cook.

Ambuyat

Name: Ambuyat
Total time: 20 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Bruneian
Ingredients: 250 g sago starch (or tapioca starch); 80 ml cold water, to loosen the starch; 320 ml water, at a rolling boil; 50 g tempoyak (fermented durian), or fresh durian with a squeeze of lime; 1 tbsp dried shrimp, soaked; 1 tsp belacan (shrimp paste); 2 bird's eye chillies; 1 tbsp hot water, to loosen the sauce; salt, to taste; 300 g fish, grilled or fried; 200 g fern tips or green beans, blanched

Sago starch whipped with boiling water into a translucent glue, eaten with a sour cacah dip

Ingredients

250 g sago starch (or tapioca starch)

80 ml cold water, to loosen the starch

320 ml water, at a rolling boil

50 g tempoyak (fermented durian), or fresh durian with a squeeze of lime

1 tbsp dried shrimp, soaked

1 tsp belacan (shrimp paste)

2 bird's eye chillies

1 tbsp hot water, to loosen the sauce

salt, to taste

300 g fish, grilled or fried

200 g fern tips or green beans, blanched

Method

Make the cacah first. Ambuyat waits for nobody: it stiffens as it cools, so everything else has to be on the table before you scald the starch.

Pound the soaked dried shrimp, the chillies and the belacan to a paste in a mortar. Salt it.

Stir in the tempoyak and loosen with the hot water. It should be sour and pungent - that, not the ambuyat, is where the flavour lives. Set it out with the fish and the greens.

Slurry the starch with the cold water in a heatproof bowl and leave it a few minutes. Skip this and the boiling water will set it in lumps you cannot beat out.

Bring the rest of the water to a hard rolling boil. Water that has gone off the boil will not set the starch, and there is no fixing it afterwards.

Pour the boiling water over the slurry in one go, whisking hard with a wooden spoon as you pour.

Keep whisking for a minute or two. It turns from milky white to clear and glossy and starts to pull into long strands. That is done - it needs no cooking at all.

Serve at once, with the cacah and the side dishes. Eat with a chandas: twist a bite onto the bamboo fork, dip it in the cacah, and swallow it whole without chewing.