About Laksa Sarawak

Aku baru jer lepas makan Laksa Sarawak ni kat Ceria Cafe, Satok. Makin sedap pulak laksa kat situ. Patutlah banyak customer kat kedai ni. Bercerita tentang Laksa Sarawak ni, aku memang suka betul menu ni, kalau makan masa sedang panas berpeluh-peluh kita dibuatnya. Walaupun ada orang cakap Laksa Penang laksa paling sedap, Laksa Sarawak pun ada kelebihannya.

All about laksa Sarawak :
Sarawak laksa is a cardiologist's nightmare of a breakfast. More cholesterol than you can shake a stick at, swimming in a delicious thick soup whose primary ingredient is santan (coconut milk), one of the richest vegetable sources of saturated fat. It's also got enough pungent spices to give a gastero-enterologist the jitters when he thinks about what it's doing to your colon, heaps of seafood itching to trigger off the slightest allergy, and sufficient highly refined carbohydrates to make your pancreas dance the tango.
Laksa is the quintessential coffee shop dish. You walk into a typical Kuching coffee shop, approach the lady whose stall bears the word laksa, and ask for "laksa big" or "laksa special." Never order the standard portion; it's perfectly adequate for most mortals but the whole object of the laksa experience is self indulgence.
What transpires next is a minor miracle of culinary simplicity. The laksa stall comprises two enormous metal vats, one containing boiling water for cooking the noodles, and one containing gallons of bubbling laksa gravy (soup is far too innocuous a word for this robust liquid). The noodles (most good stalls use freshly made bee hoon, a fine wheat flour vermicelli) are dunked in the boiling water for a few seconds, along with a handful of large, fresh beansprouts. They are then retrieved and placed in a large soup bowl, into which about half a pint (300ml) of laksa gravy is poured.
This wondrous substance bears little resemblance to the bland curry that passes for laksa in Kuala Lumpur. Subtle fragrances of candle nut, lemon grass, sour tamarind and garlic blend together with a sharply flavoured curry-like spice mix and lashings of santan to form a liquid that seems to posses a hundred different flavours simultaneously.
The doused noodles are garnished with generous helpings of sliced omelette (watch out for the cholesterol), fresh prawns (lots more cholesterol) and shredded chicken breast. The whole thing is topped-off with a garnish of coriander leaves, and served to you with chopsticks and a soup spoon. The uninitiated should never ask for a fork and spoon instead of the chopsticks - laksa is just too messy to be eaten with such imprecise implements.
Before you start on your laksa, however, you will notice a small bowl containing a lime and a teaspoonful of mysterious brown paste. Old laksa hands always squeeze the lime juice into their soup spoon, as this avoids having to retrieve the pips from the meal itself. Having discarded the pips, you mix the lime juice with the brown paste, which is in fact belacan, a dried and fermented puree of shrimp (even more cholesterol). This pungent mix is then poured into the laksa and gently agitated with the chopsticks to ensure an even distribution.
After a few fleeting minutes of ecstasy, you realise your bowl is empty. No dish seems to create as much disappointment when it is finished as Sarawak Laksa, but if you find the sense of loss too much to bear, you can always order another one.

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