Making Belachan - Old Style

A typical Malay meal without the 'sambal belachan (chan) it never a complete course. Belachan is usually made fron shrimp  processed into a paste. The belachan industry is still a strong part of the fishing income. 

 The process of making belachan involves a whole of grinding and moulding the shrimp to a mass and later dried in the sun. It is a smelly job! It is like making Blue Cheese only stronger in smell. I beleive there are two distincet smells that Malays identify with and that is the smell of belachan(especially roasted) and the smell of the King of Fruits, the Durian.It is a matter of getting use to like all else.

These pictures does not tell much of the process of making belachan but they  are a testimony to a n age old industry that is here to stay just like the Durian, Bleachn is being export to foreign countries today all wrapped up and  and packaged with style. I found both the belachan and the Durian(frozen) at a Chinese grocery store on Clements Street in Downtown San francisco, two blocks from where my family was living.

Check out the hairdo!! Belachan or not the hair had to be tip top.

Most  good stuff looks ugly and smells like belachan!

It was a common sight to behold rows of fish or shrimp or even squids being laid out to dry along the beaches and the smell being raised by the noonday sun from these filled the air with the aroma of the sea. This scene will forever be buried into the past as today one gets to see semi-naked bodies lazing along these beaches with roaring jet skis and speedboats is a more common sight. Where there peacefyl silence but foer the sound of the breeze rusttling through the palm trees, today we hear the sound of progress and ddevelopment.