More makeshift cooking: Solok lada!

I got invited to a baby shower potluck and the food theme was nasi kerabu. Seeing as to most of the components of nasi kerabu had been taken by the other ladies in the group, I decided I would try making solok lada.

Solok lada when done right is always a treat. It's one of those sides that really elevate a nasi kerabu, arguably the best rice dish to come from Kelantan (nasi dagang used to be up there, but as I grow older I prefer Terengganu-style nasi dagang), but then is rarely eaten with anything else.

A borrowed picture of someone else's nasi kerabu, iconic Kelantanese blue rice, with solok lada smack in front. Its so common that I never bothered to take pictures of all the amazing nasi kerabu I've eaten. Alas.

My grandma had once taught me how to make good solok lada, and the ingredients are really very simple. Just some mackerel flesh blended with shredded (fresh) coconut meat, shallots, black pepper, garlic and seasoned with salt and pepper-- stuffed into a pepper, incidentally named solok chili (I have tried to Google up a species name, but all I find is that it is a common long green pepper grown in the East Coast i.e. Pattani, Kelantan, Terengganu perhaps), then lightly doused with coconut milk and steamed until everything is soft and cooked. Mmmm so good. The solok chili has a lovely warm heat, so it contrasts nicely with the rich yet delicate blend of coconut and fish, and a good solok lada can just be eaten on its own like a very decadent snack.

Now the issue of trying to make solok lada in the US of A, is finding a suitable replacement for the elusive solok chili. The long hot peppers that I like here are too thin and too green, banana peppers are too yellow and small, so in the end I settled with a bag of green-yellow Italian peppers that were probably twice bigger than the average solok chili and vastly less hot. I had ummed and ahhed over the chili section for awhile, even after a nice fellow grocer try to weigh in on which one I should take, but it was Matt in his wisdom responding to my lament over the description of the Italian peppers as 'sweet and mild' being the biggest thing that misses the brief, "Just make the stuffing hotter then." that settled the decision. 

Then the next challenge was finding fresh coconut flesh. Ah, how Malaysians take for granted the ease of popping by the wet market and buying bags of freshly grated coconut. But in the recesses of my mind is the still vivid memory of living with my grandparents and being the one tasked with sitting on a 'little horse' with a sharp jagged mouth which we use to grate coconut flesh out of coconut halves at home. If 10 year old Kye could do it, surely 30-something Kye could too.

The kukur kelapa, or coconut grater horse. Image also taken from someone else because again, never thought to take pictures of these things before!

Luckily, we found a small pile of whole brown coconuts at the tropical section in Wegman's called 'easy crack' coconuts. It occurred to me while I have certainly grated fresh coconut flesh, I have never opened a coconut myself. It was a mini operation involving a corkscrew, (the blunt end of) a chef's knife, and a husband-- but we managed to open the coconut, and I was able to pry out the flesh from the shell (it turns out the easiest way to do this is to keep hitting the shell with the blunt end of the knife until the flesh is loosened first). Next, I peeled off the brown skin from the white flesh, chopped up the flesh into tiny pieces. Then blitzed them using a food processer until they seemed fine enough. They don't achieve the nice soft wispy texture of grated coconut, but they had to do.

So. Much. Effort.

To replace the mackerel, I used tilapia filets. This was an easy decision. I've become a huge fan of tilapia: they're cheap, they're not fiddly to cook, they have lovely texture, and I have a decent handful of fish rub recipes that work really well. So we always have tilapia on hand now. 

After blitzing and mixing everything, I seasoned with salt and sugar, and to make the stuffing a bit hotter then, I added a couple of dashes of Trinidad scorpion pepper powder courtesy of my lovely MIL (this thing is amazing, just a couple of dashes into ANYTHING and you get a good slow burn). Into the deseeded halved peppers they go, basted with coconut milk, then steamed for 35mins.

Solok lada waiting to be steamed.

I had a test taste and besides the crunchy coconut and the not-hot-at-all pepper, they tasted pretty correct. But THEN I had an inspiration, which is to give them a toasty look on the top, so I broiled the peppers for another 5 minutes. In retrospect, they look nicer but I think just leaving them steamed kept the solok lada more moist. 

And there you have it, monster-sized steamed-broiled sort of solok lada.

                                            

No one complained, and I thought the solok lada tasted decent and went well with everything else. The ladies were impressed I banged out coconut flesh from a whole coconut. Indeed, the pot luck shower featuring nasi kerabu was as much a success as any group of Malaysians in wintry Rochester could hope for. 

Got budu summore under that covered bowl next to the salted egg okay.