After the heat came the euphoria, and after the euphoria came the doubt. I was tasting sambal belacan, a condiment most people don’t sample on its own, for the same reason people don’t usually taste gunpowder, or sulphuric acid. Sambal belacan is what other hot sauces get shown in ads, the idealized, triple distilled essence that underpins Matouk dreams and Cholula fantasies. It’s hot enough to wake the dead, and funky enough to get them dancing. The heat of course is chili, in copious, flagrant, eye-watering quantity. My friend Christopher, a cook of the most delightfully finicky sort, insists that a “properly
Our family recipe is very similar, but mum always insisted on adding a few dried Kashmiri chillies as well.
Not exactly traditional, but she said it amped up the smoky notes from the toasted belacan. It also extended the slow burn from the capsaicin, which she actually savoured.
Wonderful column. The sambal belacan now in my fridge comes, admittedly, from a packet, but I remember my mum making hers in a hefty mortar and pestle. Which belacan, I wonder today, did she opt for? We were Malacca-born but moved to Penang, so she would undoubtedly have an opinion on that front. (And speaking of flavor bombs, she would opine on this cincalok versus that one, but always lament—once we had moved north, that the best were to be found only in certain musty Malacca shops.)
Our family recipe is very similar, but mum always insisted on adding a few dried Kashmiri chillies as well.
Not exactly traditional, but she said it amped up the smoky notes from the toasted belacan. It also extended the slow burn from the capsaicin, which she actually savoured.
Good to know. Time for some pork belly cincalok.
Wonderful column. The sambal belacan now in my fridge comes, admittedly, from a packet, but I remember my mum making hers in a hefty mortar and pestle. Which belacan, I wonder today, did she opt for? We were Malacca-born but moved to Penang, so she would undoubtedly have an opinion on that front. (And speaking of flavor bombs, she would opine on this cincalok versus that one, but always lament—once we had moved north, that the best were to be found only in certain musty Malacca shops.)
Thank you for your glorious essays.