Recipe For Sator Beans Chillies Sauce With Anchovies

Yesterday, was our third anniversary. I decided to cook something special for my dearest husband's lunch, yet I didn't have any idea what would that be. With limited stuffs in fridge, (we haven't got time to restock everything). I found two bags of frozen sator beans (petai) in the freezer. I decided to cook something out of the sator beans, with some fried fish with chillies, macaroni soup, and mixed vegetable. Yet again, I have no idea how to make something tasty with the beans, so I decided to google some recipes. I found some at myrecipe.com, and some from other's blog. but then again, with limited stuffs in my kitchen, I decided to improvise a bit..

Upon requests from friends, here I shared the improvised recipe.

Sator Beans In Chillies Sauce With Anchovies (Sambal Petai Dengan Ikan Bilis)

Ingredients:
- A handful of cleaned and sliced anchovies
- 2 spoonful chilli paste (cili boh)
- 1/4 cup coconut milk + 1/4 cup water (I used instant coconut milk from carton)
- 5 bunches of chillies, red or green (I used green chillies)
- 1 Onion and 2 garlics - thinly sliced
- 2 pcs tomatoes - cut into 4 pcs (I used 4 cherry tomatoes)
- Sator Beans, Petai (I used a handful of these, but that depends on one's preference)
- salt, sugar and flavours.

How To:
1. Slice the Onion and garlics thinly.
2. Peel open the Sator beans, and make sure the bean is well-clean. Some people prefers to boil the beans for few minutes, but I prefer not to.
3. Using a dry blender, blend the green chillies for a while, and then blend together with the anchovies, make sure the mixture are not too smooth, leaving the anchovies blended roughly. I prefered to use lesung batu as it gives a better appearance.
3. Place the saucepan on a medium heat and allow it to warm through. Add a little oil, sliced onion and garlics, give it a little mix and let the oil heat up, stirring occasionally.
3. Add in the roughly blended mix of green chillies and anchovies, and give it a stir. Then, add in the chilli paste, and stir everything together.
4. Add in the mixture of coconut milk and water, and let it sit for a while before adding in the sator beans and the tomatoes. Don't forget to put in the salt, sugar and some flavours if desired such as ajinomoto. Be cautious when adding in the salt, as the anchovies is already salty, and upon cooked the saltiness of the anchovies will come up.
5. Stir occasionally and make sure the beans are well-cooked before serving..
6. Voila! Ready to eat with rice as side dishes..

Well, happy cooking!

p/s I was so glad my husband loves this cooking, though this was my first attempt of cooking sator beans, normally he'll eat the beans as ulam with some 'belacan paste' but yesterday I decided to cook it. And I am still very satisfied with the result. Might as well try the recipe, but instead of using anchovies, maybe I'll try to use prawns..