Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

We recently had dinner at Sambal, a Malaysian restaurant in Sydney’s North Ryde.

I adore Malaysian food. The spices and flavours are so appealing to me that I could eat them for every meal of the day. I’m not sure if it’s the coconut milk, or the prawn paste or the tamarind, but just typing these words can make my mouth water.

The meal was made all the better because we were dining with Marty and Joyce and their ravenous offspring.  Pete and I lived with M & J when we were in our early 20’s and thankfully, joyously, very little has changed over the years.  Getting together for a meal with them is like dining with your wolf pack on a communal antelope – if you’re slow off the mark, you’ll go hungry.

There was so much food at dinner – which usually happens when we let Joyce order – but I only managed to take a few photos.  As with most Asian cuisines, the food was shared at the table, and when you’re eating with M & J, it doesn’t stay in a pristine, photogenic state for very long.  My pleas of “don’t touch it until I’ve taken a photo” went completely unheeded.  In the end I resorted to dragging the dish in front of me and defending it with a fork while maneuvering the camera with the other hand.

The photo above is of Gulai Tumis Fish – white fish cutlets cooked with okra in a spicy, tamarind sauce.  It has that wonderful sour assam flavour so unique to Malaysian dishes.

Belachan Chicken – which Marty kept referring to as KFC, in an attempt to induce the kids to eat it (they didn’t need any encouragement) –  chicken pieces coated with shrimp powder and deep fried until dark brown, then served with Worcestershire sauce.

Kapitan Chicken Curry – this delicious, yet simple, chicken curry  was prepared with fresh herbs, coconut milk and a little lime juice. It was perfectly matched with Nasi Lemak, plain rice cooked in coconut milk.

Did you know that Nasi Lemak is a standard breakfast dish in Malaysia and Indonesia?  How cool would it be to have coconut rice and curry for breakfast every morning?  Sigh.  I would be a beached whale.

By the time dessert arrived, everyone was slightly less starving, so I managed a couple of decent photos.

Ice Kachang is a large, impressive dish, but deceptively so, as the bulk of it is just shredded ice.  It also has black grass jelly, corn kernels, palm seeds and red beans, along with a generous splash of evaporated milk, rose syrup and gula melaka (palm sugar).

And while Ice Kachang is probably my favourite, this Sago Pudding is a close second – the sago (tapioca) pearls are boiled until clear, then moulded. It was served with coconut milk and gula melaka syrup.  Doesn’t it look like a cluster of frog eggs?

Note: There is parking at the rear of the restaurant – turn in at the McDonald’s entrance and drive around to the back.