Tom Yum with Anchovies & Undur-Undur

I went to Depok beach yesterday with my neighbour friends for inauguration party of the new RAS squad. We bought heaps of seafood: clam, skipjack tuna & a kind of flat fish (flounder, I guess) in the fish market, and then brought them to a nearby restaurant to be processed. The clams were stir-fried in sweet and sour sauce, the flounders were baked, while the skipjack were deep-fried. The food was great! It was really worth the time and trouble to reach the beach (about 50 km from home).

Having tasted all that seafood delight, suddenly I had this urge to cook seafood too. I decided to make Tom Yum with this oval-shaped crustacean called undur-undur. The taste was like shrimp, but more crispy & savoury.

Ingredients:
1 large onion, chopped
2 lemon grass, bruised & tied
4 keffir lime leaves
1 inch ginger, crushed (I wanted to use galangal but ginger is all I have)
2-3 tbsp chilli paste
3 bird chillies (whole)
1 lime (you only need the juice)
1-2 tbsp fish sauce (nam pla)
3-4 cups water
1-2 stock cubes
1/2 kg fresh anchovies (I recommend you deep-fry the anchovies first until they browned & firm. I made mistake by adding the fresh achovies while sauteing the onion. The taste were good, but they disintegrated into pieces, making the soup cloudy.)
2 large white tofu, cut into 2 cm cubes
1/4 kg fried undur-undur
100 g dried mushrooms, soaked in warm water
salt to season
cilantro & leek (sliced) to garnish

Saute the chopped onion until tender. Add ginger, anchovies, undur-undur, lime grass, keffir lime leaves, chillies & chilli paste. Add the water & stock cubes and bring to boil. Add tofu, lime juices, fish sauce, mushrooms & salt. Serve with cilantro & leek.


Can you see the orange pieces floating on the soup? That's the undur-undur.

You can substitute anchovies & undur-undur with any seafood. I know a restaurant which serve Tom Yum with chicken feet. ^o^