Lemak sauce made from rempah in five minutes? Read on.
Our grandmothers would laboriously pound a long list of ingredients: shallots, chilli, belacan or shrimp paste, candlenuts, turmeric, and coriander to make the spice paste or rempah first.
Then they would sauté it slowly till the aroma arises, add prawn stock, before finally adding coconut milk to make it creamy. Lovely. But it takes at least half an hour.
Me, I make it in five… minutes. Thanks to bottled jars of spice paste, easily available powdered spices and coconut milk or cream now packaged in cartons or tins. My grandmother would turn in her grave.
I can cook in a hurry. Besides, who wants to stand in front of the stove for hours? You want food on the table in less than an hour… which I do, most days honestly.
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Making rempah the old-fashioned way
In the bad old days, I learnt cooking the old-fashioned (hard) way. Using mortar and pestle, I pounded the root spices until they all melded into a paste. My granny would know if I did it right just by the sound of the pounding pestle. Rhythmic and constant.
Then I bought myself a food chopper and it became easier. Finally, I started to read the labels on bottled spice jars and found that some of them contained the same ingredients as the fresh paste, with a few unnecessary ingredients such as garlic (seldom found in true-blue pastes). I ignored this anomaly as it doesn’t really show up after cooking.
Best thing: no pounding or chopping.
But how to freshen up the taste? Well, leaves from the spice plants in my garden would do the trick. Indeed when I moved house, I moved with my turmeric, kaffir lime, lemon grass, curry leaves and torch ginger plants. I would add whole leaves or torn pieces into the pot.
I was on a roll! I could easily make laksa, lemak, otak otak and even sayur lodeh if I omitted the chilli or reduced the amount of bottled paste used.
Yes, all of these favourite dishes rely on the same rempah spice paste called titek: onions, chilli, candlenuts and belacan. It is coloured yellow with turmeric, fragranced with coriander and creamed with coconut. By the way, I use coconut cream rather than milk because I like the heft it gives to the gravy. You use as much or as little of the paste, depending on how much gravy you need or your spice tolerance.
I like to make a huge quantity of rempah, then portion it out into small jars for freezing. For two persons, I would use two tablespoons of paste. If using bottled pastes, no need to freeze; just spoon out the amounts you need each time.
Otak jantan
I made otak jantan (male brain) this time. The name is intriguing because there is no female otak. But you can also refer to the dish, made only with fish cakes, as otak belanga. It is cooked in a clay pot (belanga) rather than wrapped, then baked in banana leaves, as we do with that other more well-known otak otak.
A few tips: sweeten the broth with dried shrimp, or prawn stock, made from prawn shells. (Whichever, don’t omit the dried prawns as they deliver essential sweetness to the broth.) And you need not make the prawn stock from scratch. You can also add the stock left over from boiling the prawns if you’re going to use that later as a garnish.
Depending on the dish, you would add fishcake, tau pok (tofu puffs), cucumber strips and yes, daun kesom or Vietnamese mint, as garnishes.
Yes, you can make otak jantan from scratch, using the raw spice ingredients, roots and leaves; or in five minutes, using a bottled paste. Both recipes below. Have fun!
Otak Jantan (Sauce from scratch)
(For 8-10 portions)
Ingredients
- 6 large fishcakes (round), to be halved later
- 2 lemongrass stalks, bulbs bruised
- Kaffir lime leaves whole, 4-5
- ½ cup dried shrimp, small
- 1 litre water
- 1 200ml packet coconut cream
- 1 tbsp salt or to taste
- 1 tsp sugar or to taste
Spice paste
- ½ cup shallots, peeled
- 4 candlenuts, soaked first to soften, then drained
- 1 tbsp belacan (dried shrimp paste)
- 2 fresh chillies (dried if you like a stronger colour and taste), cut into smaller pieces
- 1 thumb-length turmeric root, peeled and cut into smaller pieces
- 1 tbsp coriander powder
Method
- Make spice paste or rempah by using a mortar and pestle to pound the ingredients listed into a paste. Or use a food chopper. Add coriander powder.
- Heat 1 tbsp of vegetable or coconut oil in a pot and sauté the rempah till aromatic, stirring often to avoid burning. Toss in bruised lemongrass stalks and a couple of kaffir lime leaves, whole. Sprinkle some water if it seems like burning.
- Halfway, add the drained dried shrimps and stir well.
- When aroma rises, add prawn stock, if using, and water. Bring to the boil. Add coconut cream.
- Season with salt and sugar. Taste to adjust seasoning.
- When gravy comes to the boil, add fishcakes. Bring to the boil again, then remove the fishcakes and cut in half when cooled. Store separately till time of serving to avoid flavour being leached out of the cakes.
- To serve, heat sauce again. When sauce boils, add fishcakes. Garnish with more whole kaffir lime leaves and serve.
Otak Jantan (Using premade sauce)
(For 8-10 portions)
Ingredients
- 6 large fishcakes (round), to be halved later
- ½ cup dried shrimp, small
- 1 litre water
- 1 200ml packet coconut milk
- 1 tbsp salt or to taste
- 1 tsp sugar or to taste
Sauce paste
- 1 tbsp of bottled spice paste of choice
- ½ cup onions, finely chopped
- 1 tbsp turmeric powder, to taste/look
- 1 tbsp coriander powder
Method
- Sauté 1 tbsp spice paste from a jar.
I like the bottled Nonya Sambal Chilli from Glory. And onions, chopped fine in a chopper, to thicken and sweeten the sauce. - Add turmeric powder. Stir and add a bit more if you find the colour too pale. Remember however that coconut milk will lighten the colour somewhat.
- Add coriander powder for fragrance.
- Bring to the boil, then add coconut milk and heat till boiling again. Season with salt and sugar and taste to adjust if needed.
- Add whole fishcakes and continue with the rest of the recipe above.
Tip: you can also prepare the recipe to this point and reserve or freeze gravy for later. Be sure to freeze in usable portions. Add fishcakes just before serving, after heating up the sauce.
