Resep Dekke Naniura Ikan Mas Masakan Khas Batak (Spicy Hot Pickled Grass Carp) for a Bataknese Descent Dentist 25th Birthday

Dekke Naniura Masakan Khas Batak Toba

Resep Dekke (Dengke) Naniura Masakan Khas Tapanuli Utara-Batak Toba. Dengke (pronounced: Dekke) na–ni–ura deribed from Bataknese descent language dengke meaning fish, Na–ni refers to a process and ura meaning sour (lime /lemon juice), So Naniura is a spicy pickled fish using grass carp (ikan mas) and jeruk jungga (kaffir lime juice). Dekke Naniura used to  heavily seasoned with chili and  turmeric based seasoning and then marinated for hours until the grass carp fish flesh tender and “cooked” within the acidic lime based pickling marinade and the remaining bone easily separated and removed from the fish flesh.

Dekke Naniura Masakan Khas Tapanuli Utara

Resep Dekke naniura. Naniura adalah masakan yang berasal dari tanah Tapanuli Utara, leluhur orang Batak Toba. Dekke Naniura adalah masakan yang terbuat dari ikan mas berbumbu yang disajikan tanpa proses memasak menggunakan api, tetapi “dimasak” dalam bumbu air jeruk asam yang berbahan dasar utte jungga atau jeruk jungga (sejenis jeruk purut khas Sumatera Utara). Air asam dalam jeruk jungga dapat memasak atau lebih teptnya mendenaturasi protein pada daging ikan mas sehingga kolagennya terputus dan dagingnya menjadi empuk setelah direndam selama  kurang lebih 4 jam, selain itu pH rendaman naniura yang asam membunuh parasit dan kuman bakteri yang terdapat dalam daging ikan mas. Naniura berbumbu dasar kunyit dengan intensitas kepedasan yang menyengat lidah. Bumbu naniura yang wajib lainnya adalah andaliman atau merica batak, bahan ini dapat ditemukan di penjual makanan khas batak. Andaliman memberikan sensasi getir atau baal pada ujung lidah yang akan membuat nafsu makan semakin bertambah. Dekke Naniura juga ditambahkan batang kecombrang yang menambahka aroma dan rasa asam yang menyegarkan. Selain itu tidak lupa ditambahkan kacang tanah dan kemiri ke dalam bumbu perendam naniura yang sebelumnya disangrai dan kemudian dihaluskan untuk memberikan rasa gurih kedalam masakan ini.

Dekke Naniura an Indonesian Style Spicy Fish Ceviche

Naniura is a pickled raw fish, similiar to ceviche (Peru) kinilaw/kilawin(Philiphine) or poke (Hawai/USA). I quite familiar with raw seafood dishes, actually way before i made myself naniura, i made my Raw Live Spiny Lobster Ceviche with Cherry Tomatoes and also Raw Tiger Prawn Sashimi. One thing i know that  before considering made your own raw fish dish, you should know how to deal with it. In order to reduce the risk, you should pay extra attention on the following tips to handle raw fish dish at home :

• If you had live fish, keep it  alive as long as posible, kill it just before serving or using the raw fish within the recipe,
• If you had a vaccum packed fish filets with certified sashimi grade, thaw it in the fridge overnight or submerged the whole package in a cold water before serving or using raw fish in the recipe, never thawing it in room temperature or your fish gonna be spoiled.
• Keep all the tools clean and properly desinfected for serving or using raw fish in the recipe, stop handling the fish if there are accidentally wounds cuts on your hands. Cleanliness is the law for handling raw food!!!
• Keep the raw fish cold, right after you dressed the live fish, put some ice to kept it cold, it’s better you serving or using raw fish in the recipe over a bed of ice.
• Keep it fast and moving, dress your fish quickly and served it immediately, it’s better to served raw fish  within 2-4 hours after killed and dressed.
• Incase your raw fish is not fresh or with a strange taste (usually from the frozen vaccum pack), stop eating it.
• Consult the doctor  if gastrointestinal symptoms appear after eating raw fish

