Otak Otak

This is simple comfort food that I grew up with when grandma made this dish – inexpensive yet flavourful and nutritious.

I have concocted this otak recipe that is great with rice or bread. I use batang fish meat (Spanish Mackerel) to make the fish paste. You can use chopped prawns or prawn paste as well.

I have tried ready fish paste and it’s a definite no-go. Store-bought fish paste is too finely ground, more flour than fish and very salty. So it’s worth the effort to make your own and it doesn’t take too long.

Ingredients
*130g prawn paste or fresh fish meat, scrape fish meat from skin, discard the skin and bones and make a coarse paste by pressing fish meat with the back of the spoon.
*3 Kaffir lime leaf, remove the leaf vein and sliced thinly.
*120ml coconut cream
*2 tabsp Thai Chili Paste
*3 medium eggs

Method
1. Oil the shallow pan/tray and set aside. You may want to line the base with grease proof paper.
2. In a separate bowl, beat eggs, add chili paste, coconut cream and salt. Mix ingredients.
3. Add fish/prawn meat and Kaffir lime leaf into the otak otak mixture.
4. Prepare a steamer, pour mixture into pan and put into steamer over low to medium fire. Steam otah for 20-25 min or till it is set.
5. Leave to cool before slicing.

Additional Tip:
You may put the steamed otak otak into oven set at 180C for additional 20-30 min. It gives a drier texture.

Note

This prawn paste is a product of Malaysia, available at NTUC Supermarket. I used the entire packet for this recipe.