Ikan Bilis Goreng Berlada (Spicy Fried Anchovies)

Ikan bilis goreng berlada

Ikan Bilis Goreng Berlada is one of my favourite dishes growing up. It is a Malay dish and one of signature cooking style of Minangkabau descendents in Negeri Sembilan as it used a lot of bird's eye chili. This dish is perfect as it is both savory and spicy. The anchovies is usually first deep fried to make it crispy and then mixed with the chili paste.

This dish is really simple to make but good dried anchovies can be hard to find outside Malaysia. White and smaller anchovies from Malacca Straits is usually crispier than one from South China Sea as the latter tend to be more tough. Therefore, the latter need to be fried longer until it become crunchy.

Ikan Bilis Goreng Berlada can be served as dish for rice and porridge. It is also one of the dish usually served to women in maternal abstinence.
 

Ingredients

a handful or 200 grams of fine dried anchovies
1 onion
9-11 bird's eye chili
1/4 teaspoon salt

Instructions

Rinse anchovies with water and remove any fish waste
Add oil for deep frying. Fry the anchovies until noise from frying oil getting lower and set aside.
Cut onion into half and slice one half thinly for texture
Add another half of onion and bird's eye chili into food processor and blend. You may want to add a little bit of water to ease blending process.
Heat two tablespoons of oil in new pan and sauté both mixture and sliced onion for about three minutes. You want to make sure chili is cooked thoroughly but not burnt.
Now, turn off the heat and add the fried anchovies. Stir around to coat anchovies with paste
Ikan Bilis Goreng Berlada DONE!