Dengke Naniura Masakan Khas Batak Toba-Sumeatera Utara

Dengke naniura isn’t much known and served this days, my parent’s generation maybe had a chance to enjoying naniura  once a while their grown up, but for some of the Bataknese descent in my generation didn’t even known anymore about it and thus made naniura less known and apreciated even more. Naniura used to be a festive dish in any Bataknese celebration occations, but now i’ve never seen any naniura served outside North Sumatra land. Countless lapo (bataknese ethnic restaurant) appear across Indonesia, but seldom providing naniura in the menu, unless special order made priorly the day before. I totally understand why i didn’t grown up with naniura, that because my mom comes from the Batak Mandailing (Southern Bataknese) that not used to naniura dish, but luckily my grandma from my father comes from Batak Toba (Northen Bataknese) and she more than happy to share her recipe. The worst thing about naniura is now only several elder know about the authentic recipe of making it. Backthen once there’s no refrigerator and people made their naniura with a humble kitchen tools, but now the refrigerator exist and it’s kinda embarrassed me off for my bataknese descent blood running throught my vein but i didn’t try making dekke naniura once. Now in  the day that i’m turning 25, i celebrate my birthday to share the recipe of Dekke Naniura by my humble  grandmother Opung Nova boru Hutabarat.

Asam Jungga or Jeruk Jungga

Diagonal Cut Asam Jungga Show the Very Thin Skin

The basic marinade for pickling dekke naniura is the jeruk jungga or utte jungga, it’s a local name for endemic kaffir lime which had a thinner skin and more sour juice than common kaffir lime. The naniura spice paste made of shallots, garlic, turmeric, ginger that burnt and charred over a gas flame first before mashed alongside chilies and bird eye chilies pepper. Toasted corriander, peanut and candle nuts then added to the spice paste to give a rich and creamy flavour into the tangy kaffir lime marinate

Andaliman Pepper

Andaliman pepper (Zanthoxylum acanthopodium) or lada batak is an essential ingredients for kicking dekke naniura taste. Andaliman pepper closely related to Sichuan pepper (Zanthoxylum bungeanum) and Sansho pepper (Zanthoxylum piperitum), the husk or seed pericarps are used as spices in cooking and have a tongue-numbing and tingling sensation. Andaliman got a citrusy and tangy fruity flavour on it, but if you living abroad, sichuan pepper and sansho pepper is good enought to substitude it. Andaliman is also used to added to any Bataknese dishes like Arsik Ikan Mas Khas batak (Spicy Fish Stew) and Saksang Ayam (Spicy Chicken with Blood Stew)

Batang Rias/Kecombrang/Honje

Rias (Etlingera elatior) or torch ginger, ginger flower, red ginger lily, torch lily, wild ginger, kecombrang, bunga kantan, Philippine wax flower, xiang bao jiaing, Indonesian tall ginger, boca de dragón, rose de porcelaine, porcelain rose you name it yourself. The soft whitish inner part of the torch ginger flower used also to the naniura seasoning, this is the lass but not less ingredients. The torch ginger stalk usually exposed to the flame until the outside layer charred and slightly burnt before peeled off and mashed within the naniura spice paste

Kicking Delicious Spicy and Tender Dekke Naniura

Naniura dengke that popular nowdays using grass carp or ikan mas/dekke mas or literrary translated in english as golden fish, back then naniura originally used ikan batak, ihan or dekke curong (Toba), or dekke jurung-jurung (Mandailing)(Tor Tombroides). Ikan semah or ikan batak had a plenty names around the world, Ikan Kelah or Ikan Empurau (Malaysia), Mahseer Fish (India). Even in Indonesia, we”ve got several name for this fish from the genera; known as Ikan semah (South Sumatra), Ikan Sapan (Borneo), Ikan dewa/Ikan Kancra Bodas/Ikan Kencara (West Java), Ikan Tambra/ Tombro (Central Java). This ikan batak is quite rare and pricey, that’s why naniura ihan batak used to be a special threat to the wealthy and royalties among Bataknese people. You can use any kind of sashimi grade fish filets if you want to make naniura, but you must using live freshwater fish like grass carp for this recipe.

Cara membuat naniura. This is how you make dekke naniura; medium size live grass carp (300-500 grams) scalled and  butterflied through out the  back side. The grass carp internal organ and gills removed then the fish cleaned under running cold water to remove the remaining blood and slime. The fish than laid in a shallow glass bowl to made the pickling marinade completely drenched the fish. never use metal or plastic bowl to marinade fish in acid liquid because the contact will conduct unwanted chemical reaction.

The first lime juice and salt poured over the fish and then flipped around to made sure all the fish fillets drenched with the kafir  lime juice and refrigerate about 10 minutes until the skin not slimey anymore.

The kaffir lime juice and alll the dripping liquid that mixed with the grass carp fish remaining slime then discarded. This is a very important steps to made sure the finished  dekke naniura didn’t taste fishy at all.

 

The remaining 3 jeruk jungga or kafir lime juice  squeese out and added to the grass carp fish. Never forget to remove the seed before pouring it to the fish unless you had to picked it one by one like i fooly did in the photograph above.

