The Peranakan culture is unique to Singapore and Malaysia, a result of the marriage between the Straits Chinese and indigenous Malays, and the best part about this (to me) is the Nonya cuisine that develops, a mix of chinese cooking techniques and ingredients with malay spices-- the best of both worlds! The Nonya achar is quite different from your usual pickled gherkin, nor the Indian achar. It's more like a super aromatic and spicy piccalilli, and besides cucumber, can have cauliflower, long beans, carrots, and cabbage.
I used the vegetables that I had at hand/were on offer, and replaced a lot of the more exotic ingredients with the ones that I could find readily, so I guess it's not as authentic or mind-blowing as it could be, but it's still very good.
Simplified Nonya Achar
makes about 2 cups (this is a small batch achar)
Ingredients
1 medium cucumber
1 medium carrot
small handful of stringless runner beans
1/2 cup of chopped fresh pineapple (for natural sweetness (: )
2 tbsp toasted sesame seeds (and/or chopped toasted peanuts)
3 tbsp sea salt
2 tbsp unrefined cane sugar
1/2 cup rice vinegar
1 tbsp whey (optional)
For the spice paste (rempah)
6 shallots (or 1 red onion)
1 clove of garlic
1 cm slice of ginger
1-2 tsp ground turmeric (originally fresh turmeric)
1 tbsp hot chilli powder (originally a mix of dried red chillies, fresh red chillies, and birds' eye chilli)
1 tbsp toasted belachan (fermented shrimp paste)
2 macadamia or brazil nuts (originally candlenuts, but it's harder to find out of southeast asia)
Method
1. Chop the cucumbers and carrots into bite sized sticks, and slice the runner beans diagonally.
2. Sprinkle 1 tbsp of sea salt over the cucumbers and leave them for 30 mins to sweat.
3. Bring the vinegar to the boil with 1/2 cup of water, 1 tsp of sea salt and 1 tsp of sugar. Blanch the carrots and the runner beans.
4. Dry your vegetables! This makes for crunchier pickles!
Drain, rinse and squeeze the cucumbers.
Lay the carrots and runner beans out on trays to dry
(In Singapore where it's 36 degrees celsius almost all the time, just leave them out in the sun. Here in london where the skies are grey, I chose to dry them out in an oven turned to a very low heat)
5. Blend all the rempah ingredients. Add oil to a hot pan and stir fry the spice paste over medium low heat till aromatic, about 15 min. Add the remaining rice vinegar, sea salt and sugar, bring to a boil and then remove from heat to let cool.
6. In a glass (or other non-reactive) bowl, mix the rempah with the vegetables pineapples and whey (if using), sprinkling the toasted sesame seeds over.
7. Resist the temptation to eat it straight away and let the vegetables sit in the marinade.
It will seem like the marinade can't really cover the vegetables, but just press them down into the jar. The next day the vegetables will release some of their own water.
Fragrant with toasted chilli and spices, and bursting with a tart sweetness, this pickle gets better after a day or two in the fridge, and can keep for about a week (I read a month somewhere. hmm oh well you will definitely finish before then). That's the key to a good pickle-- time! The flavours start to meld and become more intense. The lacto-fermentation also makes the achar even healthier because of the friendly probiotics, which is why it's always had with a heavy meal to help with digestion.
This is a small batch achar because it's my first time making it. I looked at this, this, and this for reference. The achar turned out really good, but my aunt's achar still wins. Maybe when I go home for summer I'll grill her and try this again with the proper ingredients. For now, I'm very very happily eating my way through my simplified Nonya achar (:
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