BUT THAT SMELL!

There are some dishes that transcend boundaries, because more than one group wishes to claim it as their own. Goans. Straights Portuguese (Malacca, Penang, S'pore). Macanese. Eccentrics.
Even a few people in San Francisco.
Maybe just one person there.

Ballichao, for instance. The name of the dish is based on Malay 'blachang', which is a common term for stinky shrimp sauce or fish paste, used in a lot of South East Asian cooking. Cooking with it gives the perfume you remember from that disgusting flop house near Mabini.

Ballichao is more of a condimental side than a main. As with rendang and empal, there should be more than that on the table. Perhaps Portuguese Chicken (葡國雞 'pou gwok gai', for instance, plus stirfry vegetables with oyster sauce, rice, sambal, and lalap. And "old fire soup" (老火湯).

Ballichao is also made with shrimp.
Such as here: Six Recipes.

It keeps for a day or two at room temperature.
For ages in the refrigerator.


PORK BALLICHAO

Ingredients for the enamel stew-pot:
One pound pork, cut into smallish cubes.
Four tablespoons wet shrimp paste.
Two onions, minced.
Half a dozen cloves of garlic, sliced.
Two TBS chili paste (sambal oelek).
Two to four Tbs oil.

Spice paste:
Two TBS chili paste.
Two TBS Louisiana hot sauce.
Four TBS tamarind water.
One head of garlic, separated into cloves, feet trimmed.
A piece of ginger, roughly three slices.
One TBS peppercorns.
One Tsp. ground cumin.
Half Tsp. turmeric.
Half Tsp. cinnamon.
Quarter Tsp. ground clove.
One cup of white vinegar.


Put the spice paste ingredients into the blender, reserving some of the vinegar to rinse out the remaining sludge after blending well.
Reserve it all.

Sautée the pork pieces till slightly browned at the edges, but not fully cooked. Decant and set aside.
Lightly gild the garlic, add onion, fry till the onion starts to brown. Now add the chili paste and the shrimp paste and close the kitchen door if you haven't done so already.
Cook until colour and smell change, add the garlic and spice sludge, cook for a few minutes till everything is incorporated, put in the pork chunks, stir, and simmer for half an hour on low, stirring occasionally. Add a pinch of sugar at the end. When it's nice and stiff, squeeze a lemon over it.

For me, one of the main points of appeal is that preparing something like this very nicely disguises the treacherous odeur of whatever I've been smoking in the kitchen, even a nice reeky Nicaraguan robusto. My apartment mate won't notice the tobacco over everything else, and will just think "oh, the old Toad has been doing 'cuisine' again". She dislikes the fragrance of tobacco.

Last week I did a ground meat rendang preparation.
Lots of coconut milk, lots of chili paste.
Coriander, turmeric, garlic.

Too much to eat at one sitting, but I've been having a bit frequently with other food. Like ballichao, it's great with rice.




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