Chef's Recommendation! - Gado-Gado Surabaya (Recipe)

Gado-gado is a traditional dish in Indonesian cuisine, and is comprised of a vegetable salad served with a peanut sauce dressing. Although it is to be eaten as a main meal, many Western countries describe it simply as a salad. It is widely served from hawkers carts, stalls (warung) as well as in restaurants both in Indonesia and worldwide.

Gado-gado is part of a wide range of Indonesian sauce & salad combinations; with lotek, pecel and karedok. In many places, to retain authenticity in both the production and flavor, the peanut sauce is made in individual batches, in front of the customers (see picture left). However, since the dish has gained popularity (because of the increase of Asian-themed restaurants) Gado-gado sauce is now mostly made ahead of time and cooked in bulk, although this is probably more common in Western restaurants rather than in Indonesia. Compared to both standard Western salads and Indonesian versions of this dish, Gado-gado has much more sauce in it. Instead of being used as a light dressing, the vegetables should be well coated in the sauce.

Many stores now offer Gado-Gado dressing in dried blocks to which you simply add hot water, making it easier and cheaper to cook at home.

Gado-Gado Ingredients:
Blanched/steamed vegetables

• long green beans, cut into 4-5 cm long
• Chinese cabbage, shredded
• Bean sprouts

Fresh Vegetables

• Lettuce
• Tomato, wedged
• Cucumber, sliced

Other Complements

• Boiled/steamed potatoes, sliced
• Boiled eggs, wedged
• Fried/baked tempe
• Fried/baked tofu
• Lontong (rice cake with log shape), cut into 1 cm thick
• Ready-to-use fried shallot
• Melinjo nuts crackers
• Shrimp crackers

Gado-gado sauce

• 10 cloves garlic, stir fried/fried/roasted
• 300 g roasted/fried peanuts (In this case, I used 1 cup of organic crunchy peanut butter)
• 1000 ml coconut milk
• 10 red chilies, discard the seed and stir fried/fried
• 1 tsp terasi (dried shrimp paste), toasted
• 1 block of coconut sugar (about 62.5 grams)
• 2-3 tbsp rice flour dissolve in a small amount of water

Sambal

• 20 red bird eyes chilies, boiled /steamed
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• Sea salt as desired

Method:

Gado-Gado Sauce

1. Process garlic, peanuts/peanut butter, a half part of coconut milk, red chilies, terasi, coconut sugar in a food processor or blender.

2. In a sauce pot, combine processed mixture with the rest of coconut milk, stir and turn on the stove at low-medium heat. Stir occasionally.

3. Cook sauce until boiled, the volume reduced and the sauce surface looks a bit oily. Add rice flour mixture. Keep stirring until bubbling about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat.

Sambal

• Combine all ingredients and process in a food processor/blender or you can grind them with mortar and pestle.

Serving

• Place lettuce, slices of lontong and boiled potatoes, blanched vegetables, wedges of boiled egg, slices of fried tempe and tofu, and wedges of tomato, slices of cucumber. Pour the warm sauce over, garnish with fried shallot, crushed shrimp crackers and emping nuts crackers. Put sambal on the side as people has different tastebuds to handle the spiciness. You can omit the sambal if you don’t like the spicy sauce.

Tips

- If the sauce to thick, add a small amount of water.

- Always try the sauce before remove from the heat, so you can add salt or coconut sugar to match your tastebuds.

- Serve gado-gado sauce while it is still warm. Warm up the sauce if it is cold.

- If you still have leftover sauce, keep it in a jar and refrigerate/freeze. You may use for other dipping purposes.

How to cook Soto Ayam

Soto ayam is a yellow spicy chicken soup with vermicelli, commonly found in Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia. Turmeric is added as one of its ingredients to get yellow chicken broth. Besides chicken and vermicelli, it is also served with hard-boiled eggs, slices of fried potatoes, Chinese celery leaves, and fried shallots. Sometimes, slices of Lontong (compressed rice roll) are also added. Occasionally, people will add "koya", a powder of mixed fried garlic with prawn crackers or bitter Sambal (orange colored). Krupuk are a very common topping.

