Dried Shrimp Sambal Sauce

Everu Tuesday The Star newspaper will have a column in the StarTwo section where Amy Beh will have recipes following a certain theme(maybe quiche week or chilly week or something) or answering people's queries for recipes with related recipes.

The latest Tuesday(which is a couple of days ago duh) she had recipes on various sambals or chilli paste, matching certain types of food recommendation.

Since Mom decided to fry bee hoon with crab today, I wanted to make this dried shrimp sambal sauce as accompaniment to the bee hoon. The recipe can be viewed here.

I followed the recipe, but left out the 6 red chillies because I didn't have them on hand. I find out that this is crucial to give the sauce the vibrant red colour as in the picture. Oh well, the bird's eye chillies(or cili padi) gave the sauce the taste anyway, and that's what I'm looking for.
I used belacan cubes, so I had to roast them according to Mom. I've double checked with dear Uncle Google and she's right. Roasting the cubes actually enhances the flavour of the sauce! MMmmm~

I don't have an inkling what calamansi limes are, so I just plucked some limes from the lime trees in my porch area and squeeze the juice out, omitting the seeds.
Amazingly the belacan cubes actually get whizzed in the food processor, I was thinking its impossible since they became hard like nails after roasting.
The tomato took a while to get blended. At that time I couldn't wait to dig in to the bee hoon already. But being a chilli fan I had to finish what I started just to enjoy eating bee hoon with great chilli sauce!

It was worth the wait and the hardwork(try de-skinning and slicing 3 cloves of garlic will you) as now I have tasty chilli sauce waiting to accompany my next meal. Till next time...