Curry Laksa Recipe: Are You on Team Asam or Team Curry?

I love Japanese and Indian food, Mrs Traveleater prefers French and Italian. When choosing ramen, tonkotsu is my jam but she favors miso. My hypothetical last meal would be sushi while hers would be lamb chops with foie gras.

She’s frequently the yin to my yang so it’s no surprise that when it comes to laksa, she sits on team asam while I’m chilling on the other side with team curry.

Laksa is a spicy noodle soup dish that’s hugely popular in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. It’s considered a national dish in Malaysia and I believe it could be a borderline national dish in Singapore as well.

There are many variations of laksa, but most types fall under one of two basic kinds – curry and asam. If you’ve tried both, then you’ll understand how different they are.

Today, we’ll be sharing with you a recipe for curry laksa.

WHAT IS LAKSA?

Laksa is one of the most popular dishes in Peranakan cuisine. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, the Peranakan Chinese are the descendants of Chinese migrants who settled in Penang, Malacca, Singapore, and Indonesia and inter-married with the local Malays. In doing so, they created a distinct, intensely flavorful cuisine that combines Chinese, Malay, and other influences.

Laksa is a supremely flavorful noodle soup dish made with a variety of different proteins, vegetables, herbs, spices, and condiments. It can be made with various types of noodles though rice noodles are the most common.

Regardless of what noodles and toppings are used to make it, the heart of a laksa is in its soup base. Laksa soup made with coconut milk and curry powder is richer and creamier while laksa broth flavored with asam (tamarind) is tangier.

TYPES OF LAKSA

Though most laksas can be categorized into curry or asam (or a combination of the two), the variations within each style are immense. This reminds me of ramen in Japan where there are just four basic types but countless regional variations.

There are too many to list here so you can refer to the laksa Wikipedia page for the seemingly endless array of laksa variations you’ll come across in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia.

The bowl of asam laksa pictured below was from the popular Air Itam hawker stall in Penang. Apart from the noodles and tamarind used as a souring agent, typical ingredients in a bowl of asam laksa include mackerel, lemongrass, galangal (Siamese ginger), and chili.

Anywhere else and these bowls of coconut-based soup would be known as curry laksa. But in Penang, they’re referred to as curry mee so as not to confuse them with asam laksa.

Curry mee is made with egg noodles in a coconut-based curry soup. They contain a variety of toppings like fried tofu puffs, fresh bean sprouts, pig’s blood curd, cuttlefish, shrimp, and cockles.

We had these delicious bowls at one of Penang’s most legendary hawker stalls – Sister Curry Mee. This humble roadside stall at the foothills of Kek Lok Si Temple is run by a pair of sisters who’ve been serving these same bowls of curry mee at the same spot since 1946. Legendary!

I don’t believe curry laksa is considered a national dish in Singapore but it’s massively popular there as well. Everyone seems to have their personal favorite but we had this bowl at popular heritage stall Sungei Road Laksa on Jalan Berseh. It’s considered one of the best restaurants in Singapore for laksa.

Made with the typical coconut-based curry soup, it was topped with slivers of fish cake, blood cockles, and Vietnamese coriander along with a dollop of some very spicy sambal.

There’s an interesting backstory to this place. Legend has it that over 40 years ago, the owners were struggling with their food cart business when a mysterious customer showed up one night and gave them the secret recipe to this laksa. Business boomed shortly thereafter and the benevolent customer was never to be seen or heard from again.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Regardless of which type of laksa you prefer, if you like having a lot going on in your food, then you’ll love this curry laksa. Sweet, spicy, creamy, crunchy, chewy – it’s got a little bit of everything!

She didn’t do it here but sometimes, Mrs Traveleater adds fish balls and crispy fried shallots as laksa toppings and serves fish sauce on the side. Yummers!

NOTE: A good laksa recipe, like this one, will have you make authentic laksa paste from scratch. Nothing beats homemade rempah paste but if you’re pressed for time, then you can speed up the process by using store-bought laksa paste or red curry paste instead.

As described, I love the creaminess of curry laksa broth but Mrs Traveleater enjoys the depth and unique flavors of asam laksa.

That’s the beautiful thing about food. Taste is subjective so there’s never a wrong or right answer. We’re all different so it always boils down to personal preference.

What about you? On which side of the laksa debate do you rest your chopsticks? Are you team curry or team asam? Let us know in the comments below!

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