THE COOKBOOK TEST #0034: COCONUT & SAMBAL
INSTALLMENT #0034 (FREE) HAI HAI / LEAN, MEAN AND GREEN / SPICED CORN FRITTERS / FRIED SHALLOTS / SOME(BAL) LIKE IT HOT / SMASHED FRIED CHICKEN WITH SAMBAL / PALM SUGAR SLICE
Dear Readers,
If you ever find yourself in Minneapolis-St. Paul - or, if you're like many of my readers and already, in fact, live in Minneapolis-St. Paul - make a point of grabbing dinner sometime at the restaurant called Hai Hai in the Northeast part of town.
In warm weather, Hai Hai's a perfect kind of place - bold, bright, fiery Southeast Asian-inspired fare complemented by a Tiki-style cocktail menu, the sort of stuff that goes perfectly with a 90-degree afternoon and a light breeze whipping across the patio.
In cold weather, Hai Hai's also a perfect kind of place - a portal to a better, warmer world, a dimensional gate to a tropical state of mind.
I've always wondered how to get the kind of flavors and textures that Hai Hai serves up; intense spicy heat, funky complex depth, crispy crunchiness - and the book Coconut & Sambal, as it turns out, provides many of the answers. A clearly written key to Indonesian cooking, this is a book loaded with both the ingredients and techniques required to make Pacific island dishes that explode with impact.
Many of its recipes call for making and then sautéing a compound spice and aromatics paste that then provides a big, bold shock of flavor through whatever dish it enhances. Likewise, skillful use of lime, coconut, chili peppers, lemongrass, galangal and supplementary methods like fried shallots bring a strong point of view to everything I tried from this book. I dig this cuisine, I dig this book, and I look forward to cooking out of it again as the weather warms up this summer - and yet again as things get frigid next winter.
at your service,
James
COCONUT & SAMBAL: RECIPES FROM MY INDONESIAN KITCHEN
BY LARA LEE
BLOOMSBURY | 2020 | $35
Rather than hit you with a second mini-essay here, let's get right to the recipes. There are a lot of them this time around!
LEAN, MEAN AND GREEN
I think the place at which I part ways with most salads is the green leafy part of the equation. So often tasteless or soggy or actively bitter, our reliance on leafy greens has turned many a salad into a freakin' depressing slog through Health Valley. Therefore I was pleased to see that Coconut & Sambal's Balinese salad leaned heavily on coconut and aromatics, with beans and peas and edamame standing in for the leafy green nothings.
The finished product, heavily bedecked with fried shallots (see method below), was really pretty damned delicious - light, bright, flavorful, refreshing without being boring, rich without being fatty or overwhelming.
BALINESE COCONUT LAWAR SALAD
Serves 4
1 long red chili, deseeded and thinly sliced on the diagonal
180g green beans, trimmed and chopped into 1cm pieces
100g frozen edamame (removed from pods)
100g sugar snap peas in pods, cut into thin matchsticks
2 makrut lime leaves, stems removed, chopped finely
1 lemongrass stalk, outer woody layers removed, chopped finely
60g unsweetened desiccated coconut
2 Tbsp fried shallots (see below)
Handful of cilantro, lightly chopped
Zest and juice of 2 makrut or standard limes
3/4 tsp palm sugar or brown sugar
3/4 tsp sea salt
Vegetable oil for frying
Spice paste
Ginger, about 30g, peeled
Galangal, about 30g, woody stem removed
3 garlic cloves, peeled and ends trimmed
4 Thai shallots (or 2 standard shallots), peeled
2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp ground turmeric
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
1/4 tsp ground white pepper
Place the spice paste ingredients into a food processor and blend to a paste. Heat 2 Tbsp of oil in a pan over medium heat and cook the paste for about 10 minutes until fragrant, making sure it doesn't burn. Remove and let cool. Mix the spice paste with the coconut.
Heat another tablespoon of oil in the pan and cook the chili until softened and set aside.
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and cook the beans, edamame, and sugar snap peas for 1-2 minutes until they are crisp, tender, and bright green. Drain and refresh under cold running water, then mix with the kaffir lime leaves and lemongrass. Mix the spice paste and coconut into the greens, add the fried shallots, and cilantro, and mix it all together. Add the fried chili to taste, then season to taste with lime zest and juice, sugar, and salt.
