Gulai Cumi Padang

Gulai cumi Padang is one of the famous dish from Padang, West Sumatra, besides the world most delicious food, Rendang. Gulai cumi Padang, or in English translated as Padangnese squid curry has rich taste of spices such as lemongrass, galangal, ginger and turmeric. My family loves squid, especially my older son. We usually just make simple dish like pasta, risotto, fried calamary or just grilled.

I never cook squid for curry before, well except some years ago. And recently I got quite a lot of stock of fresh squid. Unfortunately they are not big as Sotong squid, the one that are commonly sell in Indonesia. But I guess for now size doesn’t really matter, as long as the taste is delicious 😀 In Slovenia, seafood is consider expensive and there are not much choices of fresh seafood. Most of them are frozen. It even so difficult to get fresh prawn. But at least, fresh squid is easy to get.

This time I cooked gulai cumi Padang with less chillies so my husband can eat it. As I remember when I ate gulai cumi at padang restaurant in my hometown, Surabaya – it has some filling inside. And I wondered what is it. I googled and found out they used tofu and egg. So I gave it a try. Here’s the recipe.

INGREDIENTS

800 g squid (cleaned)

For filling

250 white firm tofu

1 medium egg

2 cloves of garlic

1 stalk spring onion, thinly chopped

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper powder

1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder or curry powder

Spice Paste for the curry

2 big red chilles (optional, if you want to have it non-spicy, you can use red paprika)

4 shallots

3 cloves of garlic

1/2 tablespoon of coriander

3 candlenuts

1 cm ginger

3 cm turmeric

Addition ingredients

1 stalk of lemongrass

1 Indonesian bayleaf (daun salam)

3 cm galangal, smashed

3 cm, ginger,  smashed

2 kaffir lime leaves (daun jeruk purut)

1 1/2 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon sugar

300 ml coconut milk

200 ml water

2 tablespoon oil

DIRECTIONS

1. Make the filling : using spoon, crushed tofu, then mix with spices,  spring onion and egg. Mix them well.

2. Fill the squid with the filling, then seal the edge with toothpick. Don’t fill the squid too much.

3. Grind or blend the spice paste for the curry. Heat the pan with oil then saute spice paste, lemongrass, galangal, ginger, daun salam and kaffir lime leaves,  until it’s fragrant. Add the water, coconut milk and filled squid. Spice it up with salt and sugar and bring it to boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for about 20-30 minutes.

4. Serve with steamed rice and other dishes such as sambal lado ijo or terong balado.