Ambuyat

Ambuyat with Cacah Sauce (Brunei's National Dish)

Ambuyat is Brunei's iconic national dish: a neutral, starchy paste made from sago starch and hot water, eaten by twirling it around bamboo prongs and dipping it into bold, sour-spicy sauces. The experience is as much about the texture and communal dipping as it is about flavour.

Prep

15 min

Cook

25 min

Total

40 min

Serves

4

Difficulty

Medium

Recipe ingredients

• •200 g (7 oz (about 1½ cups)) sago starch, true sago palm starch is traditional; tapioca starch is the closest common substitute but yields a slightly more elastic texture
• •500 ml (2 cups) boiling water, must be at a full rolling boil when added
• •200 ml (¾ cup + 1 tbsp) water, cold, for the cacah base
• •60 g (½ cup) tamarind pulp (seedless), soaked in 80 ml / ⅓ cup hot water for 10 minutes, then strained to yield sour juice
• •4 cloves garlic
• •15 g (about 2 tbsp sliced) fresh ginger
• •4 whole fresh red chillies, Bruneian cooks typically leave seeds in; reduce to 2 for a milder sauce
• •2 tbsp dried shrimp paste (belacan/terasi), toasted dry in a pan for 1 minute until fragrant, then crumbled
• •1 tsp salt, or to taste
• •1 tsp sugar (palm or granulated), balances the sourness
• •4 stalks fresh bamboo shoots (rebung), boiled until tender, served cool on the side; canned young bamboo shoots are the common substitute in home kitchens
• •4 whole cucumber, cut into spears, served on the side
• •1 whole small green banana (pisang hijau), unripe; peeled and sliced; substitute with a slightly under-ripe regular banana if unavailable

Steps

1. 1 Make the cacah sauce base: in a small bowl, soak 60 g seedless tamarind pulp in 80 ml (⅓ cup) hot water for 10 minutes, then mash and strain, discarding fibres and seeds to yield a thick sour juice.
2. 2 Roughly pound or blend the garlic, ginger, fresh red chillies and toasted dried shrimp paste into a coarse paste (cacah literally means 'pounded').
3. 3 In a small saucepan, combine the tamarind juice, 200 ml (¾ cup + 1 tbsp) cold water, the pounded spice paste, 1 tsp salt and 1 tsp sugar. Bring to a gentle simmer over medium heat, stirring, and cook 6–8 minutes until the sauce thickens slightly and the raw garlic-chilli heat mellows. Taste and adjust salt, sugar and sourness; the sauce should be sharply sour, salty, spicy and just a touch sweet. Keep warm.
4. 4 Prepare the bamboo prongs (candasas): if using real bamboo, soak the tips in warm water for 10 minutes to soften the fibres; wooden chopsticks are the home-kitchen substitute, though the twist-and-pull technique is harder.
5. 5 Pour 500 ml (2 cups) water into a kettle or pot and bring it to a full, rolling boil - this is essential; under-heated water will leave lumps.
6. 6 Put the 200 g sago starch in a wide, heatproof bowl (a rice tub or a large metal mixing bowl works well).
7. 7 Add the boiling water all at once and begin stirring immediately and vigorously with a wooden spoon or spatula. The mixture will seize into a translucent, gluey mass within 30–60 seconds; keep stirring until it is smooth, glossy and pulls cleanly away from the sides of the bowl as a single elastic blob.
8. 8 If the ambuyat is too stiff to twirl, work in another 30–50 ml (2–3 tbsp) of boiling water; if too runny to hold, briefly set the bowl over a pan of simmering water and stir for 1–2 minutes to drive off moisture.
9. 9 Transfer the hot ambuyat to a shallow serving dish and keep it covered with a lid or plate so a skin does not form.
10. 10 Arrange the cacah sauce in a small communal bowl, and the boiled bamboo shoots, cucumber spears and green banana slices on a separate plate.
11. 11 To eat the traditional way: pinch off a thumb-sized piece of ambuyat with the bamboo prongs, twirl it clockwise so it wraps the prongs in a stretchy grey-white sheath about the thickness of a finger, then dip and pull it through the cacah sauce, tearing off a bite-sized portion with the teeth. Repeat, alternating with bites of bamboo shoot, cucumber and banana to cool the palate.
12. 12 Safety note: cacah sauce is eaten only after simmering for at least 6 minutes, which cooks the raw garlic, ginger and chilli; do not serve it uncooked. The ambuyat itself must be eaten hot, as it stiffens and becomes inedible as it cools.