Gado-Gado [ Salads Indonesia ]

Gado-gado (Indonesian or Betawi), also known as lotek (Sundanese and Javanese), is an Indonesian salad of slightly boiled vegetables and hard-boiled eggs served with a peanut sauce dressing.
Gado-gado in Indonesian literary means "mix-mix" since it is made of rich mixture of vegetables such as potatoes, string beans, bean sprouts, spinach, chayote, bitter gourd, corn and cabbage, with tofu, tempeh and hard-boiled eggs, all mixed in peanut sauce dressing, sometimes also topped with krupuk and sprinkles of fried shallots. Gado-gado is different from lotek atah or karedok which uses raw vegetables. Another similar dish is the Javanese pecel.
Gado-gado is thought to have originally been a Sundanese dish. It is widely available from hawkers carts, stalls (warung) and restaurants and hotels in Indonesia; it is also served in Indonesian-style restaurants worldwide. Though it is customarily called a salad, the sauce is a larger component of gado-gado than is usual in Western-style salads; the vegetables should be well coated with it.

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

How To Make

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

1.      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.

Categories: Main Course