How to Cook Mambow Chef Abby Lee’s Slow-Cooked, Spicy-Sour Asam Pedas Oxtail

This is a Malay dish famous in Kota Kinabalu, a coastal city in East Malaysia. Asam Pedas translates to ‘sour and spicy’ and is best known as a fish curry, with modern variations using okra, aubergine, and pineapple. However, I have only really seen the oxtail version cooked in that region. The main difference with this curry is the usage of whole spices, where their fragrance pairs beautifully with the meatiness of the beef. Tamarind is an important element here, the ‘sour’ mentioned in the dish’s name. It is best when made using tamarind pulp and hot water, rather than buying a readymade tub of tamarind liquid. You could serve this with rice cooked with few stalks of Vietnamese mint, or thin rice vermicelli, depending on your mood. 

Read more: Something Curated’s profile of Abby Lee and her favourite things.

Recipe for 4

Ingredients 

1.2kg Oxtail

Rempah
2 medium size red onion
3 stalks lemongrass, top half set aside
20g galangal
30g ginger
35g dried Kashmiri chilli, soaked in hot water for 20 mins
10g fresh turmeric
7 cloves of garlic

Spice bag, tie this up in a muslin cloth
1/2 stick cinnamon
3 pcs each of cloves, green cardamom, and star anise
1/2 tbsp black peppercorns, lightly crushed

400g tomato, cut into quarters
10 stalks Vietnamese mint, kept whole
10 kaffir lime leaf
4 tbsp tamarind puree
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
8 pcs okra
Vegetable oil
Crispy shallots

Method

Start by covering the oxtail with cold water and bringing it up to a boil in a deep pot. Let it boil for 5 minutes before straining and rinsing each oxtail of any scum. Start again in a clean pot, covering the oxtail with 2L of water and ½  tsp salt, bring it up to a light simmer, never letting it boil, to ensure a clear stock. Skim off anymore scum that may come up. This will take 1.5 hours. I add the spice bag after an hour of cooking, leaving it in for the final 30 minutes. 

While you wait for that to cook, you can make your rempah (spice paste): Roughly chop the red onion, ginger, turmeric and garlic. Thinly slice the lemongrass and galangal as these are tougher to break down. Add all these into a food processor along with the soaked chillies and blend until smooth. 

In a wok or deep wide pan, add oil up to ½ cm high, and bring to medium heat. Fry off your rempah, stirring regularly, until the oil has split and the solids caramelise – you’re after a deeper red colour. This usually takes around 45 minutes, adjusting the heat to lower if it’s caramelising too quickly. Stir in 1 tsp salt and sugar at the end.

When the oxtail stock has finished cooking, add the meat pieces and spice bag to the pan with your cooked off rempah, coating each piece well. Then finely strain the stock, add 1L of this and tomatoes to the pan – the oxtail should be just covered, but not completely. Let it gently simmer for another 1.5 hours, turning them occasionally. In the last half an hour of the cook, add Vietnamese mint, kaffir lime and tamarind. In the final ten minutes, the okra can be added. The curry should have reduced by half and thickened. If too much fat has risen to the top, you can ladle some off. Taste and adjust at the end to your personal preference, with tamarind, salt and sugar. Top with crispy shallots and serve.

Abby Lee is the head chef at Mambow, a modern Malaysian restaurant in east London. Photography by Abby Lee.