hatever people can make out of what Nature gives us! Kapi shrimp paste represents a totally different approach to using seafood than crevettes mayonnaise. Here, weeny shrimp that otherwise would be too small to consume is fermented into a condiment. It has a solid homogeneous consistency and intense flavour.It took me a while to get used to it. For someone brought up halfway between Moscow and Alaska, the heady smell of sun-rotten shrimp ground into paste was just too overpowering.
Time heals everything, even aversion to exotic condiments. These days I add a wee dram even to some dishes that are not supposed to contain it, like Korean jaeyook bokkeum. It works amazingly good.
I call this shrimp paste by its Thai name kapi because I first encountered it in Thailand. It is called the same way in Laotian and Khmer but its native range actually spans from Southern China to Indonesia. In Malaysia it is called belacan, in Indonesia - terasi. They make an intensely fragrant sauce out of it, sambal belacan or sambal terasi that tastes amazing with squid (sambal cumi-cumi). The same thing is called nam phrik kapi (น้ำพริกกะปิ) in Thailand and used as a dip.
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Thai language school and translation agency in Bangkok, Thailand offering Thai, Chinese, English, Japanese, Russian and Laotian (Lao, Isarn, Isaan) language courses.
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Whereabouts in London did you buy this? I'm intrigued to the point where I shall have to track some down on my next visit.
ReplyDeleteIn any Asian supermarket, really. I know some places in South and Central London, let me now if you need the addresses.
ReplyDeleteInteresting blog, I suppose I could learn a lot of recipes about seafood here. I think you should be an explicative person because isn't easy to built a blog like this one. I really like this initiative and I will be able to understand each point of view, specially if you'll write about my passion: seafood.
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