Arsik is an
Indonesian spicy
Pungency () refers to the taste of food commonly referred to as spiciness, hotness or heat, found in foods such as chili peppers. Highly pungent tastes may be experienced as unpleasant. The term piquancy () is sometimes applied to foods with a l ...
fish
Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% of ...
dish of the
Batak Toba and
Mandailing
The Mandailing is an ethnic group in Sumatera, Indonesia that is commonly associated with the Batak people. They are found mainly in the northern section of the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. They came under the influence of the Kaum Padri who ...
people of North Sumatra, usually using the
common carp (known in Indonesia as ''ikan mas'' or gold fish).
Distinctively
Batak elements of the dish are the use of
torch ginger fruit (''asam cikala''), and ''
andaliman
''Zanthoxylum acanthopodium'', or andaliman, is a species of flowering plant in the family Rutaceae. Its range includes southern western China (Guangxi, Guizhou, Sichuan, Tibet, and Yunnan), Bangladesh, Bhutan, northern India and northeastern I ...
'' (similar to szechuan pepper).
Common Indonesian vegetables and spices such as
shallots
The shallot is a botanical variety (a cultivar) of the onion. Until 2010, the (French red) shallot was classified as a separate species, ''Allium ascalonicum''. The taxon was synonymized with '' Allium cepa'' (the common onion) in 2010, as th ...
,
garlic,
ginger, fresh
turmeric
Turmeric () is a flowering plant, ''Curcuma longa'' (), of the ginger family, Zingiberaceae, the rhizomes of which are used in cooking. The plant is a perennial, rhizomatous, herbaceous plant native to the Indian subcontinent and Southeast ...
root and
chili are also used.
Andaliman, essential for the distinctive taste of the dish, is known to grow only in the Batak highlands of
North Tapanuli
North Tapanuli Regency (''Tapanuli Utara'' - in Indonesian, "utara" means "north") is a landlocked regency in North Sumatra province, Sumatra, Indonesia. Its capital is Tarutung. The regency covers an area of 3,793.71 square kilometres and it had ...
and
Samosir
Samosir, or Samosir Island, is a large volcanic island in Lake Toba, located in the north of the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. Administratively, Samosir Island is governed as six of the nine districts within Samosir Regency. The lake and i ...
, hence this dish is regarded as being specifically of the Batak Toba and Mandailing people, who dwell in these areas.
Other variations
Besides gold fish or carp, saltwater fish such as
rastrelliger
''Rastrelliger'' is a mackerel genus in the family Scombridae. The three species of ''Rastrelliger'' together with the four species of ''Scomber'' comprise the tribe Scombrini
Scombrini, commonly called the true mackerels, is a tribe of ray- ...
(''kembung'') and
snappers can also be used to make arsik. A meat variant of arsik also exists, with pork as the commonly cooked meat.
See also
*
Batak cuisine
Batak cuisine is the cuisine and cooking traditions of Batak ethnic groups, predominantly found in Northern Sumatra region, Indonesia. Batak cuisine is part of Indonesian cuisine, and compared to other Sumatran cuisine traditions, it is more i ...
*
Escabeche
__NOTOC__
Escabeche is the name for a number of dishes in Spanish, Portuguese, Filipino and Latin American cuisines, consisting of marinated fish, meat or vegetables, cooked or pickled in an acidic sauce (usually with vinegar), and colored w ...
References
External links
Resep arsik yang sederhana
Batak cuisine
Fish dishes
{{Indonesia-cuisine-stub