Long story short, I have found the passion of writing again. I have let other personal ventures crossed into the love of cooking and writing, and reading about food and cuisine. Started cooking again this weekend, and it felt great. My family is not that thrilled that, again, I will be messing up the kitchen and buy loads of unused ingredients, but it is fun to see some smoke coming out of the burner, I think.

Something easy and fun to start the year. I am a big fan of eggs. Any type of eggs. Scrambled, sunny side up, hard boiled, soft boiled, with rice, noodles. Easy meal with simple eggs on toasts or plain noodles or rice can fill me up for hours.

Spice up the plain old fried eggs is easy and quite a delight. One of my all time favorite is this simple sweet, sour and spicy treatment – sweetness from the shallots, sour from the lime juice and the hot after taste from the red chili.

Shallots, chili and sugar are like the trio of Indonesian cooking. All three are always present in people’s kitchen. Unlike the extravagant Chinese cuisine’s sweet and sour sauce, I really like this version better. The taste is all there, without the goey sauce thickener. Extra easy and extra yummy. Not using up too many pots and pans, That’s what I called easy cooking, if we can call frying eggs and dressing it up a little bit “cooking”.

Sweet Sour and Spicy Fried Eggs

Makes 2 servings

Ingredients:

3 eggs

2 shallots

3 red chili

juice of 1/2 lime

4 tbsp cooking oil (for frying eggs and stir-frying ingredients)

1/2 tsp sugar (optional)

1/2 tsp soy sauce

2 tbsp water

Directions:

In a non stick pan, Fry the eggs, sunny side up or any other style preferred. Set aside

Heat oil in the pan for three minutes over medium heat, add in chili slices, shallots and soy sauce

Stir fry till fragrant for 5 minutes. Add in the sugar and lime. Mix well

Lower the heat and throw in the fried eggs

Serve with noodles or plain steamed rice