Vegetables with Peanut Sauce

(Pecel)

Pecel is a traditional meal from one town in East Java, Madiun. It made from different vegetables and serve with peanut sauce and warm plain rice (nasi putih). And usually accompany with some rice flour cracker (rempeyek). In reality Pecel has a lot of version such as pecel Blitar, Nganjuk, Kediri, Ponorogo, and Madiun. Although the substance has no difference with others, but each has its uniqueness.

Difficulty: Medium

Cooking time: 45 - 60 minutes

Ingredients

200 g peanut, peeled and fried (or you can use peanut butter)

Spice Paste

- 2 cloves of garlic

- 2 red chillies, seeded and fried

- 5 eye’s bird chillies, seeded and fried (you can add more if you wish to)

- 5 cm kencur (also known as kaempferia galangal), peel off the skin

- 1 tablespoon dried prawn paste (terasi)

- 7 kaffir lime leafs

- 2 tablespoon tamarind mixed and squeeze with 100 ml lukewarm water and drain.

- 50 g palm sugar or more if you like more sweet taste

- 1 tsp sugar

Additional Ingredients

- 100 g bean sprouts, cleaned

- 100 g spinach, cut

- 100 cabbage, shredded

Directions

1. Fry garlic and the chillies. Set aside. And then grind or blend together with the rest of ingredients of spice paste. Add the fried peanut. Continue blending to make it smooth.

2. Add some of warm water to make the sauce thicken

3. Cook all the vegetables. Set aside.

4. Serve: Arrange the vegetables, and then pour with the peanut sauce. Serve with plain rice (nasi putih), crispy rice flour cracker (rempeyek), fried egg and cucumber.