Different regions have their own variation of this dish, for instance:

• Soto Ambengan, originated from Ambengan, Surabaya. Soto Ambengan is famous for its delicious koya topping.
• Soto Banjar
• Soto Kudus
• Soto Medan

Ingredients: Serves 8-10

• 2 chicken whole legs or breasts (bone-in)
• 2 big red onions
• 5 garlic
• 2in ginger
• 1 stalk lemon grass (thinly sliced)
• 4-spices (1 star anise seed, 3 cloves, 3 cardamon & 1-inch cinnamon stick)
• Rinsed 5 cups water
• 1/3 cup coconut milk
• Salt and sugar to taste
• 5 tablespoons vegetable oil

Method:

1. Grind onion, lemon grass, garlic and ginger in the blender.

2. In a pot, heat the oil and add the 4-spices until fragrant. Add in the gounded ingredients and stir continuosly until fragrant.

3. Add water and chicken, let it boil. About 30 min.

4. Take the chicken out and let them cool.

5. Add coconut milk into the pot together with salt and sugar to taste. If necessary, add another cup of water.

6. In the meantime, shred the meat of the chicken and add them back into the pot together with the bones. Let it boil for another 15-20min. Serve hot with rice cakes/nasi impit (cut into bite-sized cubes) or vermicelli and bean sprouts.

Best Malay Mee Siam

Mee Siam, which means "Siamese noodle", is a dish of thin rice noodles (vermicelli) in spicy, sweet and sour light gravy. It is one of the popular one-dish meals in Singapore. A "dry" version, which is essentially stir-frying the rice noodles with the same spices used in the "gravy" version, are also popular among the Malays and Chinese in Singapore.

Originally a Thai dish, it became a Nyonya specialty that is now prepared by Indians, Malays as well as Chinese stalls in Singapore with slight variation in ingredients. It is served with salted soy beans, dried bean curd, boiled egg, and tamarind, garnished with spring onions and Chinese chives.

Recepi 1
Ingredients

Gravy:

• 1 tbsp cooking oil
• 5 shallots, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, chopped
• 6 dried chilli, pounded
• 1 tsp belacan (shrimp paste)
• 2 onions, sliced
• 4 tbsp preserved yellow beans, pounded
• 3 tbsp tamarind
• 2 litres water
• sugar and salt to taste

Spiced Rice Vermicelli:

• 500gm rice vermicelli
• 4 tbsp cooking oil
• 3 shallots, chopped
• 2 tbsp chilli paste
• 3 tbsp dried shrimp, pounded
• 150gm bean sprouts, peeled.

Mee Siam Garnish:

• 1 egg, hard-boiled, cut in wedges
• 20gm local chive (ku chai), fresh
• 1 local lime, trim top
• 3 prawns, medium size, peeled
• 20gm soya bean cake, deep-fried, diced
• 20gm fish cake, sliced
• sambal sauce (optional)

Instructions

Gravy:

• Mix tamarind with water. Strain off pulp and reserve the juice. Cook shallots, garlic, dried chilli paste and onions until fragrant. Add remaining ingredients and bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 45 mins. Check seasoning.

Spiced Rice Vermicelli:

• Soak vermicelli in cold water to soften. Drain dry, blanch in boiling water for 30 secs and strain. Heat oil in wok and cook shallots, chilli paste and dried shrimp until fragrant. Add vermicelli and bean sprouts and mix well. Remove from heat.

Serving

• Place spiced rice vermicelli in bowl. Add piping hot gravy. Garnish with egg wedges, chopped chive, prawns, soya bean cake, fish cake and lime. Sambal sauce may be added.

Recipe2

 Serves : 1

 Ingredients :

• 150g grated coconut
• 560ml warm water (A)
• 50g dried tamarind paste (assam)
• 50ml warm water (B)
• 80g soy bean paste (pounded)
• 1 onion (cut into strips)
• 50g dried chillies (ground finely)
• 100g shallots (ground finely)
• 10g shrimp paste (ground finely)
• 40g dried shrimp (ground finely)
• 300g rice-vermicelli (soaked, drained)
• 200g bean sprouts
• sugar to taste

 Garnishing :

•  2 hard-boiled eggs (shelled, sliced)
• 4 bean curd puffs (cubed)
• 5g chives (chopped finely)
• a few fresh limes (halved)

 Method :

• Combined grated coconut with warm water (A). Squeeze out coconut milk and set aside. Combine dried tamarind paste with warm water (B) to obtain juice.
• Gravy : Place coconut milk, soy bean paste, onion and 3/4 of the ground dried chillies, shallots, shrimp paste and dried prawns in pot. Simmer for 30 minutes.
• Add tamarind juice and sugar to obtain a sweet and sour taste. Set aside.
• Heat 6 tablespoons oil in wok till hot. Stir-fry remaining ground ingredients till fragrant. Add rice vermicelli, bean sprouts and enough water to cook rice vermicelli. Place some rice vermicelli in serving dish and pour in gravy.
• Garnish with sliced eggs, bean curd puffs and chives. Drizzle with a little lime juice.

