Today it's my third try out on perfecting my Pork Steak recipe.
Yeah, I've been experimenting with this ingredients lately. Especially the legendary Andaliman, a unique traditional spice with distinctive tongue-numbing characteristic.
Zanthoxylum acanthopodium (latin for Andaliman) is a 'must-have' ingredients in Batak Tribe's culinary. I live in North Sumatra, an area rich of ethnicity and diverse tradition. One of the most common is Batak.
The Prep
I shopped the meat from local butcher near my neighbourhood. I carefully handpicked the belly parts, which contain at least 35-40% fat.
I bought half-ounce of andaliman (only 30gr needed per serving), garlic, shallot, onions, black pepper, cayenne pepper, coriander seed, sesame seed oil and vegetable oil.
I've been juggling with this ingredients a few times, trying to find the best ratio and marinating techniques.
The execution
The onions, shallots, some cayenne and garlics are chopped and stir fried in hot vegetable oil.
I use stone based mortar and pestle to grind black pepper and coriander seed separately to coarse ground, then I sprinkled it on the meat.
I also grind andaliman and cayenne pepper using mortar and pestle. I added a pinch of salt and orange leafs.
I mix all those above to thoroughly marinate the meat along with more salts and sesame seed oil.
I put them on a baking pan, and bake it for 30 minutes in 250°C electric oven.
Result
Well, as you can see on the pictures above, it tasted heavenly!
The spices completely merged their taste to create a unique sensation of freshness (similar to lemon grass) and tongue numbing.
But, I won't be easily satisfied.
I will be back with another experiment and more photos.
PS: it doesn't come without price.
Be careful with your knive.