My aunty with 10 years experiences as a chef in her own restaurant, gave the recipe

shown below. Currently, she is retired and often cook at home to serve her family and
friends. When she was running her restaurant, Asam Laksa is one of the famous
dishes in the menu. This asam laksa recipe is passed down from my grandmother, who
learned from my great-grandmother, so its been tasted, authenticated, and loved, by
Malaysian.
Ingredients
1 kg pre-cooked laksa noodles (or thick round rice noodles)
Ground spice paste
15 fresh red chilies and 10 dried red chilies (or 3 tbsp freshly ground chili paste)
10 shallots
6 cloves garlic
1 inch of galangal (lengkuas)
2 cm knob of fresh turmeric
2 stalks lemongrass, minced (use the white part only)
1 1/2 tbsp belacan (dried shrimp paste), or if in block form, use 3/4 of a block
Soup
For cooking fish:
15 cups water
3 stalks lemongrass, lightly smashed (white part only)
1 torch ginger flower, quartered
3 inches of galangal, halved
1 1/2 kg (about 15 fish) fresh mackerel, horse mackerel, fresh sardine, or yellowtail
kingfish - cleaned and gutted
1/3 cup tamarind juice (mix tamarind pulp in hot water for five minutes before
squeezing it to obtain the juice)
5 pieces tamarind peel (asam keping or asam gelugor)
6 stalks Vietnamese mint (daun kesom)
3 tbsp sugar or to taste
Salt to taste
Garnishing
1 cucumber, thinly sliced into strips
Chinese lettuce, sliced
1/2 medium size fresh pineapple, sliced into small pieces
2 red onions, thinly sliced
Handful of mint leaves (daun pudina)
1 torch ginger bud (bunga kantan), finely sliced
3 red chilies, thinly sliced
2 green bird's eye chilies, thinly sliced

Condiments:
Calamansi lime
Sweetened prawn paste (heh ko sauce), diluted with laksa soup or water
Process:
1. Blend spice paste ingredients into a fine paste.
2. Heat a pot of water and add lemongrass, galangal, torch ginger flower. Bring to a
boil and then add fish. Boil on medium heat for 15-20 minutes or until the fish is
cooked.
3. Transfer cooked fish to a bowl and let cool. Strain broth to remove spices. Add to
the broth the Vietnamese mint, tamarind juice and tamarind peel and continue to boil
on low heat.
4. Break the fish meat into tiny pieces, but keep some in bigger chunks.
5. Add the fish flakes back into the pot, along with the spice paste.
6. When it reaches a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 40 minutes to one hour. While
simmering, add salt and sugar to balance the spiciness and sourness for your taste.
7. Rinse laksa noodles in cold water and strain. Place one serving of noodles into a
bowl, and pour laksa soup with fish flakes over the top.
8. Top with garnishing, and serve with a spoonful of shrimp paste if you like.

Differences between the online recipe and the actual recipe given
First, based on the online recipe, they use mackerel (ikan kembong) in the asam laksa
as it is commonly use by the hawker stalls. Ikan kembong is a kind of low quality fish
which is the cheapest at the market. Thus, when compare to the actual recipe given by
Miss Yew Yuet Ngor, who is a housewife that cook at home, she had try a better
quality fish such as horse mackerel (ikan selar kuning), fresh sardine, or what was
used in this recipe yellowtail kingfish (ikan pelata).
Besides, the online recipe that get from rasamalaysia.com was prepared by a BabaNyoya lady while the actual recipe that I get was prepared by a Chinese lady. As a
result, the way they cook the dish is slightly different from each other. For instance,
the online recipe actually sauts the spice paste with cooking oil before transfer it into
the boiling stock. However, in the actual recipe, the spice paste was added to the
boiling stock with the fish flakes directly without sauted it.
Furthermore, there are different in the seasoners used by the online recipe and the
actual recipe. For instance, according to the actual recipe, seasoners such as
lemongrass, ginger flower, galangal and tamarind was used to spice up the soup while
the online recipe only used asam keping and tamarind to spice up the soup. This
difference can be explained by the fact of different culture. Galangal and ginger
flower was seasoners that often used by the Chinese people as they think that these
seasoners are good to health. On the other hand, asam keping was one of the most

famous seasoners that used by the Nyonya in most of the dishes.

Lastly, due to the time constraints and the technology advancement, nowadays people
used the asam laksa instant paste that are well packed by the supplier instead of
spending time preparing the ingredient and cooked it. While instant paste are quite
convenient, the disadvantage is that they are usually less nutrient dense than the
freshly made paste. The more a food is processed to make it instant, the more vitamins
and minerals are lost. Therefore, asam laksa that make by fresh ingredients, which
have not been processed, are a much healthier choice.