While there is friendly rivalry between Singapore and Malaysia over
who makes better food, for one notable family in Singapore, the best sambal belacan (a spicy condiment made from shrimp paste) indisputably comes from Malaysia, though only from a very special source.
In 2019, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong conveyed his thanks to the Malaysian queen for regularly sending over her sambal belacan
to his family. “Thank you for your warmth and kindness, sending my
father (and me) your special sambal belacan all these years!” he tweeted
on 28 October 2019. “I hope you enjoy making it as much as we enjoy
eating it!” A few days before, Raja Permaisuri Agong Tunku Hajah Azizah
Aminah Maimunah Iskandariah had shared on her Instagram account a letter
written in July 2009 by former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. He wrote
that the six packets of sambal belacan she had given him were
delicious. “I shared them with my two sons. They have all been consumed.
It is the best chilli belacan we have tasted. Can my family have a few
more?”1 Since then, she has been regularly sending her sambal belacan across the Causeway.
Sambal belacan is a regular accompaniment to rice in Malay, Eurasian and Peranakan meals. It is made by pounding toasted belacan
with chillies and adding calamansi lime juice, salt and sugar to that
mixture. While it is popular with many people, its key ingredient, belacan, has a somewhat malodourous reputation.
Hugh Clifford, who served as Governor of the Straits Settlements between 1927 and 1929, referred to belacan
as “that evil-smelling condiment which [had] been so ludicrously
misnamed the Malayan Caviare” in his 1897 account of the Malay
Peninsula. He wrote that the coasts reeked of “rank odours” as a result
of women villagers “labouring incessantly in drying and salting the fish
which [had] been taken by the men, or pounding prawns into blâchan”
throughout the fishing season. The stench was so strong that “all the
violence of the fresh, strong, monsoon winds” would only “partially
purge” the villages of it.2
In his book, A Descriptive Dictionary of the Indian Islands & Adjacent Countries (1856), John Crawfurd, the former Resident of Singapore, describes balachong (belacan) as:
“[A] condiment made of prawns, sardines, and other small fish, pounded and pickled. The proper Malay word is bâlachan [belacan], the Javanese trasi [terasi], and the Philippine bagon [bagoong].
This article is of universal use as a condiment, and one of the largest
articles of native consumption throughout both the Malay and Philippine
Archipelago. It is not confined, indeed, as a condiment to the Asiatic
islanders, but is also largely used by the Birmese [Burmese], the
Siamese, and Cochin-Chinese. It is, indeed, in great measure essentially
the same article known to the Greeks and Romans under the name of
garum, the produce of a Mediterranean fish.”3
Today, the Malay term belacan is commonly used in Singapore,
Malaysia, Brunei and parts of Indonesia to refer typically to shrimp
paste. In Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, it is called kapi, which is borrowed from the term ngapi (literally “pressed fish”) used in Myanmar, while it is referred to as mắm tôm or mắm ruốc in Vietnam.
Because it is rich in glutamates and nucleotides, belacan
imparts savouriness to any dish, what is often described as “umami”.
Other foods that are rich in umami include fish sauce, soya sauce,
kimchi, mushroom, ripe tomato, anchovy and cheese.
Making Belacan
A 17th-century account gives a remarkably detailed description of making belacan. In 1688, the English privateer William Dampier encountered people making a paste of small fish and shrimps called balachaun during his visit to Tonkin (North Vietnam). He saw how this process produced nuke-mum or nước mắm
(fish sauce) as well. His account, published in 1699, provides one of
the earliest Western descriptions of making fish/shrimp paste:
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