‘Asam Pedas‘ refers to sour/spicy fish stew made of tamarind base. ‘Asam’ means tamarind and ‘pedas’ spicy. It tastes quite similar to ‘tom yum goong’ from Thailand and the ingredients used are almost the same. With ‘asam pedas’, we usually cook it with freshwater fish such as the ‘ikan tengirri’, otherwise known as macakerel and sometimes with red snapper. I had neither but a spare barramundi fillet at home so I used it instead and it tasted just as nice. ‘Asam Pedas‘ is not a common dish cooked in Indian households. In fact, I do not recall my mum or aunts ever cooking it when I was still in Singapore. However, I do enjoy it tremendously whenever I am outside at seafood restaurants. I am a huge fan of ‘tom yum goong’ and love anything that has a sour/spicy taste so naturally, ‘Asam Pedas’ is in my top 10 most loved food. This recipe I have is mine. I had to make it several times to achieve the desired consistency and I think I managed to do it. Well, why don’t you try and let me know if I have? 
Asam Pedas
Ingredients:
- For Grinding
- Shallots (Small red onions) - 1
- Peeled Garlic - 4 cloves
- Galangal - 3 cm knob
- Ginger - 3 cm knob
- Fresh Turmeric - 5 cm knob
- Belacan (Shrimp Paste) - 1/2 tbsp
- Dried Chillies - 10 pieces, cut into halves, deseeded and soaked in boiling water
- Serai (Lemongrass) - 5 cm bulbous portion only
- Water - 15 ml
- Other Ingredients
- Kaffir Lime Leaf - 2 pieces
- Serai (Lemongrass) - 2 * 5cm bulbous portion only
- Barramundi Fillet - 300 gm, sliced into medium sized pieces
- Tomatoes - 1, cut into wedges
- Indian Brinjal - 2, quartered
- Okras - 4 pieces
- Tamarind - 1/2 tbsp, soaked in 500 ml hot water and juice extracted
- Salt - To taste
- Canola Cooking Oil - 5 tbsp
Instructions:
- Coat the barramundi slices thoroughly with 1 tsp turmeric powder and wash it off after 5 minutes. As I always mention in my posts, washing meat and any type of seafood with turmeric helps to remove the odour that may be quite overwhelming sometimes.
- Blend all the ingredients to be ground into a smooth paste.
- Heat a medium sized saucepan with measured amount of cooking oil.
- Add the kaffir lime leaves and serai. Wait for the lovely aroma to waft through your nose.
- Add in the ground chilli paste, salt and stir on low heat for 10 minutes or till the oil separates and surfaces on top of the chilli.
- Add the tomatoes, okras, brinjals, the washed barramundi slices to the sambal paste and stir together.
- Add the tamarind extract and let the stew simmer on medium heat for 10 minutes.
- Taste for salt and sourness in the stew and adjust acordingly if needed.
- Asam Pedas ready to be dished out :-)
Hi Lalitha, over from G+. Am loving your blog, kudos on trying the recipe lots of times to get it right! Great to meet you, catch you again soon! x
Hi Azlin, my apologies for the extremely late reply. Thank you for taking your time to look through my blog.