Sambal

• 1. Introduction

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  Across Indonesia, cooks are reported to make somewhere between 212 and 300 distinct kinds of sambal. That is one country, one family of sauces, and a count that nobody can quite pin down. Sambal is a category of chilli-based sauces and pastes from maritime Southeast Asia. Some are raw and bright. Some are cooked down until dark and sticky. Some are mild, and some are fierce enough to make a diner reach for the rice.

  How can a single word cover so much ground? Chillies come from the Americas, so what did people in the islands eat before they arrived? Who carried the idea of sambal to places as far from the archipelago as the Netherlands? And why does a sauce so tied to heat sit comfortably beside dishes at both everyday meals and celebrations? The answers start with a stone mortar and a very old habit of pounding.

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• 2. Before the Chilli

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  The Javanese word giling means to grind or crush, and it traces back to Proto-Austronesian roots that describe rolling, turning and crushing. That one word captures a habit shared across many Austronesian and Southeast Asian cultures: pounding ingredients with a mortar and pestle. Records do not show where sambal first emerged, so its exact origin stays uncertain.

  In Java, a plant called cabay, the Javanese long pepper, was the main hot spice. Inscriptions and literature from at least the 10th century CE, during the Mataram Kingdom, mention it. Black pepper arrived from India by the 12th century and widened the range of pungent tastes.

  In North Sumatra, the Batak people seasoned dishes such as arsik fish with andaliman, a local relative of Sichuan pepper. They often paired it with ginger and torch ginger buds. In Maluku and the Banda Islands, cooks blended long pepper, ginger and galangal with cloves and nutmeg in stews and preserved foods.

  The habit reached well beyond Indonesia. Malay sources describe long pepper, called lada panjang, mixed with ginger, galangal and black pepper in spice pastes. Tomé Pires, a Portuguese physician in Malacca between 1512 and 1514, noted that people there chewed betel nut for its warming effect. Early Thai and Khmer curry pastes used long pepper with lemongrass and wild pepper leaves.

  In the pre-Hispanic Philippines, ginger gave heat to broths such as tinola. In Vietnam and the former Champa territories, long pepper served mostly as medicine. Across the region, people prized these spices for flavour and for a reputed ability to aid digestion and ward off illness.

  Then, in 1498, Portuguese ships reached Goa on the western coast of India, and the next stage of this story began.

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• 3. Ships and Spice Routes

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  In 1511, the Portuguese under Afonso de Albuquerque captured Malacca. The city was a key trading hub on the Malay Peninsula, and holding it gave them influence over the spice trade and over what people cooked. Chilli peppers, native to the Americas, travelled in Portuguese hands from Goa to Malacca. They then moved along ports in India, the Moluccas and coastal Java.

  Spanish traders carried chillies to the Philippines by the middle of the 16th century. At first the new pepper supplemented native spices such as long pepper, black pepper, ginger and galangal. Soon it replaced long pepper in everyday cooking. Long pepper lingered only in some ceremonial and medicinal uses.

  The reasons were practical as well as culinary. Rice is the staple food of the region, and strong chilli let a small portion of costly meat or seafood flavour a large plate of rice. Heat also helped cover the taste of less fresh or fermented foods in a humid tropical climate. Chillies grew well in the tropics and suited local tastes. Many people overcame an early sensitivity to capsaicin, and the source links the lasting preference to the pleasurable endorphin response.

  By the late 16th and early 17th centuries, chillies were fully part of the culinary landscape. Cooks served small fresh ones whole or sliced beside rice and noodles. In Thai som tam, they met ground peanuts. Pastes and sauces took in shrimp paste, garlic, shallots, lime juice, palm sugar and soy sauce. This paved the way for sambal, for Thailand's nam prik and for Vietnam's chilli-garlic sauce, tương ớt tỏi.

