Daging Salai and belimbing Masak Lemak

As org nogori... of course I should know how to make Masak lemak cili padi. Masak Lemak is actually one of the easier dish to cook (provided you already have the pounded cilipadi). Masak Lemak is also one of the most versatile dish, you can cook it with chicken, meat, seafood or with vegetables, in short, everything goes.. ;)

Anyway, one of my most favorite variation of masak kuning is Daging Salai with Belimbing buluh. And today I am going to blog out a brief guide on how to make it.

Let's start with the shopping list.

1. Meat. I usually ask for the BatangPinang (Striploin). Its about RM23 per kg and for this purpose let's cook for 500g. BTW, traditionally, in kampung ways sometimes they use buffalo (kerbau) meat rather than cow's meat. Apparently the kerbau meat is sweeter in taste. I dont really know the difference and to me cow's meat is good enough..

2. Belimbing Buluh. I dont know if there is an english name to it, anyway, for those who dont know what it is, this is how it looks like. This particular ingredient is not easy to buy as it is seldomly sold in the market. I usually get it from the tree itself . Choose the ripe and big ones. To cook for 500g of meat maybe you'd need around 2 handful.

3. Santan (coconut milk). Amount: 1 biji

4. Cili padi. The amount? depending on your taste bud. I would say for the half kg meat you'd want to pound about a handful cilipadi. This one, I dont know how to explain how much cos I just estimated it, and add and reduce as necessary.

5. Serai (lemon grass). About 4 stalks , pounded

6. Kunyit (tumeric). You can use dry tumeric though fresh tumeric is recommended (if using fresh tumeric pls pound it as well).

Wokeh, now all the required items are sorted out. Let's start the cooking.

Preparing the meat (daging salai)
-Wash it first of course.
-You need to smoke the meat, and to do this, you need to cut the meat in fillet like about 4cm in thickness. Then mix it well with a bit of tumeric and salt (like you would when frying fish).
-Next, you grill / smoke it. I usually just use the stove top kind (see photo) since I dont have a bbq pit or a place to start an open fire. It would have tasted and smelled better though if we use good old smoke fire.



- anyway, cook the meat evenly, becareful and keep the fire low in the beginning to ensure that the meat is properly cooked.
-Okay. Once that's done. What we need to do now is sliced the meat thinly (see below).

Preparing the belimbing
- Cut the belimbing in two or fours, like the photo below. The objective is basically so that you dont take the seed.
- Why...? i dont know. My uwan just asked me to cut it that way.

Preparing the Cilipadi
- Pound the cili padi. See picture

alrighty, now that we have done all the prelimenary work, lets start cooking

1. Put in the sliced meat, pounded cili, pounded lemongrass, salt and tumeric. Cook in slow fire
2. Mix it well, and usually at this will produce slight water. This is when you taste it and see if its pedas enough or not.
3. When the water dried, put in the santan cair
4. Once it has boiled over twice, then put in the belimbing and the santan pekat
5. When it boils again, voila... it is cooked!