SPICED CORN FRITTERS
I'm skipping the recipe for Coconut & Sambal's spiced corn fritter because while they're quite good, they're also quite like many other fritters I've tried from many other books and cultures. In short: ginger, garlic, shallots, scallions, makrut lime leaves, spices, eggs, cornflour and a lot of corn go together into a delicious mass which is then deep fried for about 4 minutes.
Did these taste good with chili sauce and/or sambal? They sure did. Were they the star attraction of the meal? Not quite - they paled before the fried chicken entree, and the fresh green salad that we started the meal with was similarly more magnetic and noteworthy.
FRIED SHALLOTS
There's not much to fried shallots, and I'm OK with that - thinly slice 500g of shallots, heat up vegetable oil in a skillet to about 290 F, brown the shallots for about 10-15 minutes (until about half are turning brown), then take them off the heat and let them hang out and keep browning before slotted spooning them onto paper towels and storing them in a jar.
Fried shallots make a lovely condiment - they're crunchy, they're chewy, they're flavorful.
SOME(BAL) LIKE IT HOT
The first sign of trouble with the Tomato Sambal recipe came when I got back from Ha Tien Super Market and looked at my chili peppers. The recipe called for 250g of long red chilis, which I assumed meant Thai chilis - they are quite long, and, of course, very red. Plus: Right part of the world!
But upon further examination, the recipe also called for about 20 chilis; I had at least 100 of the lil red guys. I concluded (correctly) that I'd accidentally graduated to a much smaller (and hotter) chili. I pivoted: doubled the amount of tomato, cut the chilis down to 140g (before stemming) and slightly upped the tamarind paste and palm sugar. Upon cooking it down and trying it, I thought: "Well, this is very hot, but it's got a nice flavorful kick, too. It could work as a condiment."
When I gave some to Becca (who is not a spice wimp by any stretch of the imagination) she said "Oh my God oh my God oh my God why did you chemical warfare me" and when I asked, "But do you think it could work as a condiment?" she said some other stuff that wasn't very nice.
Consequently: I added a 14.5 oz. can of diced tomatoes and additional supplements of tamarind and palm sugar, to create tart and sweet undertones to fight with the pure heat for supremacy. I think it's quite a tasty if super-charged spicy condiment; verdict is out on Becca's opinion of the revised sambal paste. My version is not "mellow" like the Coconut & Sambal version.
This is a 50/50 error between me and the book, I think - the book should have really made it clear what sort of chilis to use, and I should have really thought about the weight-versus-number measurement provided and figured out Thai chilis were the wrong move. C'est la vie!
The happy postscript: We shared the sambal (and everything else written about here) with two friends with extensive history and first-hand knowledge of Southeast Asia, and they said it would absolutely pass for something they've eaten in Singapore, and they even asked me to send them home with a jar, if I could spare it. I was happy to do so. A little goes a long way.
BRACINGLY HOT TOMATO SAMBAL
Loosely inspired by a recipe in Coconut and Sambal
Vegetable oil for frying
100g Thai Red Chilis
450g cherry tomatoes
25g ginger
4 garlic cloves, peeled
4 Thai shallots, peeled
1 14.5 oz. can of diced tomatoes
3 Tbsp tamarind paste
3 Tbsp palm sugar
Sea salt and black pepper
Place the chilis, tomatoes, ginger, garlic, and shallots in the food processor and blend to a semi-fine paste.
Add 4 Tbsp oil to a frying pan over medium heat. Add the chili-tomato-etc. paste and diced tomatoes, and stir continually until the sambal darkens and thickens, about 20-25 minutes. Stir in the tamarind paste and palm sugar, season with salt and pepper, and remove from heat. Leave to cool.
SMASHED FRIED CHICKEN WITH SAMBAL
Eating this fried chicken was an absolute treat. Richly spiced, flavorful, and complex, it was absolutely tasty on its own and next-level fantastic when dressed up with (reasonable) amounts of our fiery hot sambal.
I do a very successful buttermilk fried chicken that involves rolling buttermilk brined chicken through a flour coating that has been mixed with buttermilk to create little crunchy platelets.
