Superbly Sambal

Come to Penang and you'll find that everybody loves sambal, especially the savoury kind made with belacan, and almost everyone will be able to tell you how to make it but very few people know that there are in fact more varieties of sambal than they ever dreamed of. Indonesia alone has more than 30 varieties of sambal while Sri Lanka has quite a few varieties of its own, too. 

In Malaysia, the 11 West Malaysian states all boast their own variations of this simple concoction of chilies, shallots (small red onions), garlic and lemon or tamarind juice. It's een given it's name to a whole range of dishes from Sambal Tumis to just plain Sambal Ikan or Sambal Fish (recipe here). Of course, it's the addition of other simple ingredients that make each variation of the humble sambal unique.

You can add fish,sauce as a substitute for belacan (fermented fish paste), white or palm sugar, finely pounded dried shrimp, rice vinegar, the finely julienned skin of limes, unripened mangoes, hard-boiled eggs, lemongrass, deep-fried anchovies or ikan bilis, diced tomatoes and even deep-fried salted fish. Or put in lots of tempoyak (fermented durians) like some Malaysians do. Just make sure all our doors and windows are open and you have a good deodoriser handy when you do this.Of course your neighbours might think that you just found three or four five-days-dead rats in your kitchen because durians have an extremely pungent smell, and when fermented, the "perfume" becomes much, much more intense and powerful.

Or play it safe and try to replicate some of the Indonesia sambal by adding things like crushed fried peanuts, petai (a very aromatic bean), candle nuts, roasted grated coconut, young bananas or strawberries like they do in Bandung, West Java. The Sri Lankans also make their sambal interesting with crumbled fish and/or plantains.

The best-loved sambal is, of course, the sambal belacan. Use it to jazz up plain rice, raw cucumbers or fresh sour fruit and a bit of light soy sauce like the poor people did in times of yore or use it as a condiment, a dipping sauce or a cooking ingredient. Many Penangites even add it to traditional Chinese hawker food like wonton noodles, rice noodles (kuay teow), fried noodles or soup of every kind, fried rice and chicken rice. In fact, Ipoh's famous Cantonese combination of boiled chicken, fresh beansprouts and silky hor fun (large, flat rice noodles) is heavenly with sambal belacan! Less adventurous Chinese usually opt for the time-tested lemon juice chili sauce, though.

If you want an authentic taste of Penang, see below for my recipe for a basic sambal belacan. It's very easy to prepare but there's just one caveat. You can prepare it in a grinder but it will come out slightly watery and the fragrant oils in the ingredients will not be released so you have to pound or grind it in a mortar. The importance of doing that cannot be emphasised. In the old days, rich Nyonya ladies sized up their potential daughters-in-law by listening to the rhythm of their pounding and the tinkling of the girls' bracelets as they pounded sambal belacan. One wrong note and bye-bye girlie!

Ingredients -
6 fresh medium-sized chilies (remove all the stalks and seeds first if you want it less spicy)
2 bird-s eye chilies (you can omit these for a less spicy paste)
a finger-length of belacan (roast it until it crumbles into flakes and powder)
2 shallots (remove the outer skins first)
1 small clove of garlic (remove both the hard and the fine skins)
 the juice of one big lime (you can substitute it with tamarind or lemon juice)
salt to taste

Preparation
1. Pound or grind the chilies, shallots and garlic into a semi-fine paste. You should still be able to see tiny bits of thin red chili in the paste.
2. Mix the lemon juice into the paste while still in the mortar.
3. Scoop the paste out into a small sauce dish or saucer.

You can serve your sambal belacan with almost anything but I love it best as a dip for either fresh, raw vegetables or mixed into either plain white rice or noodles of almost any kind. On various occasions, I've also tried it with french fries, meat balls, porccini mushrooms sauteed in butter, and pasta. Loved them all.