Country 48: East-Timor - Ikan Pepes

 Finally we are onto E!

This was an incredibly complicated recipe to find, there was very little information online for any meals from East Timor. I knew that their national dish is ikan pepes but all the recipes I could find were from other bloggers who were also doing the whole cooking-every-country thing and I didn't want to follow one of their recipes. One thing that I do try to make a concerted effort at is finding an authentic recipe or at least a blogger who is from the country that I am cooking, so finding a recipe to follow was tricky. 

Thank goodness for YouTube. Don't get me wrong, I sat through some truly weird videos - there was one that was just a guy eating different types of East Timorian food which made me uncomfortable (I love to eat but I do not love to watch other people eat), but then I did find a recipe that had was easy to follow. None of it was in English so Google Translate was also my friend for this one, but the video was clear and easy to understand and I am so grateful for people who add helpful tips to their videos. 

This is the video I followed.

• Getting some of the ingredients was tricky. In the end I had to go without galangal - I looked in various different supermarkets and Waitrose was supposed to have some but not at the time I was there. There are a bunch of Asian grocery stores around where I lived and I looked thoroughly around them but sadly there were none. The turmeric was easy and I always have ginger. Although now I have a load of fresh turmeric in my freezer that I'm really not sure about what to do with. 
• I also didn't use hazelnut as Nick is allergic.
• I wasn't sure what kecombrang was or where to find it so I skipped that one as well. 
• As always, I used seabass. I did use tilapia when I cooked Angola but that involved a very early wake-up to go to the Billingsgate fish market and I figured that the type of fish didn't make that much of a difference.
• I also didn't steam the fish in banana leaves. I would have really loved to have done this but I couldn't find banana leaves to begin with, and also we don't have a steamer which would have made things slightly more complicated. Instead I wrapped it in tinfoil, added a tablespoon or so of water to the parcel and then put in the oven. The water did evaporate during the cooking process so I guess it was steamed somehow, but this was definitely more baked than steamed. 

Either way it turned out pretty well in my opinion. The ginger/turmeric/chilli flavour was quite intense but I enjoyed it. Nick doesn't love ginger so he was less impressed but I thought the flavour profile with the lemongrass, bay leaves and basil made it all super tasty. 

The only real problem was the actual fish itself - cooking full fish (rather than fillets) is so much more annoying because of the bones. It was still tasty but the nuisance of having to remove all the bones was a major turn off.