Another Indonesian vegan recipe "Nasi Pecel Sayur" (Indonesian Salad with peanut dressing)

Hello dear Steemians,

I would again give you another vegan recipe from Indonesia.
I bet you (I mean you who are non Asians) have already known and perhaps even tried the peanut sauce in some Chinese or Thai Restaurant in your country, but believe me... they just taste completely different.
Not only because peanut sauce from China or Thailand is different than from Indonesia, but they definitely don't taste that way either in China/Thailand. I always have an impression that they simply mix peanut butter with water, sugar and perhaps a bit of chili oil.
I never took any peanut sauce whenever I eat chinese buffet here.
If I go to a chinese buffet, I would definitely go to seafood platters... only this way your money is worth the value and the taste would be rather fine as well. Especially because seafood most of the time would be grilled or stir fried on the spot.
Going for fried noodle or fried rice is a bad choice. :-D
Those are the cheapest one and the easiest one to cook too. It doesn't taste special at all. One can just make it at home. :)

Regarding peanut sauce, there are few kind of peanut sauce in my country... the simplest one is called "Sambal Pecel".
It will be served normally with vegetables and some deep fried tofu, tempe or bakwan.

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"Pecel Sayur"= Vegetable with peanut sauce was one of my favourite food since I was a child.
I ate it for breakfast nearly everyday. In my hometown it would be sold in the market or street vendors using a plate made of teak wood leaves. It makes it taste really special, even more delicious than using banana leaves as a wrapper or plate.
This is something that one can't find anywhere else since it's very typical from "Blora", because Blora is known as "Teakwood city". Teak is the biggest comodity from this town.

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I took a screenshots of some pictures presenting "pecel Blora", this is how it looks:

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It's one of the cheapest food but very delicious and healthy. :-D
Now I would share the original recipe of this food for you. Of course you can buy the ready made one too if you live in Germany and it's also original from Indonesia. There are some products made by different companies but I would recommend you this one.
You can buy it online in tokoindonesia.de and they have 3 spiciness level for this product. All you need to do just dilute it with a hot water and you can decide how liquid/viscous you like to have. But for you who want to make it by your self, just pay attention to my recipe below:

Ingredients:
- 350 gram peanuts, roasted or deep fried
- 5 red chilis and some rawit chilis (if you can stand the spiciness, otherwise just use 1 chili and red peperoni instead. We need the red colour from the chilis, so if you can't even stand peperoni just please pick out the seeds)
- 4 cloves garlic
- 2 cm kencur (you can use few pieces of dried "kencur" or 1 tsp of the ground one.)

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• 2 cm ripe tamarind or 1 tsp tamarind paste, diluted with 3 ml warm water. Don't forget to pick out the stem and the seed if there is one.

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- 3 tbsp ground/grated palm sugar

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- 1/2 tsp salt
- 500 ml hot water (if you want to directly use it. If you want to make dried peanut sauce for stock, then you don't need water but some hot cooking oil instead OR you can just deep fry the peanuts by your self and don't strain it too well. This way you would still have a bit of oil in it that could help to keep the sambal moistured without using water.
We need to drain as much as water contain from the ingredients. This dried version "sambal pecel" could last very long although not being put in the fridge as long as it's stored in the air tight container or plastic wrap.
So I can sure you that the dried pecel sold in the online store here is not using artificial preservative. Just multiply the ingredients if you want to make a large stock of this dried peanut sauce)

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- 4 pieces lime leaves, finely chopped

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Instruction:

1. Deep fry the peanuts, set aside. Make sure that they don't burn if there is any single peanut getting burnt please pick it out because it may cause the taste of pecel slightly bitter.

2. Fry garlic and the chilis then grind it well. If you have a good food processor you can grind them alltogether with the peanuts but if the performance of your food processor is just average, then please grind the spices separately using mortar first before mixing the paste with the peanuts and diluted tamarind in the food processor.
Well, if you don't use food processor at all but prefer to grind all ingredients manually then it's even better. :-)
Finally you can mix the peanut paste with the finely chopped lime leaves using a spatula.

Serving pecel with it's "friends":

For this dish you can use any vegetables you like. You just need to use vegetables that can be cooked without getting too mushy, for example: soybean sprout, spinat, "kangkung" or waterspinat, long beans, julienned carrot, white cabbage, sugar peas etc.
In Indonesia we could also sometimes use the flower of vegetable hummingbird. This flowers taste very special, slightly bitter but many Indonesians love it. It has some medicinal properties too. This flowers can be used to cure mouth ulcer, sore throat, diarrhea and speed up the light wound recovery.
Just cook or steam the veggies for a few minutes only, don't overcook them.
You can also just blanch it if you like it more crispy and don't want to lose too much vitamine in the veggies. I normally use the rest water from steaming or blanching the veggies to dilute the "sambal pecel", this way we could still preserve nearly all vitamine from the veggies ^_^.

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Arrange the veggies on the plate and pour the peanut sauce on it. You can serve this salad with steamed white rice and "bakwan", fried tofu or tempe seasoned with garlic and coriander OR you can also eat it without rice.
We love it this way as well like for a snacking time.

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Have a nice meal everyone! :)

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