The old-fashioned way…

I love the way my mum or for that matter, my grandma and aunties, cooked fish or prawns in their own kampung-style sort of way. Some may feel that it is actually assam (tamarind) fish or prawns but I would say that it is not exactly the same in that the end product would have nice clear sourish yellow-coloured soup like this…

This way of cooking is best with udang galah (freshwater prawns) or what the Chinese would call tua-thow hay (big-headed prawns)…

…which cost a bomb these days, going up to over RM30-40 a kilo. Suitable alternatives would be fish like ikan buris or sai seng, tengirri or bay ka (mackerel) and others, even kembong.

It is very simple to cook really and all you need would be these ingredients…

– a bit of kunyit (tumeric), chili, one or two stalks of serai (lemon grass), some belacan (dried prawn paste) and a piece of assam keping (dried tamarind slice).

Bruise the ends of the serai and pound the kunyit and chili until they’re really really fine…

…or your soup will not be nice and clear.

Dilute the pounded ingredients in water and put the rest of the stuff in…

Hmmmm…it was a bit too red – maybe I added too much chili and there were little bits floating in the water – perhaps I should have pounded everything a bit more. Anyway, I would think that it looked a lot nicer than this assam fish that we had in KL…

Bring that to boil and and simmer until the fragrance from the ingredients comes out and fills the whole house. Put in the prawns or the fish and simmer a while longer for the sweetness of the crustaceans to come out. Add salt and/or msg according to taste.

My attempt at cooking it in that old-fashioned way turned out quite well and I would think it was nicer than what we had before at a restaurant in town…

There is still room for improvement though – I would prefer it to be a little bit more sour so the next time around, I would add another piece or two of the assam slices and I also feel that a little bit more belacan would be nicer. Other than those, that huge chili that I used was absolutely hopeless – not pedas (spicy hot) at all. If I had known, I would have added a couple of cili padi for that sadly-missing extra kick that my missus and I would have loved.

Whatever it is, I certainly will try it again and again till I get it perfectly right – the way my mum used to cook it.