  The mortars were already waiting. Cooks simply pounded the chillies in with shallots, garlic, galangal and shrimp paste. By the 18th century, colonial-era accounts describe chilli condiments served with rice, fish and vegetables. Javanese, Minangkabau, Sundanese, Malay, Peranakan and Balinese cooks all counted sambal as a staple.

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• 4. Raw, Cooked and Bottled

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  Cooks sort sambal into two broad camps: sambal masak, which is cooked, and sambal mentah, which is raw. Cooking gives a distinct flavour and aroma. Raw sambal is mixed with extra ingredients and eaten almost at once. Geography divides the camps. Cooked sambals are more common in the western archipelago, including western Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei, while raw ones dominate in eastern Indonesia.

  Shrimp paste, called terasi or belacan, gets special treatment. Cooks fry or burn it first to tame its sharp smell and release its aroma. Chilli, garlic, shallot and tomato are usually ground fresh in a mortar.

  A well-sealed glass jar in the refrigerator keeps sambal for about a week. Some households and restaurants refuse to store it at all. They make sambal dadak, a word meaning impromptu sambal, just before the meal. Even so, most warung and restaurants prepare a large batch each day.

  Industrial sambal arrived later. Bottles and sachets now fill warung, traditional markets, supermarkets and convenience stores. Heinz ABC sambal terasi and several Indofood variants are among the brands named. Machine production gives these sauces a finer, more even texture, thick like tomato ketchup. A mortar-ground sambal stays coarse.

  The chillies themselves vary. Cayenne is shiny, red and elongated. Bird's eye chilli is very spicy and about 50 mm long. The habanero, which the source also calls adyuma, is yellow and block-shaped. Each brings its own heat to the mortar.

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• 5. The Indonesian Mosaic

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  On the Batak side of North Sumatra, sambal andaliman carries the tingling local pepper into a chilli sauce. A cousin, sambal tuktuk, combines andaliman with dried fish. Minangkabau cooks in West Sumatra make sambal balado, a sauteed mixture of chilli and tomato often paired with eggs, eggplant or seafood. In Bali, sambal matah stays raw and mixes shallots, lemongrass and bird's eye chilli.

  Some sambals turn on one unusual ingredient. Sambal durian, also called sambal tempoyak, uses fermented durian and appears in Sumatra and parts of Kalimantan. Bali's sambal bongkot uses torch ginger stems. Sambal gami from Bontang in East Kalimantan is cooked with assorted shellfish, and sambal terung asam from Kalimantan uses the sour fruit Solanum ferox.

  Fruit also finds its way in. Palembang's sambal buah combines kemang mango with pineapple. Sambal belimbing wuluh uses sour bilimbi, and sambal pencit from Central Java uses shredded unripe mango. At the other extreme, sambal uyah-lombok is only raw chilli and salt. Sambal ulek is a plain raw chilli paste that serves as a base for other sauces.

  Many sambals belong to a particular plate. Ambon's sambal colo-colo goes with grilled fish. In East Nusa Tenggara, sambal luat accompanies se'i smoked meat. The Betawi sambal pecak, a soupier version made with ginger, dresses fried fish or chicken. On Lombok, sambal taliwang takes its fire from locally grown naga jolokia peppers.

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• 6. The Malay Peninsula and the Sulu Sea

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  In Malaysia, a mortar of fresh chillies and toasted belacan produces sambal belacan, perhaps the best-known local style. Cooks season it with sugar and lime juice. Traditionally the souring comes from limau kesturi, or calamansi, though regular lime substitutes outside Southeast Asia. Tomatoes or unripe mango sometimes join in. People eat it with raw vegetables called ulam. A Malaysian Chinese version fries the belacan with chilli before serving.

