Tuna Sambal Matah and Bangkok Culinary Trip to Thailand with Mr. Bondan Winarno and Diatabs

Good Morning!

Some of you might already know that I won an instagram contest from Diatabs, and the prize is a fortune! Culinary trip to Bangkok!!! Can I scream my uber-high pitch-out of this world-kinda scream? Prepare to close your ears, peeps. Hahaaaha. Anyway, the truth is, the moment I found out that I won, I was confused, can't believe it. I mean...is it really true??

It was my dear friend, Ayu, who informed me about this contest. That was the last day of submission and I am running out of time. I have tried to look for some old pics that suitable for the contest, but came up with nothing. So I open my fridge, and do the best effort I can give with whatever ingredients available. After screening through every corner, every drawer of my refrigerator, I decided to make sambal matah. It is well known as a special sambal from Bali. That was not my first time making sambal matah, in fact it is one of my favorite sambal and I make it quite often .

Here is the pic that I submitt to the contest. Not bad rite?

TUNA SAMBAL MATAH

Ingredients:

12 thai red chili

10 shallots

2 garlic

3 kaffir lime leaf, remove the cord

2 lemongrass, peel and use only the tender white part.

1/2tsp shrimp paste, toasted

1/2 sdt salt

Pinch of sugar

1 tbsp lime juice

4 tbsp oil

1 can (128gr) tuna in oil

.

Cara:

1. Thinly slice the chili, shallots, lemongrass, garlic, and kaffir lime leaves
2. Add lime juice, salt and sugar. 
3. Heat oil in a frying pan, put the shrimp paste and with the back of a spoon, mashed the shrimp paste until all combined with the oil. Turn off heat
4. Pour the mixture of oil and shrimp paste to the chilies. Add the tuna chunk. Mix well. Ready to serve.

A little behind the scene story,  I was in a hurry during the photoshoot, it was a bit late in the afternoon, not much sunlight left. Like a bad dream for every foodphotographer who use natural light and very depending on the availability of sunlight like me.  So i got to make it quick, and somehow my camera remote was nowhere to be found. So i use both my hands to do the action. My right hand to pick up the spoon, while my left hand click the camera shutter. It was a very acrobatic experience. At the end, the result is worth every single effort. Touchdown Thailand, for free! Thanks to Diatabs!

Do you guys want to know what we're doing when in Bangkok? Please read my story of our 3 days 2 night Bangkok Culinary Trip on the next posts 

Sambal Jambal

Hello All,

I am finding difficulties to find the appropriate title and name of this recipe in English. Therefor, I use it original name. Sambal jambal. I honestly don't know the origin of this sambal. My mom introduce me to this delicious thing. As she is a sundanese, probably it is originally from West Java.

This spicy, tasty, delicious sambal is very easy to make, with simple ingredients. If you don't know what Jambal is, it is a type of salted fish. I have no idea what the name is in English. And I bet it is not easy for you to find varieties of salted fish if you lived in America or Europe. You must check your local asian store, I think. 

Back to the ingredients, you can adjust the level of spiciness to your personal liking. If you think you can bear the hot and extra spicy flavour, use all bird eye chilies and green bird eye chilies (Indonesian : cabe rawit merah dan hijau). If you afraid that the sambal will sting your stomach, play safe! Use 50:50 with red cayenne. Still afraid? Remove the seeds, it will reduce the spiciness.

Ingredients :

200 gr of jambal salted fish, cut into thin slice, wash clean

250 gr mix of cayenne, bird eye chilies, and green bird eye chilies

10 green tomatoes, cut into 4

16 red onion

8 cloves of garlic

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp sugar

12 tbsp cooking oil 

Directions:

1. Clean all the chillies, peel the skin of red onion dan garlic. Wash clean, set aside

2. Fry the slice jambal until golden brown. 

3. Mashed the chilies, onion and garlic with mortar and pestle. If you use blender, just press a few seconds so it is not mashed finely

4. Turn on your stove, add in cooking oil. 

5. Cook the mashed chilies with medium heat untill done. Add in salt, sugar, tomatoes, the fried jambal.

Shallot and Chili Relish

Most Indonesian can't eat without sambal. There are so many varieties of sambal/chili here accross the nation. Each region has its own specialty. In fact, I believe every family has special sambal recipe. 

This shallot relish is one of our favorite sambal, we have it in stock most of the times. You can store this relish in your refrigerator using airtight glass container for 1 month.  Re-heat using microwave before serving. 