This recipe is sort of the reverse - the chicken gets a dry brine, a spice rub, a coat of spiced flour, and then a dunk into an egg/buttermilk/vodka batter before it hits the hot oil. It lacks the delicate crunchiness of my usual fried chicken, but has a really satisfying rich crunchy exterior shell. When smashed with a rolling pin before serving, each piece offers up a complex mix of coating, meat, and crispy fried chicken skin.
My recipe keeps the batter and breading proportions of the original but doubles the amount of chicken - the ratios work out just fine and if you end up with extra chicken at the end of the experience, it keeps beautifully for a few days in the fridge and eats quite well cold.
SMASHED FRIED CHICKEN WITH SAMBAL
16-24 skin-on, bone-in chicken thighs and/or drumsticks
2 Tbsp sea salt (for dry brine)
3/4 Tbsp sea salt (for spiced breading)
200g plain flour
1 1/2 Tbsp cornstarch
250ml buttermilk
2 egg whites
2 Tbsp vodka or other neutral clear spirit
Vegetable oil for frying
Sambal and sweet chili sauce for serving
Spice mix
1 1/2 Tbsp sea salt
1 1/2 Tbsp ground coriander
1 1/2 Tbsp ground cumin
1 1/2 Tbsp ground white pepper
3/4 tsp ground turmeric
3/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
30 minutes before frying, trim excess skin off your chicken pieces, lay them out on a tray, and sprinkle them with 2 Tbsp sea salt on both sides.
Combine ingredients for spice mix. Place half of it in a shallow container and set aside.
Mix other half in another shallow container with the flour, 3/4 Tbsp sea salt and cornstarch.
In a third shallow container, mix buttermilk, egg whites, and vodka.
Bring the oil in a cast iron pan or deep fryer up to about 350 degrees F.
Take your chicken, roll it in the spices, coat it in the spiced flour, and then dip it into the buttermilk batter and carefully lower it into the oil. Fry for about 8-10 minutes, until it's dark golden brown and cooked through. Remove from oil and put on a wire rack over a baking tray lined with paper towels to drain for a moment.
To serve, smash each piece of chicken on a cutting board and either smear with a small amount of sambal or serve with sambal and sweet chili sauce on the side.
PALM SUGAR SLICE
I had no idea what to expect when I started making the book's Palm Sugar Slice recipe, but "gooey, decadent, and delicious" was convincing enough.
The resulting dessert is a little bit like a lemon bar (minus any citrus flavor) crossed with the gelatinous sweetness of a pecan pie (minus the pecans.) It's mellow almost to the point of being bland, but it's tasty and comforting and goes really well with coffee or tea. You could serve this after a three-course Indonesian meal, sure, or you could bring it to a Midwestern potluck - it's a very softly spoken and agreeable dessert.
My only complaint about this recipe is a small one - it calls for a 20cm square tin, but it absolutely will not fit in a container of that size; a (considerably bigger) 13x19" baking pan is absolutely the way to go.
PALM SUGAR SLICE
Preheat the oven to 350 F and line a 13x19" pan with parchment paper.
To make the crust, beat 300g butter with 300g palm or brown sugar until pale and fluffy, then stir in 400g plain flour.
To make the cake, combine 75g almond flour, 100g sugar, 200g palm or brown sugar and a large pinch of sea salt in a large bowl. Add 150g melted butter and mix with a wooden spoon. Add 200ml of heavy cream and 8 egg yolks and mix once more.
Pat the crust into the prepared pan. Pour the cake mix over it, and bake for 45-55 minutes until the middle barely jiggles and a skewer inserted comes out with a couple moist crumbs.
THE VERDICT ON COCONUT & SAMBAL
(***BUY IT*** / BORROW IT / SKIP IT / SCRAP IT)
Immersive, ambitious, clearly written and nicely contextualized, Coconut & Sambal introduces you to Indonesian cooking and helps you graduate from the shallow end of the pool to the deep end where the complex flavors hide out. Its flavors are deep and at times challenging, the methods reasonably clear, and the results delicious. You could easily find a half-dozen go-to recipes in this book and add this corner of Asia to your culinary repertoire.