#belachan

A New Peanut Sauce for Gado Gado

I’ve been on the lookout for some time now for a more authentic Indonesian peanut sauce to crown a gado gado salad or sate sticks. I’ve tried many recipes from my various Indonesian cookbooks and most seem to miss the mark. Indonesian sate sauce differs from island to island and each Indonesian home cook may highlight a distinctive in their the sauce. I’ve tasted some dark, thick sauces in Java…

Always accompanying Southeast Asian food, belachan is a mainstay in cuisine from south of China, to Thailand, to Malaysia, to Singapore, to Indonesia and to reaches far and in-between. Needless to say, as Straits-cooking is a fusion of Malay, Chinese and Dutch influences, it is an essential condiment to nonya or Peranakan food.  At its heart is shrimp paste. Preparation from there on varies…

Smoked and coal-Barbecue Stingray on Banana Leaf with homemade Belachan Chili Sauce

Stingray is a staple of Southeast Asian cooking. In Singapore, we love our stingrays. Usually, we grill it slathered with chili and wrapped in a banana leaf. There’s something ethereal about eating stingrays. There’s not much meat out of that thin cartilage-filled wings, but there’s so much flavour in it. 

I decided to try making stingray at home. Smoke part of it, keep the rest for a barbecue with a home made belachan. It worked great so I’ll be making this again pretty soon!

A few words about my version of the belachan chili. It’s the first time I’ve made it, and I’ve always preferred my chili to be fresh, spicy and complex but yet balanced enough to take on all sorts of meats. So the technique I used was to have half of the chili I made fried in a wok and the other half kept as it is, blend the two lots and use it. This way, I got a pretty light belachan chili which worked wonders with Stingray. 

Ingredients

1 6.5 KG stingray, gutted and divided into wings and steaks

3 large pieces of banana leaf

For the Cure (for two wing portions)

1 burnt lemon grass (White part only)

Rind of 2 Kafir limes

A dozen garlic, crashed

¾ tbsp dried dill tips

½ tbsp dried fennel seeds

1 tbsp ginger powder

60 ml Rum (I used Thai Rum)

1.5 cups sea salt

1 cup demerara sugar

6 cups water

¼ cup olive oil

For the smoke

1 tbsp cherry wood chips

2 tbsp Apple wood chips

2 star anise

4 cloves

For the Belachan Chili

200g large red chili deseeded

75g chili padi (bird’s eye chili) deseeded

75g dried chili padi 

30g young ginger

60g palm plus 2 tsp golden caster sugar

2 lemon grass stalks, bashed

200g shallots

100g garlic

30g tamarind

Juice of 6-8 small lime

1/3 cup water

¼ cup vegetable oil (neutral, like canola, or sunflower)

200-250g Penang belachan or fermented prawn paste burnt and toasted in a bit of vegetable oil for 15 minutes 

Preparing Smoked Stingray

To cure the stingray wings, combine the curing ingredients and cure the wings for 12 hours. Wash off the cure, dry completely, and let the wings dry out in the fridge for another 6 hours to form a pellicle.

To smoke the wings, using a stove top kettle smoker, smoke them on high heat till the thermometer hits 150 deg F. Turn the fire down to low, and smoke for 12 minutes or until the thermometer reads 190-200 deg F. 

Remove the smoker cover and let the wings cool. You’ll be surprised how much the wings have shrunk during the  smoking process as a lot of it is just water. I reckoned that the wings dropped 30 % in size.

Remove the wings and plate it on banana leaves and serve it with the belachan (see below).

Preparing the Belachan

Combine all the ingredients less the belachan in a large pestle and pound the contents roughly. Then transfer them into a blender and blend until integrated. Add in about 1/3 cup of water and ¼ cup of oil.

Prepare the belachan. Cut out and weigh a chunk of the belachan. In a wok, break up the belachan with a fork into as small pieces as possible. Torch it with a blow torch with quick, smooth strokes. Don’t burn them, but toast the outer layer for flavor. You should see a bit of smoke coming out and the aroma of fermented prawns become a lot more intense. Do this for about 2-3 minutes or so. Then turn on the fire and toss the belachan in the wok well for another 5-7 minutes until fragrant. Add in some oil if the belachan sticks to the sides of the wok. 

Remove the belachan and add it to the chili in the blender. Blitz and combine well. Take half of the chili out, and fry it in a wok with 2 tbsp of vegetable oil until you can smell the aroma of browned shallots and garlic. Put the fried portion of chili back into the other portion of chilli in the blender and blitz again. And that’s all to it! 

Grilling the Stingray

There are many schools of thought towards grilling stingrays. The way it was done when my mate Clement tended to the grill last Sunday (it was my birthday celebration) was to get a small grill going with coconut charcoals first.