Chicken Tinola

Chicken Tinola is a soup-based dish which is cooked with green papaya cut in wedges, and chili pepper leaves, in broth flavored with ginger, onions and fish sauce.

A common substitutes for chicken is pork, chayote/Sayote instead of papaya, or moringa leaves known as marungay or malunggay, instead of pepper leaves.

Ingredients:
* 1 chicken (1 kilo)
* 1 whole medium Papaya cut in wedges 3 pieces of Chayote/Sayote
* 1 onion cut in slice
* 4 cloves garlic, crushed
* 2 tbsp. ginger strips
* 2 tbsp. patis
* 1 tsp. vetsin (Optional - I preffer not to)
* 1/2 cup young Pepper leaves or Malunggay
* Few leaves of Onion leaves (a personal favourite)

Cooking Procedures :
Clean and cut chicken into small serving pieces. Saute' garlic and ginger until brown. Add onion. Then, add chicken. Stir for 3 minutes, pour in patis. Cook for another 3 minutes. Cover and let simmer.

When chicken is half done, add Papaya or Chayote/Sayote. Cover and simmer until chicken and potatoes are done. Lastly, add vetsin (optional) Onion leaves and pepper leaves or Malunggay leaves. Let boil for 3 minutes and then serve it hot.

Photo courtesy of Flickrdotcom

Sizzling Sisig - Pork

Sizzling Sisig is actually originated in Pampanga and a very popular pulutan (delicacy? – to correct me you can use the comment section of this post :) ) in the Philippines. Sisig is a Kapampangan term which means "to snack on something sour".

It also refers to a method of preparing fish and meat, especially pork head , which is marinated in a sour liquid such as lemon juice (Kalamansi) or vinegar, then seasoned with salt, pepper, chilly and other spices. Some restaurants have also Chicken Sizzling Sisig as one their specialty (the recipe will be post in the future).

Ingredients:

- 1 kg Pork Face

- 1/4 kg Pork Brain (Optional)

- 2 tsp. butter

- 4 pcs. Onions, chopped

- 3 Tbsp. Soy Sauce

- 1 Tbsp. Vinegar

- 1 Tbsp. Catsup or Chilli Sauce

- Salt and pepper to taste

- Fried Pork skin, grounded (Optional)

- 1 Egg (Optional) - only when serving

Cooking Procedures :

- Boil pork face till tender; slice thinly into cubes.

- Saute 1 pc. onion in butter and add the sliced pork face and the brain in a deep skillet.

- While sauteing, mix the liquid ingredients.

- Add the liquid mix in the pan. Simmer for about 15 mins.

- Serve in sizzling plate, garnish with Fried pork skin, egg and chilli for your taste.

Photo Courtesy of Flickrdotcom

Adobong Baboy (Pork)

Adobo is a favorite filipino food. The recipe can be done with pork, chicken, beef or a combination of the three - if you like (but I prefer it cooked separately).

Filipinos loves garlick and tangy flavors of food dishes. That’s why adobo recipe was created. Just by smelling the aroma of it, you’ll surely feel hungry. Filipino food like this adobong baboy, is one of my favorite recipe and even foreigners too!

Ingredients:
1-1/2 lb. pork - cut into serving pieces
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1/3 cup vinegar
3 tbsp. soy sauce
1 bay leafsalt to taste
1/4 tsp. pepper or 1 tsp. peppercorns
1 tbsp. sugar (optional)
1/2 cup water
oil, for frying

Cooking Procedures :
1. Combine all ingredients in a big pot except the oil and let stand for at least 30 minutes.
2. Place pot over medium heat and bring to a boil.
3. Lower the heat and simmer covered until meat is tender for about an hour (checking occasionally for the water not to get dry, just add a little water each time you see its almost dry up). You may adjust the seasoning according to your taste and liking. Drain and reserve sauce. Set aside.
4. Meanwhile, heat oil in a pan over medium heat. Fry the meat until lightly brown on all sides. Set aside and keep warm.
5. Pour off all remaining oil from the pan. Pour in back the meat and reserve sauce. Mix for about a few minutes while scraping up the bits on the bottom of pan.
6. Remove from heat. Serve hot.

Photo courtesy of Flickrdotcom