Acar Buah (Spicy Fruit Chutney)

When I first started cooking properly (ie, I was responsible for a whole dish as opposed to just prep work), I mainly started with angmoh recipes and salads. I'd say that salads are my forte, with my sweet potato salad being one of my signature dishes.

However, as I started to get my groove in the kitchen, I started yearning for dishes from home. The only problem with dishes from home is that you often have to rely on your relatives for the recipe. And to be completely honest, makciks* really are among the worst people to ask for a recipe. Even with the convenience of the internet and online recipes, it can be hard to get hold of a good recipe

I had an overwhelming craving for acar buah so I decided to trawl the internet to compare recipes and combine and modify them as I saw fit. So bear in mind that this recipe a work in progress and that I might tweak it at some stage. However, this rough recipe should give you a good result. 

But what is acar buah?

Acar Buah, literally, means fruit pickle/chutney. To be honest though, this isn't the most accurate description of this dish. Acar buah is indeed a chutney but what makes it unique is that it is made of PRESERVED/DRIED fruit.

Preserved fruits are popular snacks in Singapore and Malaysia. This page shows just a small variety of what you can get in Singapore. You can get all sorts of preserved fruits in Singapore from plums, prunes, nutmeg fruit, mangoes.. and even some obscure fruit which even I never knew existed. But beyond that, there isn't just variety in the types of fruit that are preserved... but the way they are preserved. Plums/prunes (which are generally the most prevalent type of preserved/dried fruit) can be super sweet, super sour or a mix of sweet and salty.

The great thing about this recipe is that you don't have to wait for a season to make it because dried fruit is available all year round. A long shelf life means that if you accidentally buy too much, it's easy to store dried fruit if you can't finish off the whole bag. Heh.

Traditionally, acar buah was served as an accompaniment to rice and curry. That said, whenever acar buah was available, I think I'd end up eating more of it than the curry!

Acar Buah (A Work In Progress Recipe)

Spice paste:
500g shallots
10g dried chillis (rehydrated in hot water and drained)
10 cloves garlic
10cm ginger

Other: 
3 tablespoons fish curry powder (dry fried beforehand over low heat until fragrant)
1/2 cup oil
3/4 cup vinegar
1 cup caster sugar
1 cinnamon quill
8 cloves
2 star anise
700g mixed dried/preserved fruit

Some suggestions:
Raisins, prunes, plums apricots, pickled mango, orange peel, dates, cocktail onions, preserved nutmeg, limau jeruk (pickled limes). Most Asian supermarkets will have a range of pickled/preserved fruit but the range differs from store to store. The most common fruits you will get: orange peel, sour plums, pickled mango. 

Method:

1. Blend the ingredients for the spice paste. If you prefer more texture in your chutney, you can blend some of the shallots but slice the rest.
2. Heat oil in a wok and fry the blended ingredients (and shallot chunks/slices) and the curry powder until the mix is fragrant and oil rises to the surface. 
3. Add the cinnamon, cloves and star anise. Simmer for a few minutes.
4. Add sugar and vinegar until the mix reaches an even balance of sour and sweet. Simmer to allow the ingredients to be fully mixed in. 
5. Add all the mixed fruits in and mix well. Simmer for 15 minutes. 
6. Cool the mixture before transferring into an airtight container.
7. Store in the fridge.

Extra Notes:

• I've reduced the amounts here. The original recipe calls for 100g of dried chilli (!!!!!), 500g sugar (!!!!!) and a small bottle of vinegar (ahhh, Malay agak agak instructions at its best)
• On that note, I have to stress that the measurements for the vinegar and sugar are ESTIMATES. Depending on what mix of fruits you use, you might need to vary the amount of sugar and vinegar you use. So add the two ingredients to your mix gradually, until you get an even balance of sour and sweet.  
• The original recipe did not feature the dry spices. However, I did notice it in some other recipes during my research. I've added it here to give the chutney a more complex taste... plus I'm a sucker for the classic star anise, clove and cinnamon combination. 
• Another recipe suggested using mustard seeds - however, I don't have any in my pantry plus I was worried it might make it a bit too savoury for my liking. 
• The original recipe also suggested adding toasted sesame seeds as a garnish when serving - I'm not the biggest fan of sesame seeds and I've never had acar buah with sesame seeds, so I omitted it. 
• The original recipe featured limau jeruk (pickled limes) as an ingredient. As I couldn't find any, I omitted it.  That said, seeing how I had a few kalamansis to spare, I decided to make my own limau jeruk to use for next time. And by next time, I mean, in a month or so, because apparently that's how long it takes to pickle limes. 

*This is the first in what I hope will be a series of "Makcik-Style" posts. Why do I call it makcik-style?

For those uninitiated with Singaporean/Malaysian culture, a makcik refers to a middle-aged Malay woman. The Malay style of cooking is very unprecise and involves a lot of "agak-agak" - agak meaning "guess/estimate" in Malay.

Not many of these makciks refer to recipes; instead, they use their senses when they're in the kitchen. Consequently, sometimes when I try learning recipes from my mother, I spend half my time fuming in frustration because she'll say "just put enough chilli", "if you want it sweeter, add more sugar, if not, don't add so much" and other similarly beginner-unfriendly comments. She doesn't mean it maliciously, of course - it's just very hard to learn when you don't have a basic understanding of the recipe/methods/process to begin with. 

It's not her or her contemporaries' fault because they were brought up to cook intuitively. Many makciks grew up watching their mums prepare said recipes. So when they first embark on trying a recipe on their own for the first time, they already have a vague idea of how to make it. I, on the other hand, wasn't particularly interested in cooking as a child, I wasn't expected to help out in the kitchen every day and my mum hardly made dishes which required too much prep work.

Unfortunately, as much as I despise learning via agak-agak, I am guilty of cooking this way as well, randomly adding ingredients as I see fit. I've tried modifying these recipes to reflect the quantities that I've used and the additions I've made.