Preparation Time: 10 minutes / Cooking Time: 15 minutes / Serves 2
Ingredients
- 2-3 dried whole chillies
- 4 eggs
- 1 tbsp (20ml) fish sauce
- 3 tbsp (60g) palm sugar
- 2 large or 3 small shallots
- 4 thin slices of red onion
- 1/3 cup (80ml) cooking oil
- 2 tbsp (40ml) water
- 2 tsp (10ml) tamarind extract/paste.
Method
Eggs
- Boil the eggs for 5 minutes from when the water starts boiling.
- Once boiled, pour out the hot water and run the eggs under cold water for a few seconds. Let them sit in a pot of cold water for a few minutes until cooled.
- Put the eggs into a deep fryer at 190ºC until they turn brown (about 5 minutes). When done, drain the eggs and set them aside. Let the oil cool slightly.
Cooking Sauce
- Transfer half of the oil from the deep fryer to a wok. Add the dried chilli and red onion and stir until the onion browns. Over a low heat, add the palm sugar, fish sauce, water and tamarind extract. Mix everything together until the sugar and tamarind extract have dissolved. This will balance the sweet, salty and sour elements of the sauce. Turn off the heat and leave the sauce for a few minutes until it has thickened. While waiting for the sauce to thicken, finely dice the shallots and fry them until crispy.
Serving
- Halve the eggs and place them on a serving plate. Pour the sauce over the eggs and top with a sprinkle of fried shallots.
Notes
If you don’t have a deep fryer fill a saucepan with enough oil so that the eggs will be covered and raise the temperature to 190ºC. If you don’t have a wok, use a frying pan on high heat.