It's almost 7 am as I'm starting to type out this blog entry, and I've been tossing and turning in bed for a good part of the last few hours. I've been having bouts of insomnia for the past weeks! It's driving me nuts. Anyway, I figured, if I can't fall asleep, I might as well use the time to do something else. So here I am. Heh.

I've mentioned that my parents went to Malacca last week in one of my previous entries. I ended up not going with them, and stayed home with my younger brother instead. On one of those nights, I couldn't sleep too, and went about doing these things :

1. I did laundry. Haha.
   
   
2. There was a fan that was vibrating too much in my system unit, and it had been annoying me for weeks. I finally opened up my system unit's chassis and pulled out the darned fan.
   
   
3. And since I had the chassis open... I cleaned out some of the parts... Pictures on this task later. :P
   
   
4. I cooked! What did I cook? Read on to find out! :D

I have a system unit chassis that has a side-fan. I leave this side fan on all the time since it has a small exhaust pipe-thingie inside that leads straight to the processor fan. And when I opened up the side-fan cover, this was what I found.

Wheeeeeeee. So dusty! Hahaha. I had never cleaned it out ever since I bought it way back in June 2006! Hohoho. By the way, sorry for the super-obvious flash blast from these pictures... I was too lazy to set up my lighting kit. Hahaha.

And here's the cover, after I cleaned it out. Well, relatively cleaned it out anyway. And below is the heap of dust from just that part in the photo above.

Woot. Yes, I use a broad tip paintbrush to clean out my fans. It works quite well, you know. :) Anyway, then I turned the side cover to the other side, and unscrewed the actual fan... Which... Looked... Well, I guess, not that bad... You decide.

Guess the bulk of the dust got trapped on the cover. But then again, over the 1.5 years or so, I have wiped the fan a bit once in a while through the cover when I was relatively-less-lazy. :D

Ooh, here's a picture of the offending fan and parts of my messy system innards. I... Really cannot be bothered to tidy the innards up.

One of the perks of staying up through the night is of course the morning view. I am fortunate enough to live on the 11th storey of a typical Singapore HDB block, which faces a lovely view of sunrises. This time around, I didn't shoot a sunrise, but a capture of the beautiful blue sky. What do you think?

I really like the blues of the sky. And I am happy to say that the photograph above is minimally Photoshopped. Just a tweak here and there, is all. :) Pity about the noise though. :(

Oh, and yes, I cooked too. As promised, here are the photos.

Frying up a sambal paste which my mom always prepare in huge amounts... So technically, I cheated a bit. Heh. The sambal paste are made up of :

1. Shallot Big red onion - 2 bulbs
   
   
2. Garlic - 10 bulbs
   
   
3. Ginger - 1.5 cm length
   
   
4. Turmeric - 1.5 cm length
   
   
5. Belacan (Shrimp paste) - 1/4 (or a quadrant, if you like) of the round kind
   
   
6. And of course, dried chillies - 1.5 fistful of 'em
   
   

These ingredients are all blended together until they resemble the paste in the photograph above.

So what exactly did I cook that required so much sambal?

Chicken sambal, of course! :D

It's superbly easy to cook chicken sambal once you've got the sambal paste mixed and ready. Here are the steps!

1. Cook the chicken parts that you want first. Don't make it too crispy, but don't undercook it either. Try to get it to a slight-brown colour, with the first signs of crispiness about to appear about 3/4 cooked. That's the perfect balance. :D
   
   
2. Fry some sambal paste in a wok. More paste for a spicier taste, and less for a milder one. In my dish of 4 thighs and 6 other chicken parts, I used about 3 generous tablespoonful of the chilli paste. If you add too much, don't fret, I'll tell you how to make the taste less spicy later on. :)
   
   
3. Add a bit of sugar and salt to taste. I also added Ajinomoto's MSG flavouring to my paste. Why? Err, just because that's how my mom taught me. Haha. It's fine to exclude it 'cause from my experience, it doesn't really add much to the taste. :P (Discuss, is Ajinomoto's MSG flavouring just really a placebo effect? o.O Conspiracy alert!)
   
   
4. So fry the paste a bit until the aroma really comes out. Actually, I'm not sure about that aroma. My nose was blocked when I was cooking this, so I just waited till the colour turned slightly darker. :P You can choose not to wait too, if you want. It'd probably be fine. Haha.
   
   
5. Now, add sugar. Yes, I know you've added a bit in step 3, but add more. Quite liberally too, if you've accidentally added too much chilli in step 1. Hell, if you want the sweet and spicy taste instead, add some more too. Honestly? That's what I do. Hurr. Unhealthy, I know, but I added probably about 7 tablespoonful of refined sugar. Once, you've added the sugar, stir the paste, and it will turn a darker shade of red. Stir until the sugar has dissolved and you've achieved an even colour of dark red.
   
   
6. Fry until the paste turns slightly crispier than the original mix. You want to achieve a sort of specific consistency... If you leave it to fry for too long, the chilli paste will have a slightly burnt taste, and won't stick to the chicken parts. I'd say, stir the paste for about 5 minutes. Then, take a spoon, and take a taste.
   
   
7. Oh, blow on the paste first to cool it down before you take a taste, of course. What? You've gone and burned your tongue? MEDICCCC!!! Dammit. Where's Ridjal when you need him?!
   
   
8. Does it taste good? If it does, you're good to move on to the next step. If it's still too spicy for your liking, you can do one of two things. To lessen the spiciness just a little bit, add some water to your paste. Not a lot, just a little bit. Maybe about 200 ml of water? Well, you take an estimate. If the mixture becomes too runny, you've added too much water, and might need to let some evaporate first. Take note, this step does not make the paste a lot less spicier. Just a little bit. To reduce the spiciness a lot, add more sugar. That's right. Sugar. You could try a bit of water and sugar to make it a better solution. :)
   
   
9. Alright, now that the mixture tastes good, it's time to add your chicken parts! Add and stir until the chicken parts are covered with the sambal.
   
   
10. That's it! You're done! You can now serve your first chicken sambal dish. Congratulations!

If you do try this tutorial recipe, let me know how it turns out, yea? :D

Oh wow, look at the time... I took 1.5 hours to type out this blog entry. That rocks.

Anyway, as you can see... I'm quite a multi-talented person... I can cook, I can take nice photographs, I can blog, I can do two kinds of tutorials, I can clean dirty fans, and I can do laundry too! And plus, since I'm just such a darn nice guy... Anybody want to be my Valentine? Hahaha. :P