Laksam

I´ve been craving for this cuisine eversince coming to Germany. It is one of the Kelantan cuisine, a type of rice noodle (only thing is, it´s not the long, thin type) and has to be custom-made and eaten with fish, coconut soup and garnished with beansprout, kesum leaves, long beans and beansprouts.

I never made it myself before. As usual back in Malaysia, if you are lazy, you get to buy everthing from the stalls. Plus, I always thought that this cuisine is complicated to make, so I never thought to give a try.

So for the first trial, I got a not-so-bad taste of laksam.

I got the recipe from Myresepi.

For noodle:

Note: To make the noodle, I used spring foam base (in Malaysia, people use the flat pot cover).


Ingredients:

3 cups rice flour
1/2 cup wheat flour
4 cups luke water

Mix all the ingredients and blend well. Rub a little cooking oil on the spring-foam base. Spoon the flour batter onto the spring-foam base to make a thin layer. Put the spring-foam in a steamer. Take out the spring-foam when there are bubbles on the layer. Leave it to cool. Then carefully fold the layer as shown in the picture below:

Cut into short length as desired when you want to eat.

For the soup:

Ingredients:

1.Fish meat - you can use the fresh fish like mackerel, clean it up and boil then separate the bones from the meat or you can use the tinned mackerel with natural sauce.
2. A little bit of garlic
3. A little bit of ginger
4. 2 big onion (or several shallots)
5. Some fresh grounded black pepper (or powder)
6. Coconut milk
7. 2 pieces of sour slices (asam keping)
8. salt (to taste)
9. Brown sugar/white sugar (to taste)

Blend together item 1 to 4. Put the blended item into a big pot and add the rest of the ingredients. Simmer with medium heat until the soup is thick. Add the salt and sugar to the taste.

For garnishing:

Cucumber - cut into small, long pieces
Kesum leaves - mince
Long beans - mince
Beansprout - wash and soak dry
Sambal - fresh chilies with salt and shrimp paste - blend together.