Mendoan Tempe Recipe (Javanese Battered Tempeh)

As I noted on my post here, tempe is very popular and traditional food in Indonesia, especially in Java island where I was born and grew up. Tempe always brings my memory back to Indonesia, where I can find tempe easily, either fresh or cooked. Back then, when my mom had a home-based catering business, she always had lots idea what she was going to make for traditional party. One of her favorite’s ingredients was tempe.

At this time, I’m sending my childhood appetizer/snack for my entry at this November’s Monthly Mingle, hosted by Meeta of What’s For Lunch Honey? with a theme Traditional Feast.

Mendoan Tempe
A word mendoan is from Banyumas dialect, one of some dialects in Javanese. It means under-cooked or not hard or limp. That is why to make this mendoan need lots hot oil and quick-cooked technique. We eat this by dipping mendoan tempe into sambal kecap. Every person has a different kind of flours to make mendoan tempe, some use mixture rice flour with all purpose flour, some use all purpose flour, some use self-raising flour, and I myself use cake and pastry flour.

Ingredients:
500 grams tempeh, cut into 1/2 cm thick
oil for deep frying

Batter
1 1/4 cup cake and pastry flour
230 ml cold water
4 Chinese chives (Indonesian: kucai, Chinese: he), finely sliced

Grind into spice
1 1/2 tsp corriander seed
3 candlenuts
5 cloves garlic
7 cm kencur (also known as kaempferia galangal)
salt as desired

Sambal Kecap
1/4 cup kecap manis (Indonesian sweet soy sauce)
2 tsp fresh lime juice*
bird’s eye chillies (as many as you desire), sliced

*some people don’t add lime juice, I preferably add due to the sweetness and thickness of kecap manis bango’s brand.



Directions:

• Combine cold water with ground spices. Add flour and whisk quickly. Dip gently the tempeh slices into batter. Deep fried in hot oil until it turn golden brown and cooked through.

Sambal Kecap

• Combine all ingredients