Laksa: Rich, Spicy, Coconut-Scented and Worth the Paste from Scratch

There are two kinds of weeknight cook: the one who reaches for a jar of laksa paste, and the one who, just once, makes the paste from scratch and is forever ruined for the jar. I am the second kind, and I am here to convert you. Yes, the spice paste — the rempah — asks for a list of ingredients and ten minutes of blitzing and frying. But what you get in return is a bowl of broth so fragrant, so layered and warming, that you will understand instantly why people queue at hawker stalls for it. Crisp prawns, slippery noodles, a soft egg, coconut-rich soup laced with chilli: this is comfort food with its sleeves rolled up.

A dish born of two cultures

Laksa is one of the great triumphs of Peranakan, or Nyonya, cuisine — the cooking that emerged when Chinese traders settled across the Malay Peninsula and married into local communities. It fuses Chinese noodles and techniques with Malay spices and that all-important fermented shrimp paste, belacan. The result is something neither wholly Chinese nor Malay, but gloriously its own.

There are countless regional versions, and arguments about which is “real” laksa can get heated. The curry laksa of Kuala Lumpur and the famous Katong laksa of Singapore lean on coconut milk for richness, while the assam laksa of Penang skips coconut entirely in favour of a sour, tamarind-and-mackerel broth that is a completely different beast. Katong laksa, named after the district in eastern Singapore, is traditionally served with the noodles cut short so the whole bowl can be eaten with a spoon alone. The recipe here is a curry laksa, the coconut-scented one that tends to win people over first. Whichever camp you are in, the soul of the dish is the same: a hand-pounded paste, fried until it sings, carrying the whole bowl.

The word rempah is worth knowing, because it is the heart of a great deal of Malay and Peranakan cooking, not just laksa. It refers to the wet spice paste of aromatics pounded together and then fried in oil until the raw edge cooks off and the flavour concentrates. The frying stage even has its own name in some kitchens, and skipping or rushing it is the single most common reason a home laksa tastes flat. Get that right and the rest of the bowl is really just assembly.

Stock, noodles and getting the broth right

The stock is the quiet backbone of the bowl. A good prawn stock, made by simmering the reserved prawn shells and heads with a little ginger and spring onion for twenty minutes, will lift the whole thing and is worth the small extra effort if you have peeled your own prawns. Failing that, a decent chicken stock does the job; avoid a strongly herby vegetable stock, which fights the spice paste rather than supporting it. Whatever you use, taste and adjust the fish sauce and sugar at the end, since stocks vary wildly in saltiness and the balance of salty, sweet and rich is what you are chasing.

Noodles are a matter of preference and what your grocer stocks. Fresh thick rice vermicelli or thin round rice noodles are traditional and slippery in the best way; dried rice noodles work fine soaked and cooked to the packet, and some cooks use a mix of rice noodles and yellow wheat noodles for contrast in a curry laksa. Whichever you choose, cook them separately and keep them apart from the broth until serving, or they turn to mush. Warm them through with a ladle of hot broth just before eating.

Tips and variations

Make a double batch of the paste; it keeps in the fridge for a week and freezes for months, so the next bowl is a fifteen-minute affair. Freeze it flat in a bag, or in ice-cube portions, and drop the frozen block straight into hot oil. If you cannot find galangal, extra ginger is a fair stand-in, though you lose a little of the piney, medicinal note that makes the paste taste properly Southeast Asian. Cashews substitute happily for the more traditional macadamias, which are there to thicken and enrich the paste rather than for their flavour; either way, they help the broth cling to the noodles.

The belacan is the ingredient people baulk at and the one that matters most. It is fermented shrimp compressed into a hard block, and raw it smells uncompromising, but toasted and fried into the paste it dissolves into a deep, savoury background note you would miss entirely if it were absent. Wrap the piece in foil and toast it in a dry pan for a minute a side before blitzing, and open a window. If you genuinely cannot get it, a spoonful of miso plus an extra dash of fish sauce gets you part of the way there, in the same savoury direction as the chilli oil with crispy shallots and Sichuan peppercorn that lives permanently in my fridge for exactly this kind of umami top-up.

For a vegetarian version, leave out the shrimp paste and dried shrimp, swap the prawns for more tofu and some quartered mushrooms, and use vegetable stock with a little extra miso for savour. To make it more substantial, poached chicken or fish cakes are both classic additions. Go gently on the dried chillies first time around and add fresh chilli at the table; laksa should be warming and aromatic, not punishing. If you like the coconut-and-spice register, the same balance runs through a red lentil and coconut dal, which is a gentler weeknight cousin when you cannot face blitzing a paste.

A note on coconut milk: use the full-fat tinned sort, and shake it well, as the reduced versions split and taste thin in a broth like this. Add it after the stock and keep the pot at a bare simmer rather than a rolling boil, since coconut milk can separate and turn grainy if you cook it hard. If you find your laksa has parted slightly with a layer of fragrant orange oil on top, do not panic; that gloss is a good sign, the chilli oil rising from the well-fried paste, and a quick stir brings it back together. Serve it the moment it is built, while the broth is piping hot and the herbs are still fresh and lively.