About this recipe
Ambuyat is Brunei's best-known dish and, for many, its national one: a thick, translucent, glue-like paste made by stirring boiling water into sago starch until it turns into a stretchy, glossy gel. It has almost no flavour of its own, and the point of the meal is the ritual and the accompaniments — you twirl a strand of the sticky paste around a two-pronged bamboo fork called a chandas, dip it into a sharp, sour sauce called cacah, and eat it without chewing, usually with grilled fish, vegetables and other side dishes. It belongs to the sago-eating traditions of Borneo and is closely related to preparations in Sarawak and Sabah known by other names; this book presents the Bruneian form and its dipping ritual and logs the shared regional lineage for verification. The cacah dip is also tracked as a foundation condiment (C22).
Recipe facts
- Yield
- 4 servings
- Prep
- 15 minutes
- Cook
- 10 minutes
- Total
- 25 minutes
- Difficulty
- Intermediate (the paste comes together fast and must be worked quickly)
- Spice
- Mild (the heat is in the cacah dip)
Allergens The ambuyat paste itself is just sago and water — vegan, gluten-free and free of common allergens. The cacah dip contains shellfish (belacan / fermented shrimp) and often fish and tamarind. Not vegetarian as served with cacah. See the halal-status field.
Development draft. This is an untested development recipe from the cookbook project. It has not been kitchen-tested, and the quantities and timings are the author’s working draft rather than a verified result.
Ingredients
The ambuyat
- 1 1/2 cups (about 200 g) sago starch (sago flour / tepung sagu)
- 1/2 cup (120 ml) cool water, for slaking
- 3 to 4 cups (720 to 950 ml) boiling water
The cacah dipping sauce
- 2 tbsp (30 g) tamarind pulp, soaked in 1/2 cup (120 ml) warm water and strained
- 2 to 4 fresh red chillies, chopped
- 3 cloves garlic
- 2 shallots
- 1 tsp (5 g) belacan (fermented shrimp paste), toasted
- 1 tbsp (15 ml) fish sauce, or 1 small grilled fish, flaked (optional, traditional)
- 1 tsp (4 g) sugar, to balance
- Salt, to taste
To serve
- Grilled fish
- Blanched or raw local vegetables and ferns
- Steamed rice (optional)
Equipment
- Heavy saucepan
- A sturdy wooden spoon or the traditional wooden stirring stick
- Serving bowl, warmed
- Two-pronged bamboo fork (chandas), or a fork, for eating
- Mortar and pestle or blender for the cacah
Method
- Make the cacah first: pound or blend the chillies, garlic, shallots and toasted belacan to a paste, then stir in the strained tamarind water, the fish sauce or flaked grilled fish, the sugar and salt. It should be thin, sharp, sour, salty and hot. Set aside in a small bowl.
- Slake the sago: in a heatproof serving bowl or the saucepan, stir the sago starch with the 1/2 cup cool water to a smooth, lump-free slurry.
- Have the boiling water at a rolling boil. Pour about 3 cups of it into the sago slurry all at once while stirring hard and continuously with a sturdy spoon or stick.
- Keep stirring vigorously: within seconds the mixture turns from cloudy to a thick, glossy, translucent, stretchy paste. Add a little more boiling water if it is too stiff, stirring until it is smooth, glue-like and translucent throughout with no white raw specks.
- Serve immediately, while hot and stretchy, in the warmed bowl.
- To eat, twirl a strand of ambuyat around a two-pronged bamboo fork, dip it generously in the cacah, and swallow without chewing, alternating with grilled fish and vegetables.
From the foundations
The book pairs this recipe with the following, from the sauces, sambals and pastes that open the collection.
The Complete Edition
Ambuyat with Cacah sits in the Brunei chapter
The book carries this recipe in full alongside the rest of the Brunei chapter, the pastes and dips it is built on, and the twenty-seven pantry studies that open the collection.
In review with Amazon KDP
Both editions have been submitted to Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing and are currently in review. Submitted prices are $9.99 for the kindle edition and $49.99 for the paperback. Neither is on sale yet, and prices are as submitted rather than final.