how to make indonesian salad (gado-gado)

 Gado-gado is a traditional dish in Indonesian cuisine, and is comprised of a vegetable salad served with a peanut sauce dressing.

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.

Recipe for Gado-Gado

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
• Shrimp crackers

Gado-gado sauce

•  10 cloves garlic, stir fried/fried/roasted 
• kencur
• 13 cloves onion, stir fried/fried/roasted
• 300 g roasted/fried peanuts (In this case, I used 1 cup of organic crunchy peanut butter) 
• 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

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

    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.

    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.