This is a Malay dish and is considered pretty spicy. We normally called it sambal sotong and sambal is made of lots of chili paste and belacan. Normally sambal is cooked with sea food like fish, prawns, crab, variations of shells and squid. Is ok to serve it with plain rice but is best to eat it with coconut rice. I am sure most Filipino heard of Nasi Lemak. So basically nasi lemak is coconut rice with sambal and few other condiments. I have cooked Nasi Lemak twice in my life and I am pretty pleased with the results. However I will not post the recipe now as I prefer to post it only when I take the pictures of my own cooking.
Since I made this sambal pusit dish a few days ago, I will share with you my version of sambal pusit with everyone.
INGREDIENTS :-
- Half kilo of squid
- 3 spoon of chili powder ( grounded chili paste is better )
- 3 onions
- 5 cloves of garlic
- 5 teaspoon of tamarind juice
- one small cube of belacan ( 2cm x 2cm ) soak in half cup of water
- salt
- sugar
PREPARATION :-
- Clean squid and cut into ring shape. Take out the squid ink. This is very important as the ink will make the sambal taste funky.
- Blend the onions (3 )
- cut oinons to semi moon shape (2)
- blend the garlics
COOKING :-
- Heat up 5 big spoon of cooking oil
- put in blended garlic and onion
- when the aroma of garlic and onion can be smell, add in chili paste
- cook in low heat and let oil go on top of the paste
- add in tamarind juice and follow with belacan with water
- continue to cook in low heat and let oil go on top of the paste
- you will most likely cough smelling the aroma
- add in the semi moon onion and squid
- add salt ( one teaspoon )
- add sugar ( 3 teaspoon ) – can be more if you like the sambal to be sweet and spicy
- keep cooking till the sambal paste becomes thick
- no need to add any water as the squid will emits water
- normally the cooking process will take 30 minutes
- ready to serve with plain rice
So to make this more of a memorable meal and not wanting to do so much work to prepare coconut rice, can just simply eat with with raw cucumber and easy available fried peanuts. Is as close as Nasi Lemak with minimum effort. I will promise to make my super Nasi Lemak with various condiments and lots of side dishes ( ulam ).
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