Sambal stingray is grilled stingray or skate fish with spicy chili sambal barbeque sauce over banana leaf. Sambal stingray claimed as Singaporean dish, it’s also popular across South East Asia including Indonesia and Malaysia. The stingray or skate wings , marinated with salt and lime or kalamansi juice, wrapped with banana leaf then barbequed with lots of chili sambal over charcoal until the fish throughly cookeand , the spices and also dripping liquid evaporated and slighly charred. Sambal stingray is no.7 of the list of CNN 40 Singaporean foods we can’t live without.
Sambal stingray is called ikan pari bakar here in Indonesia. Sambal is chili sauce in Bahasa Indonesia, while ikan pari means stingray, the word bakar is describe the grilling or barbequing process. Fresh Stingray or ikan pari used to be abandoned and unpopular source of seafood protein here in Indonesia. Stingray used to be salted and dried first and locally known as ikan pari asin. Other well known Indonesian dish from stringray is mangut iwak pe, a thick and spicy curry of hot smoked stingray. Banana leaves wrapped fish is a very popular way to cook fish here in Indonesia, i even made japanese style fish Grilled Sanma Fish with Spicy Miso and Chilli Sauce in Banana Leaf Recipe. If you can’t find any stingray or skate, just use other flatfish like sole or flounder, or even dory fish fillet for this recipe.
Sambal stingray is one of my favourite dish, my grandma used to grilled it over charcoal, but eversince i live in a very populated areas i guess barbequeing and sort of cooking that induced smoke is not the best choice unless my neighbor gonna complain about it. But then i found about making sambal stingray with wokpan and i guess it’s worth to give it a shoots. I love the cartilagous and meaty texture of stingray or skate wings, the smokey, spicy and hot kicking chili sambal made the flaky, meaty and succulent stingray meat hearthy even more.
The chili sambal barbeque sauce for grilling the sambal stingray made of lots of chilies. Bird eye chili pepper and cayenne pepper mashed with shallots, garlic, and then sauteed with oil until throughly cooked and the oil separated or driven of from chili sambal paste. Chili sambal for grilling fish also contain terasi or belachan (solid fermented shrimp paste), tamarind paste, tomato or cherry tomatoes. Palm sugar added to balanced the spicy and hot tone and bring the umamai flavour instead using any mono sodium glutamat or flavour enhancement.
To make sambal stingray, first you should choose very-very fresh stingray with firm, bounchy and slighly translucent flesh. Choose the meaty stingray wings from the female stingray rather than the male, ask your butcher about it. The male stingray fish got a very fishy, stringy, dried and hard flesh. Make sure you SMELL the stingray, sometimes the stingray fillet got a ammoniak or urine smells when it not handled properly and not stored in a cold storage. I once purchased a very fresh stingray in the moring market, then i had a rice breakfast in a restaurant before going home for about 2 hours, unfortunately i forgot ask the fish monger add some ice on it; the heat in my trunk iniciate the fermentation of urea become amonia and made a very unpleasant piss or urine smells that made me had to discarded it. So, it’s very important to keep your stingray cold as possible from the freshmarket to your own kitchen, ask the fish monger to put some ice on the shopping bag.
Beside the sambal terasi or belachan chili barbeque sauce, i add thinly sliced onion, lemongrass, ginger and cherry tomato to the sambal stingray. The spices gives more bursting refreshing flavour into the grilled stingray. The banana leaf gives a nice aroma and i guess it’s very essential ingredients for unthentic sambal stingray. You can use heavy duty alumunium foil only instead of any banana leaf for making sambal stingray actually, but you’ll gonna missed authentic asian banana leafy aromas.
This is how you make sambal pari, it’s actually so easy to grilled stingray with chili barbeque sauce on banana leaf with wok pan and kitchen stove. Firstly once you got back from market is to clean your stingray fillet and then marinated it with salt and kaffir lime or kalamansi juice 30 minutes priorly to cooked. Lay heavy duty alumunium foil over skillet or wok pan, you need to dis this if you didn’t want to deal with the sticky mess after you cooked the sambal stingray. Put two layer of banana leaf over the alumunium foil and then spread the thinly sliced lemongrass, onion, ginger and cherry tomatoes over the banana leaf and then pour the chili sambal all over it. Spread it evenly and do not overfilled the banana leaf.
