On last weekend, we visited a restaurant on the beach, which served freshly caught prawns cooked in sambal sauce. They were really delicious. Sambal paste is a widely used paste in Asia,especially in Malaysian, Indonesian and Singaporean cuisine. Inspite of living here for more than an year, I haven't tried to learn much about cooking the popular food here...., so I thought this recipe was a good one to start. What I have made today, may or may not be very authentic, I read about sambal paste recipes on the internet and found that there are 100s of recipes according to countries, regions and even cooks. These are the common ingredients-- spicy red hot chilies, shrimp paste, garlic and shallots, plus and minus some ingredients. Lot of information about Sambal paste here !! This is how, I made this recipe......
Ingredients:
- 5-6 cloves of garlic
- 5-6 red chilies(I have used bird's eye chilies, can use dried red ones too...soak them in water for about 10-15 minutes)
- 1 tbsp shrimp paste -about 15 gms (I used belacan , that is a malay variety of shrimp paste)
- 3 stalks of lemon grass
- 4-5 shallots
- 1 lemon (juiced)
- about 1 kg of chicken (I used about 850 gms of whole chicken with bones, without skin)
- salt to marinate the chicken -- about 1 tsp
- 2-3 tbsp oil
- coriander leaves and chili to garnish
Recipe:
- Wash and clean the chopped chicken. Drain out all the water. Rub a tsp of salt over the chicken and keep it aside.
- Keep one stalk of lemongrass aside, chop the remaining two, after removing outer layers. Remove skins of the garlic and shallots and tops of the chilies.
- Put it all in a blender or a food processor and pulse for 20 seconds, till it all comes together as a paste. You can do it by hand too, with the help of mortar and pestle.
- Add the block of shrimp paste to the above paste and pulse again to get a fine puree. Add lemon juice to the paste. Sambal paste is ready.
- Heat about 2-3 tbsp oil in a pan. Add the sambal paste to it.
- Saute it, stirring well for 3-4 minutes.
- Add chicken and let the spices get coated onto the chicken.
- Stir well and let the chicken cook for 4-5 minutes till it becomes white.
- Add about 1- 1.5 cups of water(I added the water to the grinder in which I made the sambal paste and kinda cleaned out the sambal paste) to the chicken, and let it simmer on low flame for another 7-8 minutes.
- Garnish with chopped lemon grass, coriander and lime wedges.
- Serve hot with fragrant jasmine rice.
Quantity:
- 4-6 servings
Notes:
- I have used the least possible chilies to make the sambal paste. You can increase the chilies to 10 or even more for a really fiery hot sambal paste.
- If you are using dried red chilies, soak them in water for 10-15 minutes.
- To reduce the heat, remove the seeds.
- My version was fairly okay in terms of spice level.... even my little one could have it(just the chicken without the gravy), so I did not feel the need to remove the seeds.
- You can add a bit of sugar to the paste to balance the tartness of the limes, heat of the chilies and saltiness of the shrimp paste. I didn't add.. !!
- As with other chicken recipes, make it ahead and let it sit in sambal sauce for 6-12 hours. It tastes really good that way....!!
- You can use this paste to make prawns or grilled fish too...!!
- A special note to my Malaysian and Singaporean readers: Do let me know, how do you make your Sambal paste !!!
