Brunei Cap’n (Part 2)
I last left you outside of aptly named Taste Good Malaysian restaurant in Woodside, where we tried to approximate a Bruneian meal. Since we were unable to find a specifically Bruneian restaurant, we decided to compensate by trying to find the ingredients to cook something up ourselves.
We had learned that a lot of the Bruneians who live in the area do their shopping at Top Line Supermarket, right around the corner from Taste Good, so that’s where we headed. I had chosen two dishes from the Brunei Tourism website, which has a great collection of Bruneian recipes. Udang Sambal Serai Bersantan is a red prawn curry. Serondeng Padang is chicken in a coconut-milk sauce. Most of the ingredients we needed to find were really straightforward. We found some good frozen coconut milk, ground coconut, a chunk of frozen lengkuas (better known as galangal), some halia (or ginger), serai (or lemongrass), fresh chilis, and some fine looking tiger prawns. That left us with just one ingredient left to find, the pandan leaf. I asked a couple of people, got some vague directions, and proceeded to wander the store slowly losing my mind. I finally gave up. I had run out of English-speaking store clerks to ask, and we were tired and ready to head home. As I stood in line, resigning myself to failure and how it might affect my attempts at replicating Bruneian food, the Nomad made a last-gasp tour of the store. I was stepping up to the checkout counter when she came bounding toward me triumphantly holding aloft an 18-inch, vacuum-packed, frozen leaf, yes, the pandan leaf. So we were set.We had initially planned to do lunch in Woodside, grab the stuff for cooking and do dinner the same day. You might remember, though, that our outward trip to Queens that day involved a flat tire and a good couple of hours roasting on the BQE and waiting for a new tire. That turned our lunch into an early dinner and pushed our dinner back a night. The next day, I grabbed a whole chicken on my way home from work, headed to the Nomad and Noquar’s place and got to work.
I, with help from the Nomad, followed the recipes nearly exactly as written. Here they are as they appear on the Brunei Tourism website.
Udang Sambal Serai Bersantan
Spicy prawns smothered in a coconut-based red curry, with a distinctive Malay flavour. 1 kg tiger prawns
150ml cooking oil
10 pieces of garlic (minced)
4 onions (diced)
6 pieces of Serai (or lemongrass) (finely minced)
5 fresh red chillies
15 dry chillies
100ml asam jawa (or tamarind) flavoured water
50ml of coconut milk
Salt
Sugar
Heat the cooking oil and fry the onion and garlic. Add the Serai and Asam Jawa flavoured water. Next, add the prawns and chillies, salt and sugar to taste. Cook for 2-3 minutes until shrimp are pink. Finally, add coconut milk and stir until thickened.
Serondeng Padang
A hearty chicken dish combining the Malay staples of garlic, onion, and chillies with a touch of coconut milk and the fragrance of native pandan leaves.
1 chicken cut into eight pieces
Water to boil
50g of halia (or ginger), cut into small pieces
50g of garlic
50g of onions
Cooking oil for frying
500ml of coconut milk
50g of kerisik (roast ground coconut)
1 pandan leaf
Salt
Sugar
Ingredients A
150g onion
50g garlic
50g halia (or ginger)
50g lengkuas (galangal)
50g dried chilli, reconstituted in warm water
20g fresh chilli
Boil the chicken with a bit of halia, garlic and onion until the chicken is cooked. Remove the skin, depending on preference. Heat the cooking oil in the frying pan and fry Ingredients A until the aromas are released. Add coconut milk, kerisik, pandan leaf, chicken, salt and sugar. Mixed until cooked.
Both dishes were really easy to make and turned out nicely. Give ‘em a whirl!