  Sambal jeruk is made from green or red chillies with kaffir lime, or with vinegar and sugar in place of lime. It is the usual partner for nasi goreng and noodles. Sambal tempoyak, found in Pahang, Perak and parts of Brunei, uses fermented durian. The raw version mixes pounded chillies with dried anchovies and tempoyak. The cooked version is stir-fried with shallots, lemongrass, turmeric leaf and anchovies, sometimes with petai or tapioca shoots. Sambal hitam Pahang adds belimbing for sourness.

  Sambal kicap blends sweet soy sauce, shallots, garlic and bird's eye chilli. It works as a dip for fried foods or a condiment for soups. Sambal tumis, a stir-fry of dried and fresh chillies, belacan and gula Melaka, is the classic partner of nasi lemak. That plate comes with fried anchovies, peanuts, cucumber and boiled egg.

  Farther east, among the Tausug and other Moro communities of the Sulu Archipelago and Mindanao, sambal means something different. It is a spicy appetiser served with sliced cucumber, chopped radish or green mango to stimulate the appetite. Shallots, ginger, onions, chillies and peppercorns are pounded or blended together. The same word also names a sweet and spicy broth, sambal soup, served with satti, a breakfast of skewered grilled meat and rice balls.

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• 7. Sambal Abroad

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  In Sri Lanka, the word lost its second a and became sambol. The source says the dish came during the colonial era, derived from the chilli sambal of the Dutch East Indies. Cooks adapted it with grated coconut, lime juice, and vegetables such as nelum ala, the lotus stem, and dambala, the winged bean. A wooden grinding device called a mirisgala traditionally crushes the ingredients.

  Sri Lankan sambols are generally made from fresh, uncooked ingredients, a point that sets them apart from many Southeast Asian versions. The source compares the result to Mexican salsa or Laotian jaew. Seeni sambol is a hot and sweet mix of onions, crumbled Maldives fish and spices, and its name comes from the Sinhala word for sugar. Pol sambol uses scraped coconut, onion, green and red chillies and lime juice. Lunumiris, literally salt chilli, is red chilli with sea salt. Jaffna Tamils make a chutney-like preparation called campal.

  In the Netherlands, sambal arrived from Indonesia, a former Dutch colony. Supermarkets and tokos sell Conimex and Koningsvogel brands. Sambal oelek, a simple chilli paste, is the most popular type, while sambal badjak is a sweet, cooked sambal often made with onions. Dutch cooks use it with rijsttafel, nasi and bami, and they add it to snacks and sandwiches.

  In South Africa, sambal belongs to Cape Malay cuisine, which reflects Indonesian and Malaysian ancestors brought to the region in the colonial era. A cucumber sambal is one local adaptation.

  In Suriname, the Javanese-Surinamese community brought sambal with them. They serve it with rice, meats and tempeh, and some versions use chicken hearts, gizzards or liver. The fierce Madame Jeanette pepper, fruity and typical of Surinamese cooking, supplies heat. Local ingredients appear in the Surinam cherry sambal and the peanut sambal called pinda sambal.

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• 8. Sambal in the Pot

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  Indonesian cooks use the phrase sambal goreng, meaning fried sambal, for a main ingredient stir-fried in sambal. Potatoes, liver, crackers made from beef or buffalo skin, anchovies and tempeh all get this treatment. In Minangkabau cuisine, the prefix balado means with chilli pepper, as in udang balado, which is prawns with sambal.

  Seafood and vegetables take to it as well. The Sundanese sambal lalab accompanies fresh vegetables. Squid, cuttlefish, dried prawns and eel each have a sambal of their own. Fish can be cooked into a moist, curry-like dish or reduced to a dry floss called serunding ikan. The Javanese sambal wader pairs yellow rasbora with sambal terasi, and it is believed to have been served since the Majapahit era.

  In Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei, grilled stingray, called pari bakar, arrives with a smear of sambal paste. Serunding daging is a slow-cooked beef sambal with a floss-like texture. Ayam masak sambal appears at kenduri kahwin, the wedding feasts, where a mortar-born sauce from the age of long pepper still takes a seat at the celebration.

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