If at first you don’t succeed…

The other day, I decided to try cooking my own otak-otak…

…along the same lines as those here.

These were the ingredients I used:

– some shallots and garlic (peeled and sliced), a bit of tumeric (kunyit), galangal (lengkuas) and lemon grass (serai) and some bird-eye chili (cili padi). I also bought a packet of kerisik (toasted grated coconut, ground to paste) as well.

I pounded all the ingredients, except the kerisik…

…and I took a bit of my missus’ pounded chili (with vinegar and garlic added) for a bit of extra colour. It would not make much of  a difference to the taste as this batch of chilies that she bought were totally useless – not spicy hot at all and rather tasteless.

I got a piece of fish fillet, most probably Dory, and cut it into small bits and minced it a bit using the chopping knife…

Having done that, I mixed it altogether with the ingredients plus a spoonful of kerisik and a pinch of salt and msg, according to taste and some chopped spring onions as well (actually, I thought of adding some curry leaves but it was raining and I  did not want to go out and get wet)…

I did not have any banana leaves so I used aluminium foil to wrap it…

…and I managed to come out with four parcels in total…

Then, I put it into the oven to bake for half an hour. By then, one would be able to smell the fragrance that would have filled the whole kitchen. I turned off the heat but left the parcels in the oven to continue cooking.

About half an hour to mealtime, I took out the parcels and cut them open at the top like this…

Then, I turned the oven back on and put everything back in to heat it up for about 15 minutes and also to brown it till golden yellow like this…

The otak-otak, my own original recipe, is ready…

How was it? Was it any good? I would say that it was nice but a bit too strong on the galangal/lengkuas taste. I think the next time, I will leave that out and see if it is any better.

As they say, if at first you don’t succeed, try and try again…