Shamsydar Ani, nicknamed the Sambal Queen as a contestant on Masterchef Singapore Season 1, shares more about the importance of sambal and how to make her favourite sambals
On Masterchef Singapore Season 1, Shamsydar Ani’s skill at making sambal earned her the reputation of “Sambal Queen”. It’s a sobriquet that’s well-deserved, given her experience as a recipe developer, food writer and photographer, and a skilled cook of Malay cuisine. She’s more than happy to share her culinary knowledge—as many of her bios note, she readily accepts SOS calls from beginner cooks, and her cookbook, Spices and Lime: Recipes from a Modern Southeast Asian Kitchen, is an easy-to-follow guide to the cuisines of the region. If there’s anyone who knows a lot about this essential Southeast Asian condiment, it’s Shamsydar, which is why we decided to ask her all about sambal—and to find out how to make sambal exactly to the Sambal Queen’s liking.
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How important is sambal to the cuisines of Southeast Asia?
Sambal is pretty much prominent in the whole of Southeast Asia, mainly because of the abundance of chillies in the region due to the climate and ease of growing it. In almost every other Nusantara dish, there’s some form of chilli in the rempah.
How did sambal become so prominent in the region?
While chillies were already prominent in the region prior to the 16th century, Spanish and Portuguese sailors brought variants that were common in the western hemisphere over to the Southeast Asian region. Considering that the climate of the entire region is similar, it became a norm for different parts of the region to adopt chillies into their cooking, hence making their version of sambals.
Another reason why sambal is so popular is because eating sambal makes you sweat. Similar to Indian cooking, the sweat helps to cool the body considering the climate in this region is pretty hot all year round.
Why are there so many varieties of sambal?
There are many ways to cook, so obviously there are many ways to make sambal! Raw sambals like sambal belacan make use of charred belacan paste to enhance the flavour, while sambal matah requires the cook to deep fry the ingredients first before pounding them on a batu giling or batu lesung. As mentioned previously, different parts of the region have different methods of making sambal.
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