Tropical Salad With Peanut Sauce / Gado Gado

Hey there everybody!

I am back again with yet another recipe, a salad recipe. My readers especially those in the U.S, the Great Britain, Germany,Poland and a few other European countries should try this recipe at home. I try to make it as simple as possible so that you too can enjoy it as much as we do out here in Malaysia.
This recipe is most probably originated from Indonesia.  I had to put this in writing so that there won't be any misunderstanding from my Indonesian readers with regards to this recipe.

Let's take a look at the ingredients :

The roasted dried chili

7 dried chili 
Roast in dry skillet
Use your food processor and grind it until it became powdery
Mix a cup of water into the chili powder. Put it aside
300gm of peanut 
Also roast it without oil and allow to cool.
Then use your hand or a piece of cloth to scrunch out the peanut skin.
Grind it using your food processor until half of the peanuts became fine and the other half still chunky
2 tbl spoon of tamarind juice
( Available at any Asian store)
Take about the size of a ping-pong ball and put a little water in it. Squeeze it until it produces the brownish juice. Scoop about 2 tblspoon and put aside.

2 tblspoon of cooking oil
1 cup of coconut cream
3 garlic (crushed)
a pinch of salt
3 tblspoon of sugar
2 table spoon of brown sugar

** Don't get daunted by my explanation above. It isn't as complex as you may think. In fact it is so easy once you get started.

Tamarind

Now lets make some sauce:

Place the cooking oil in a skillet. Let it heat a little.Throw in the garlic for just a minute. Don't burn it.

Next, pour in the chili paste that we put aside just now. Cook under medium heat. Let it boil.

Then, add the crushed peanut into the boiling chili paste and stir it so that it doesn't turn lumpy.

At this time, you may pour in the coconut cream, sugar, salt and tamarind juice all at once.

Let it simmer until the sauce thicken.

Oops, one of my long bean had jumped into the sauce!
picture by ariff ismail

Once fully cooked, the color of the sauce should change into vibrant brownish as the picture above.

See, it's as easy as 1,2,3.

This is how it should be eaten

You should eat it by pouring a lot of the sauce onto your salad and mix well. Not dipping into it.

Take a look at the picture above.

Right, now that you've succeeded with the making of your sauce, let's get your vegetables ready

You will need :

bean curd or tofu and water spinach

300gm of water spinach (blanched for a few seconds, if you can't find them, just leave it out)

3 piece of beancurd (lightly fried and cut into cubes)
2 potatoes (boiled)

2 hard boiled eggs (cut any way you like)

100 gm of bean sprout (blanched for two seconds)

100gm young corn (blanched for about a minute)

8 long beans or snake beans (cut it into 2 inches long each blanched for a minute)

You may add any other vegetable to suit your taste buds.

And that's it. It's ready and it's superbly delicious and nutritious. Please try it and let me know.

Rose
17/11/13