Pempek (Palembang Fishcake with Cuko)

Name: Pempek (Palembang Fishcake with Cuko)
Total time: 2 h
Yield: 6
Cuisine: Indonesian
Ingredients: 500 g White fish fillet; 300 g Tapioca starch; 200 ml Ice water; 15 g Garlic, finely grated; 2 tsp Salt; 4 Eggs; 250 g Palm sugar; 500 ml Water for the sauce; 15 Bird's eye chilies; 25 g Garlic for the sauce; 2 tbsp Tamarind paste; 2 tbsp Vinegar; Cucumber, diced, and dried rice noodles

Chewy fish-and-tapioca cakes from Palembang, boiled then fried, dunked in cuko — a thin, black, aggressively sour-sweet chili and palm sugar sauce.

Fuente

Receta de Palembang home kitchens · 🏺 Tradicional · Palembang (South Sumatra) household cooking

Traditional dish · Palembang, South Sumatra — A dish with no single author. The cited article places pempek in Palembang, South Sumatra, describes the dough as ground boneless fish with water, salt and sago or tapioca flour, and gives cuko as a boiled sauce of palm sugar, chili, garlic, vinegar and salt. Its account of a 16th-century Chinese immigrant inventing the dish is presented there as tradition rather than documented history, and we treat it the same way. The steps here are our own writing.

Background on Wikipedia ↗

Watch it being made · 3 videos

Veronica Indrawan Diandra Cappelut The Wandering Plate

⏱ 120 min🍽 6 porciones🔥 390 kcal🇮🇩 Indonesia🌶️🌶️

HalalPescetarianoSin lácteosSin gluten

Pasos

Blitz the fish to a smooth paste with the ice water, garlic and salt. Keep it cold throughout.
💡 Warm fish paste will not bind and the cakes fall apart in the pot. If the bowl feels warm to the back of your hand, refrigerate it for 15 minutes before going on.
Fold in the tapioca starch with a spatula — do not knead and do not use a machine. Stop the moment it comes together into a soft, slightly sticky dough.
💡 This is the single hardest thing about pempek. Overworked dough turns hard and rubbery when boiled, and there is no way back from it — under-mixed is always the safer error.
With oiled hands, roll portions into logs about the thickness of your wrist, or shape flat rounds, pinch them into cups, drop in an egg and seal for kapal selam.
Lower them into a wide pan of gently simmering salted water. They sink; when they float, give them 5 more minutes, then lift out and cool completely.
💡 A gentle simmer, never a boil. Rolling water tears the cakes open and, in a kapal selam, forces the egg straight out of its seam.
For the cuko, simmer the palm sugar in the water until dissolved, then add the pounded chilies and garlic, tamarind, vinegar and a good pinch of salt. Simmer 10 minutes and strain.
Taste the cuko. It should be sour first, then sweet, then hot, and thin enough to drink — not a dipping syrup.
Slice the cooled cakes thickly and fry them in hot oil until blistered and golden outside but still soft within.
Serve in a shallow bowl with cuko poured around, diced cucumber and a tangle of rice noodles.

💡 Consejos

Boil today, fry tomorrow. Boiled pempek keeps in the fridge for days and fries up better once fully cold and firm.
Test one small cake in the water before shaping the rest. If it disintegrates, fold in a little more starch; if it is bouncy and hard, you overworked it.
Cuko darkens and gets better after a day in the fridge. Make it first, then deal with the fish.