Sambal

Steamed starch is the plate. Sambal is the reason there is anything to eat.

The funk is the base note. Without it this is just hot vegetable matter.

Acid volatilises the shrimp amines and leaves the chilli standing clean.

Grilled skin plus raw pounded chilli. Heat on char, no sauce in between.

Boiled, fried until blistered, then coated. The fat is the whole defence.

Cold water against raw capsaicin, and the only cool thing on the plate.

Oily fish takes paste through the slashes and the heat renders into it.

Fat rounds the raw chilli edge that sugar can only paper over.

A fried mould block has no moisture. Raw paste puts wet and heat back.

Hard sour fruit, salt, chilli. The rojak equation in three parts.

Glutamate under raw heat. Sambal tomat is a hot sauce that tastes cooked.

Enzyme sweetness against raw shallot bite, with the chilli reading as acid.

Raw chilli on cocoa fat: the burn stays fresh instead of turning dried.

Raw shallot sulfur against berry sugar. Chilli and salt do all the rest.