Heavenly Paradise@AdelineAng.com

A soft, squishy texture of this special dish has granted itself a unique name, otak-otak (meaning brain in Malay). Otak-otak is a fish cake prepared by blending fish fillet, onion, coconut milk and a mixture of spices (turmeric, lemon grass, galangal etc.) into a fine paste, wrapped in banana leaf, and then either steamed, grilled, or baked. It is a popular dish in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia.

The otak-otak recipe caught my eyes one day and I decided to give it a try. Sure enough, it reminded me a lot of the Malaysian otak-otak. Yummy!

Ingredients:
(A)
~ 500g fish fillet, chopped
1 medium onion
1 tsp belacan chili
1 tsp lemon grass powder
1 tsp galangal powder
4 dried red chilies
180 ml thick coconut milk

(B)
1 tsp turmeric powder
1 egg
1/4 tsp sugar
1 tbsp cornflour
1/4 tsp salt

Directions:
1. Grind ingredients (A) with a kitchen blender until a fine paste is formed.
2. In a mixing bowl, mix together the fish paste and turmeric powder. Add the rest of the ingredients (B) into the fish paste. Beat the mixture until smooth.
3. Rub some oil on the banana leaf. Pour the fish mixture onto a 20 cm x 20 cm banana leaf. Wrap around tightly.
4. Bake in preheated oven at 400 F for 15-20 minutes, or until firm to touch.

Tags: Baking

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 at 10:39 pm and is filed under Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.