Turn on the stove into medium high heat then put the stingray fillet then over the chili sambal that you’ve spreaded before. Added more chili sambal barbeque sauce generously to cover the stingray fillet entirely. Put some metal lid to cover the wok and let the magic happen
This is how what you’ve got sfter you cooke whe sambal stingray with the lid cover on and Itake a brief shoots into the sambal stingray, you’ll seen a lot of the liquid driven off from the stingray fish meat and cherry tomato. make sure you let this liquid evaporated before you flipped it over to cooked another side.
Ater the sambal stingray spices and dripping liquid evaporated, put some banan leaf and another heavy duty alumunium foil and then flipped it over upside down with a help of big flat plates. Let the other side of the sambal stingray cooked until ste spices and fish charred a lil bit.
This is how the sambal stingray looked a like once t done and i flip it over from a wok pan to a flat plate. The sambal stingray or grilled stingray with chili barbeque sauce is done and ready to served. Scrapped some of the burnt a little bit of you like, but i like it very much jst like a soccarat or charred and slighly burnt rice on my Rabbit and Snail Paella ala Valenciana Recipe
SAMBAL STINGRAY RECIPE (Grilled Stingray with Chili Sambal Barbeque Sauce):
Ingredients:
- 1 kg stingray or skate wing, cut into individual portion
- 1 kaffir lime juice to marinate the stingray
- banana leaf
- heavy duty alumunium foil
- 50 gr ripe cherry tomato, thinly sliced
- 3 lemongrass, use the tender white part only
- 1/2 onion, julienned
- thumb size ginger, peeled, julienned
- Chili Sambal Barbeque Sauce
Garnish:
- Chopped tomato
- Sliced Chilies
- Sliced Scallion
How To Grilled Stingray with Chili Sambal Barbeque Sauce:
- Marinade the stingray fish with kaffir lime juice and salt, keep it in the fridge
- Lay some heavy duty alumunium foil over wok pan, then add 2 pieces of banana leaf sheet over it
- Spread the sliced chery tomato and lemongrass and the julienned ginger and onion
- Spread some of the chili sambal barbeque sauce and put the stingray over it
- Put chili sambal barbeque sauce over the stingray fillet generously to cover it entirely and then turn on the stove to medium high heat
- Cover the wokpan with lid and wat for about 10-15 minutes until all the spices and the dripping juices evaporated
- Put another sheet of banan laf and alumunium foil and then flipped the stingray with a help of a plate
- Slide the sambal stingray back into the wok pan and then let the other side of the stingray charred and done
- Flipped the sambal stingray again with the help of the serving plate, peel of the banan leaf and pur some more chili sambal barbeque sauce
- Garnish and serve immediately.
- Slide foil, leaf and fish onto serving plate. Pull foil from underneath banana leaf and discard.Garnish and serve immediately.
Chili Sambal Barbeque Sauce Recipe for Grilling the Stingray or Skate Fish:
- 100 gr cayenne chili pepper
- 50 gr bird eye chili pepper
- 100 gr ripe cherry tomato, finely diced
- 100 g shallots
- 50 g garlic
- 15 g ginger
- 2 lemongrass, use the tender white part only
- 1 tbsp tamarind paste
- 15 g terasi or belacan (fermented shrimp paste)
- 30 g palm sugar, roughly chopped
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- salt and pepper to taste
How To Make Chili Sambal Barbeque Sauce Recipe
- Put all the chili pepper, shallots, garlic, ginger, lemongrass, shrimp paste and red chillies in a processor and grind it into a fine paste
- Stir-fry sambal paste with vegetable oil over medium heat untill fragrant, the oil is separated from the chili paste and the colour is darkens, about 15 minutes .
- Add palm sugar, tamarind and season it with salt and pepper, adjust the seasoning if necessary.
- Turn off the heat and your homemade chili sambal barbeque sauce is ready to use.