How to make sambal stingray at home – you don’t have to fly to Singapore to enjoy it
This recipe by Susan Jung rivals those served up at Southeast Asia’s celebrated hawker centres
I will be the first to admit that this version of sambal stingray isn’t quite as good as those you’ll find at hawker centres in Singapore and Malaysia. But it hits the spot when the craving kicks in – and for when I don’t have plans to visit those countries.
Stingray isn’t easy to find in Hong Kong, and I have successfully used the same cooking technique with a medium-sized pomfret.
Sambal stingray
It isn’t absolutely necessary to cook this with banana leaves, but it does make for more attractive presentation than aluminium foil. Frozen stingray (the only type I’ve found in Hong Kong) produces quite a lot of liquid as it cooks, which dilutes the flavour of the sambal. Because of this, I slather the sambal over one side of the fish and cook it, then blot up as much of the liquid as possible and flip the fish over onto a fresh banana leaf before slathering more sambal on that side, and cooking again. If you use fresh fish, you shouldn’t have this problem.
Traditionalists use a mortar and pestle to crush the sambal ingredients into a paste. I admire people who do this, but prefer to use a small blender (such as a NutriBullet).
For the sambal:
30 grams dried chillies (I use a mix of Thai bird’s-eye chillies and larger, slightly milder, Indian chillies)
30 grams seedless tamarind paste
300 grams Thai shallots
50 grams garlic cloves
3 large red banana chillies
2 stalks lemongrass
25 grams belacan (dried fermented shrimp paste)
15 grams macadamia nuts
50 grams palm sugar
5 grams fine sea salt, plus extra for sprinkling over the fish
100ml cooking oil, plus extra for oiling the banana leaves