Beside of being known with their great, yet amazing Lake Toba, Batakness people are also popular with their ‘challenging’ foods. There are so many of them, but arsik goldenfish is the most popular one that noone who claim him/herself as a Bataknese will forget about this food.
Well, never expect a common taste you usually get from an ordinary seafood, because the only taste you will get is the challenging one. Using ‘andaliman’ as its main offer, everyone can feel the tip of their tongue shaking, together with a bit hot sensation once they eat the fish meat.
For a very long time, Bataknese people has used andaliman to increase the taste of their foods. Its size is smaller than green beans, but greener, yet more delicious. There is almost no Bataknese food which found to have no andaliman in the recipe. Even, Bataknese people believe that this spice can work as medication for certain diseases. At this point, the andaliman usage also increases the healthy benefit everyone will get whenever they eat arsik goldenfish.
As you can see at the picture, arsik goldenfish is usually cooked with long beans. Bataknese people use long beans to balance the strong taste came from the arsik seasoning, especially the andaliman. The fresh and crispy sensation from the long beans will perfect the whole taste from this fish. In the other words, by eating this food, you will get not only delicious and traditionally cooked fish meat, but also completely fresh and healthy long beans.
Don’t worry to eat this food because it uses all natural ingredients, not the chemical, yet dangerous one. You may question about where does the yellow color come from, don’t worry sincethis food, as I’ve said, uses natural ingredient: turmeric, a traditional ingredients in Asia.
/// Written by Melissa Mumek, Indonesia