I am using 3 different kind of chili in this recipe, the one with the most heat is bird eye chilies. If you think you can't handle the heat, skip this chili or remove the seeds to reduce the spiciness. 

Shallot and Chili Relish

recipe slightly adapted from Rina Rinso

Ingredients:

150 gr of mixed red cayenne chilies, bird eye chilies and green bird eye chilies. 

150 gr shallots

4 cloves of garlic

1/2 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp salt, or depending on your liking

2 tsp of dried ebi (dried small prawn), pan fried (without oil) until fragrant, and mashed finely until it turns to powder.

150 ml cooking oil

Methods :

1. Peeled, washed and drained the shallots. Set aside.
2. Remove the stalks from chilies. Washed and drained. Set aside.
3. Heat oil in a frying pan and cook the chili, shallots and garlic, and the dry ebi powder until it turns a darker shade and fragrant. 
4. With mortar and pestle, or food processor, grind the chilies coarsely.
5. Then cook again, season with salt and sugar, cook until the oil colored change to red-ish. 
6. Turn off heat, let cool and store in a glass container. 

Pressure Cooker Chicken (Ayam Presto) and (Possibly) the Best Sambal Terasi I Have Ever Made

This dish is one of my family's favorite, I prepare it in bulk. Well, not that bulk actually. At least I use 2 chickens, so that I don't have to cook it again in such a short period of time. I usually keep some pieces of pressure cooker chicken in the refrigerator inside an airtight container, and the rest went to the freezer. Whenever I want to serve the chicken, all I need to do is thaw it, and fry. Saves time.

This spice-full chicken, is actually just a regular "ayam ungkep", so we called it in Indonesia. I cook it with pressure cooker simply because I want the meat part to be tender, easy to chew for my little ones. And right now, we are living really close to my father-in law, he is 80 years old, and cannot chew though food. For more, when you cook this chicken using pressure cooker, the spice really really infiltrated, absorbed into the deepest part. Yummmmy! Oh, btw, the chicken recipe was my mom's. She never use shallots to make this dish. And I agree with her, once I try to use shallots, it doen't taste as good. Since then, I only use garlic for boiling chickens.

I also include the recipe of how to make a super yummy sambal, the perfect pair of fried chicken! This sambal is quite similar to mashed sambal or sambal penyetan/sambal pecel lele, Central Java traditional food. Please note the secret ingredients, roasted sesame. Do not skip this, it makes the sambal has a deep nutty fragrance, and freaking delicious!

Ingredients :

- 2 chickens, cut into 6-8 pieces, according to your liking

- 1/2 tsp salt

- juice of 1 lime

- 1 lemongrass, mashed

- 2 cm galangal, remove the skin, mashed

- 2 bay leaves

Grind the following into spice paste

- 8 cloves of garlic

- 1 tsp of coriander seed, you can also use the ground coriander

- 4-5 cm of fresh turmeric

- 3 cm fresh ginger

- 6 candlenut

- 2 lemongrass (only the white part)

- 3-4 cm of galangal
- 1 and 1/4 tsp of salt, or adjust it according to your liking
- appx 150 ml water

psssst...this is the secret ingredients of the perfect sambal!

Chili Sauce with belacan paste
- 12 red cayenne chilies (Indonesian : cabe merah keriting)
- 6-8 bird eye chilies (Indonesian : cabe rawit merah). Be careful with this chili, it's freaking hot! *you can reverse the amount of chilies, if you are a fan of spicy hot sambal*
- 4 cloves of garlic, deep fried 
- 1 regular size tomato, remove the seed and deep fried for about 2-3 minutes
- 1 tsp of terasi/belacan, pan roasted 
- 1 tsp of sesame, pan roasted for about 1 minute
- 1 tsp of coconut sugar, or you can use just regular granulated sugar
- 1/2 tsp of salt, adjust this according to your liking. Some belacan taste more salty than the other, so add the salt in small amount first.
- 3-4 tablespoon of sizzling hot oil (use the oil that previously used for deep frying the chicken), adjust the amount of hot oil according to your taste, the more oil you use, it will get runnier.

How To :
1. Rub the pre-wash chicken with salt and lime juice, let sit for at least 5 minutes. This to remove the unpleasant smell of the chicken. 
2. Arrange the chicken in your pressure cooker, pour the spice paste, add the mashed lemongrass, bay leaves and galangal.
3. Let cook for 30 minutes, the counting starts after the pressure cooker whistling
4. After all the steam is gone, re-cook the chicken with open lid until the water evaporated.
5. Chickens are ready for deep fries.