Serves 10-12
INGREDIENTS
40g tamarind paste
100ml water
10 cloves garlic
220g dried chilli paste
40g dried shrimp paste
18 shallots
1.1 litres vegetable oil
100g ikan bilis, fried until crispy
20g sugar
3 local mud crabs, cleaned and quartered
20ml fish sauce
15g palm sugar
2 stalks curry leaves
DIRECTIONS
1 Mix the tamarind paste with the water. Squeeze the paste a few times, then strain. Discard the seeds. Set aside the juice.
2 Blend the garlic, chilli and shrimp pastes, shallots and 300ml oil in a food processor until you get a smooth paste.
3 Heat 300ml oil in a hot wok over medium heat. Add the paste and stir-fry continuously for 20min, to prevent it from burning. Add the tamarind juice, fried ikan bilis and sugar, and cook for another 10min – this is the sambal paste.
4 In a clean wok, heat the remaining 500ml oil over high heat until it smokes. Fry the crabs until they turn bright red, then remove from the wok. Retain some oil in the wok for the next step.
5 Stir-fry the sambal paste, fish sauce, palm sugar and curry leaves in the wok for 3min.
6 Return the crabs to the wok and stir-fry for 6-8min until cooked through and well coated with sambal.
This article was originally published in Simply Her December 2014.