Khmer. Main. Served at Mekong (#5 and #6).

Fish amok

Amok trei

Amok is a coconut and fish custard steamed in a banana-leaf-lined bowl. It should set soft with a wobble, smell of lemongrass and makrut before anything else, and taste salty-sweet, with the salt ahead of the sugar.

Without the eggs it won't set. The color comes from mild dried peppers, seeded, with the soak water thrown away; hot dried chiles leave a bitter aftertaste. The salt runs close to one percent, nearly double Chef Nak's recipe.

Makes
Makes six 6-inch bowls from 1 kg of fish, one per person as a main. Each bowl takes 170 g of fish.
Time
About 40 minutes at the stove, hands-off except the tier swaps. Start steaming 45 minutes before you want to eat.
Do ahead
Make the kroeung and pepper paste the day before, and line the bowls the day before. Mix and steam the day you eat.

Ingredients

Scale

Amok

  • 1 kgfirm white fish, 2 to 3 cm cubes (swai, basa, or catfish; cod releases more liquid)
  • 150 gkroeung, hand-pounded
  • 85 gmild dried red pepper paste (below)
  • 6Thai bird chiles, pounded into the kroeung (these carry the heat; the pepper paste is mild)
  • 15 gprahok, or pla ra (fermented gouramy paste; use the fish solids, not the liquid). Shrimp paste if you can find neither.
  • 30 gpalm sugar
  • 9 gsalt
  • 3 tbspfish sauce
  • ¾ tspMSG (the pla ra alone isn't enough)
  • 3eggs
  • 340 gunsweetened coconut cream (Aroy-D carton or Savoy; avoid guar-gum cans), hold back 6 tsp for the tops
  • 2long red peppers, shredded and soaked to curl, for garnish
  • 3makrut lime leaves, fine chiffonade, for garnish
  • 6banana leaves

Pepper paste

  • about 55 gdried mild red peppers (California, guajillo, or dried cubanelle type), for 85 g of paste. Make the full amount even for one bowl; it keeps a week.
  • hot water to soak, then discard
  • a splash of coconut cream, for blending

Method

  1. Make the pepper paste first. Stem and seed the dried peppers and scrape out the white pith. Soak 20 to 30 minutes in hot (not boiling) water until soft. Drain and throw the soak water away.
  2. Blend the peppers while they are still warm and soft with a splash of coconut cream until completely smooth. Push the paste through a sieve if you see flecks; bits of skin stay leathery in the custard. Weigh out 85 g.
  3. Pat the fish cubes dry. Take 20 to 25% of the fish, about 200 g, and blend it smooth with a spoonful of the coconut cream. The blended fish gives the custard a mousse texture and soaks up the water the cubes release.
  4. Pound the bird chiles into the kroeung, then mash the prahok or pla ra in until smooth. Mix in the pepper paste, palm sugar, salt, fish sauce, and eggs until smooth. Stir in the coconut cream, then the blended fish.
  5. Taste now. It should taste slightly too salty raw; it reads less once set. Lemongrass and makrut should be the first thing you smell, with some heat at the back and no dry, bitter finish. Fix it before the fish goes in.
  6. Fold in the fish cubes. Rest 15 to 20 minutes.
  7. Line each bowl with banana leaf, shiny side up. Fill to about 1 cm below the rim. Loosely fold the extra leaf over the top; do not wrap it tight.
  8. Set a three-tier bamboo steamer, 10 or 12 inches, over a rolling boil, one bowl per tier, with a kettle of boiling water beside it to top up between batches so the steam never drops.
  9. Steam three bowls at a time, 18 minutes, check at 15. The top tier runs slower, so swap tiers at 9 minutes. It's done when the center wobbles and does not slosh.
  10. Take the first three out, cover each bowl with foil, and leave them on a sheet pan. Top up the water and put the next three bowls straight in for the same time.
  11. When the second batch comes out, put the first three back into the steamer for 2 minutes with the lid on, so all six are hot and glossy on top.
  12. Top all six with the reserved coconut cream, makrut, and pepper curls.

Notes

  • 170 g of raw cubes fills a 6 by 2 inch bowl to 1 cm below the rim, so six bowls take a kilo of fish. For four bowls, scale everything by two thirds.
  • Cod and haddock release a lot of liquid. Swai, basa, and catfish hold together and are the fish used along the Mekong; swai and basa are the same Pangasius under two labels. They come frozen. Thaw overnight, then leave them an hour uncovered on a rack in the fridge before cubing, or the thaw water ends up at the bottom of the bowl.
  • Prahok is the traditional choice. Pla ra, Thai fermented gouramy sold as gouramy fish sauce in a jar, is close enough. Use the raw fermented paste, not the cooked, sweetened sauce. Shrimp paste works if you can find neither, but don't use it together with prahok.
  • The heat comes from fresh bird chiles pounded into the kroeung, not from the pepper paste. Kashmiri or other hot dried chiles in the paste leave a bitter aftertaste.
  • If the soaked peppers sit overnight they toughen up again. Re-soak them 10 minutes in hot water before blending.
  • Chef Nak's recipe serves 4 to 6 from 1 kg as a main and runs about 0.5% salt, palm sugar four to one over salt, and 20 g of kroeung per kilo. I don't follow those numbers. Other amok recipes use three to five times her kroeung, so taste the raw base and push it up until the lemongrass and makrut are unmistakable.
  • Once set, the custard holds fine; what hurts it is being cooked twice. You can also hold it in the steamer, off the heat, with the lid on.
  • Line the bowls with banana leaf only; don't put napa or chard under the custard.
  • You can steam it in banana-leaf cups instead: 15 cm circles, two per cup, shiny side out, four corners pinned, steamed 10 minutes and then 2 more after the garnish. They're prettier and all fit a 12-inch steamer at once, but there's more folding. Baking it in a tray frees the stove, but that isn't how the dish is made.