Andaliman ✦

Baies des Bataks (poivre andaliman)

What it is

Acanthopodium means thorn-footed, and the shrub is armed all the way down the stem; it grows around Lake Toba and has resisted every attempt to plant it commercially elsewhere, so the berries still come out of smallholders’ hedges. The Batak call it their pepper and put it in arsik, carp cooked without coconut milk, where its lemon edge does the work an acid would.

In the kitchen

The lemon lives in a volatile oil and is gone after ten minutes of simmering, so crush the berries in a mortar and stir them in right at the end. Buy them frozen and green rather than dried and brown if you can — dried, only the tingle survives.

Goes with

Lime Lemongrass Galangal Shallot Chili pepper Garlic Turmeric Cilantro / Coriander

Same species

Green Sichuan pepper Hana-sanshō (sanshō flower buds) Kinome (sanshō leaf) Sansho pepper Sichuan pepper Green Sichuan pepper oil

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