Let the entire glass bowl covered with cling wrap plastic and sitting undisturbly about 30 minutes to one hour in the fridge. Plastic wrapping is necessary because you didn’t want to infused any funny smells within your  raw pickled grass carp fish. Meanwhile, you can prepare the dengke naniura spice paste for pickling-marinating the grass carp fish.

This is how the grass carp fish look a like after soaked about 30 minutes to one hour in the fridge, the flesh is turning from translucent into a withish opaque color. The texture is softer than the raw fish flesh. The grass carp fish back bone now can easily separated from the flesh and removed.

The grass carp ribs bone is also easily separated and removed from the belly flesh. This is the fun part of making dekke naniura. make sure you remove any bony part of the fish except the tail and the head of course.

This is all the grass carp fish bone; back bone, fins and ribs completely removed and discarded from the flesh. This step made the dengke naniura even more easy to consume and let the acid pickling marinade penetrate even better to the fish flesh. The dengke naniura spice paste mixture then added to the fish and mix well until all the surface covered (sorry i forgot to photograph it) then the grass carp fish let marinated-pickled within the spices and kaffir lime juice for another 3 hours in the fridge untill all the fish flest is tender and taste kicking delicious.

Very Tender Raw Grass Carp Fish Dekke Naniura

This is how the finish product of dekke naniura, the grass carp is totally tender and can be cut using spoon. The raw grass carp fish head and tail bone even tender enough to chew and completely edible because it completely “cooked” or denaturated. The kaffir lime juice and heavy seasoning made this spicy Indonesian style ceviche very delicious. Dekke naniura is a very complex in flavour; sourness from the kaffir lime juice, hotness from the chilies, numbning from the andaliman pepper, nutty from peanut and candlenut, then it’s all blended with garlic, shallot, turmeric, ginger and torch ginger stalk into a heavenly lip smacking delicious combo.  The dekke naniura served with toasted peanut to add little more crisp and crunchy texture.

Resep Dekke Naniura Ikan Mas Khas Batak (Spicy Pickled Grass Carp Fish Recipe)

Resep Dekke Naniura Ikan Mas Khas Batak  (Spicy Pickled Grass Carp Fish Recipe)

Recipe by Opung Nova boru Hutabarat

Ingredients :

• 500 gram ikan mas (Live grass carp fish)
• 4 buah Jeruk Jungga/Lemon/Purut (Kaffir lime/lemon, Juiced)
• 1/2 tbsp garam (Salt)
• 3 tbsp Kacang Tanah Sangrai (Toasted peanut for garnish)

Naniura Spice Paste (Bumbu halus):

• 1 tbsp Andaliman pepper (Substituted with Japanese Sansho pepper or Chinese Sichuan pepper)
• 20 cm batang rias/kecombrang, bakar ( torch ginger stalk, charred over flames, peeled)
• 1 serai, dimemarkan (lemongrass, bruised)
• 8 bawang merah, bakar (red shallots, charred over flames, peeled)
• 2 bawang putih , bakar (garlic, charred over flames, peeled)
• 12 cabai merah (red chili pepper, toasted)
• 6 buah cabai rawit (bird eye chili pepper)
• 3 tbsp kacang tanah sangrai (peanut, toasted)
• 6 butir kemiri sangrai (candlenuts, toasted)
• 5 cm kunyit bakar (turmeric, charred over flames, peeled)
• 2 tsp ketumbar (corriander, toasted)
• 2 cm jahe, bakar (ginger,charred over flames, peeled)
• 2 stbsp  garam (Salt)

Cara membuat Dekke Naiura Ikan Mas Masakan Khas Batak:

1. Bersihkan ikan, belah punggungnya, taruh dalam pinggan kaca lalu tambahkan perasan 1 buah air jeruk jungga/ purut/lemon dan garam, diamkan selama 10 menit di kulkas

2. Buang semua cairan yang terdapat dalam pinggan kaca

3. Tambahkan perasan 3 buah air jeruk jungga/ purut/lemon diamkan selama 30 menit di kulkas sampai tulang ikan dapat dipisahkan dari dagingnya dengan mudah

4. Bersihkan ikan dari semua duri dan tulang, kecuali tulang ekor dan kepala sampai bersih

5. Lumuri ikan dengan bumbu halus dan diamkan selama kurang lebih 3 jam dalam kulkas sampai daging ikan menajadi lembut dan bumbu menyerap sempurna ke dalam daging ikan

6. Sajikan dekke naniura dengan kacang tanah sangrai