Welcome to the first of my sambal series! This is really exciting because sambal is one of my passions and I want to share it with the world!
For the uninitiated, sambal is an Indonesian/Malay word for a chilli-based condiment. Sambal is a must-have in my household and millions of others in the regions of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. Like ketchup with fries, sambal to us is the must-have accompaniment to go with our rice, our noodles, our snacks. Sambal is life!
Sambals are pounded using a traditional mortar and pestle. There are so many varieties of sambals out there that I don’t think I could ever try every one of them in this lifetime!
There are raw sambals, sambals that are cooked, sambals that are sweet, sambals that are tangy and everything else in between! The ingredient that stays consistent in a sambal is of course, the chillies! I think the topic on chillies alone should be its own blog post.
I love the fact that sambal is made out of just a handful of ingredients, but gives so much satisfaction–I know of some people who cannot eat anything without having sambal on the side! 🙌🏼 And this is not uncommon at all where I come from!
Starting off #MelsSambalSeries with one of my favourites, the Tomato Sambal. It’s spicy, tangy, sweet from the tomatoes and extremely delicious. This sambal is extremely versatile, goes with pretty much EVERYTHIING and is a cinch to make.
Cooking Instructions
This Tomato Sambal has the lovely sweetness from cooking down the onions and the tomatoes. You can make it as fiery as you like, by adjusting the amount of chilies. For me, a good ratio for this sambal is 1:1:2 – one handful each of onions and tomatoes with two handfuls of chillies.
Roughly chop all ingredients into manageable pieces. They don’t have to be sliced finely or anything, we just want them to be able to be tossed in a wok together and later on, everything is going to be pounded to pulp anyway!
An ingredient I’d love to talk about is belacan also pronounced buh-lah-chan. It’s a fermented and dried shrimp paste. It is an essential ingredient in the cuisines of South East Asia. You will find that we put belacan in our curries, sauces, dips and also in our vegetable dishes.
You’ll easily find them in Asian markets, and in Singapore, belacan is readily available in the supermarkets too. Normally, shrimp pastes are fermented with salt and dried under the sun in blocks. How would I describe it? It is a stinky, cheesy sock smelling, umami bomb! And I love it! Some versions of belacan are wet, some are sold more as a paste rather than dried up cakes, and sometimes you may get them in powder form too. Some are more pink and others a dark, chocolatey brown. From South China all the way down to the Philippines, Myanmar, Vietnam, Thailand and of course Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, the influence of belacan stretches over to Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and to Goa, India too.
Ok, back to our cooking! After chopping the ingredients, start by heating some oil in a wok and add in all the chopped ingredients. Except for the belacan. You want to cook them in a medium-high heat.
When the vegetables have started to soften, this’ll take about 10-15 minutes, add the belacan into the wok and crush it with the back of your ladle before tossing it with the rest of the ingredients. Add in some salt.
What we are looking for is a slight charring of the vegetables. You will find the garlic and onions to have caramelised into a beautiful brown. And, the skin of the chillies would also be slightly charred. The tomatoes would have been cooked down to a pulp, making the mixture slightly wet and sticky! Remove from heat.
Now comes my favourite part! Grab a mortar and pestle, scoop the ingredients in and start pounding away. With the mortar and pestle, the great thing is how you can control the consistency of your sambal. You can make your sambal slightly chunky or you can beat it to death! If you’re looking for a more finer consistency, you can pulse the cooked ingredients in a mini food processor or blender. That works like a charm!
And there you have it! My favourite Tomato Sambal goes perfectly with just about anything, with its lovely, fiery, slightly sweet flavour. I love squeezing calamansi lime over the sambal before digging in! Calamansi lime is a type of lime easily found in the region, it’s very small, about 1/2 the size of a golf ball and has lots of seeds. It has a beautiful, sweet aroma. You can swap this with just regular lime.
Check out how I’ve used this sambal to make a refreshing Salmon Poke Rice Bowl – Look forward to the recipe going live this Friday, 3rd December!
Print
Ingredients
6 Big Red Chillies
5 Red Bird’s Eye Chilli or Chilli Padi
2 Ripe Tomatoes
2 Red Onions
1 Clove of Garlic
1 tsp or 5g of Belacan
Salt
Oil for frying
Calamansi Lime or just regular Lime
Method
- Chop up the onions into 4, peel the garlic and slice the big red shillies into 4-5 pieces. You can slice the chilli padi into 3-4 pieces.
- Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a wok on medium-high heat.
- Add in all the ingredients except the belacan.
- Cook for about 10-15 minutes until soft and slightly charred.
- Add in the belacan. Crush them with the back of your spatula before tossing them with the rest of the ingredients in the wok.
- Add salt to taste and you are done!
- Pound or blend, squeeze some lime juice and enjoy!
I hope you’ll love this sambal as much as I do! Also, remember to have fun experimenting with what you can do with this sambal, use it as a dip for raw vegetables, spice up your mayonnaise, add a fiery kick to your pasta sauces or use it as a spread (perhaps sparingly?) for your sandwiches. Check out our full video on YouTube and follow us on Instagram for more fun content! Don’t forget to share and tag us when you try this delicious recipe.
Till our next recipe! Drop your recipe suggestions in the comments below.
Deliciously yours,
Mel
