Blog

Treasure of South East Asia

2020.09.29

Hello everyone!

It’s been some time since my last post. If everyone remembers, my previous post was a short introduction about myself and the food I love. If you have not seen it, here is the link to that post: http://jyamaguchi-lab.com/newweb/blog/singaporean-food-or-rather-the-absence-of

Recently, my neighbor, an Indonesian from Waseda’s Faculty of Fundamental Science and Engineering, returned to Japan after having been restricted from entering the country due to the coronavirus. As he and I had many cooking adventures together, I was looking forward to the treasures that he would bring with him this time.

After his two-week quarantine was over, I decided to go over to his apartment to make dinner when he pulled these out:

These little bottles and cans contain a condiment that is used every day in South East Asian cooking known as “sambal“. As you probably noticed, the colors of the contents in each bottle are different. Sambal is extremely versatile in both its production and usage and is chock full of flavor. My neighbor stands firm in his belief that the best sambal cannot be found in supermarkets and will not be sold in glass jars, but are only sold over mail-in orders and in plastic containers – which is the reason why most of the sambal he brought this time was packaged in small plastic bottles.

While Singapore has sambal as well, the flavors are incomparable to the Indonesian brands. Of course, the level of spiciness would be probably be out of my range of tolerance, but that is just a small price to pay for tasting these treasures. We opened all the bottles and cans that night and tried each of them with savory pancakes made of just flour, salt, and eggs.

I fried the pancakes, spread a teaspoon of the sambal inside it and folded it in half. The amazing combinations of smells filled the whole room while I was preparing the food. We were so excited to bite into them that I forgot to take a picture of it…

We picked up the pancakes…

Took a large bite…

Exclaimed how delicious the pancake was…

And then it hit us.

Not only was I unable to speak, I couldn’t stop myself from crying while panting to catch my breath. My neighbor and I ended up finishing all the milk that both of us had to get over the extreme pain from the sambal, just so that we can take another bite. While it just seems that we were being masochistic, I really will recommend anyone to try it at least once just to understand why we enjoyed it so much. Here are my top three recommendations from the many bottles that he brought with him.

Starting from the left, this sambal is made using green chillis, giving it a fresh fragrance along with a slight bitterness, the sambal in the can has salted squid in it, giving it extra depth in terms of flavor, and the sambal on the right is made with some lemon juice, giving a refreshing taste with every bite. These sambals have to be the best I have ever tasted.

Just looking at these pictures triggered the memory of each of their flavors, causing my mouth to water. Maybe I shall bother my neighbor later in the evening for some sambal and rice for a night-time snack. Until next time!