What Would Be Happened If Spring Mix Salad Was in Indonesian Kitchen

Feel honored when Michelle of My Year to Get Skinny, the host of My Kitchen My World #12, and chose Indonesia as the theme. Thank you for your appreciation to my homeland cuisine.

Speaking about Indonesian cuisine means diversity in food, where every province has a distinction. Rice is the staple food for almost every region, some places have different fundamental food, such as in Madura island (corn), and Eastern Indonesian islands (sago). In addition, tuberous root (sweet potato and cassava) is also the main food.

Nasi Pecel or Pecel with Rice is eaten for breakfast and brunch in East Java province, a place where I was born and grew up till I was high school. Enjoying pecel this day is such a memory that brings me back to my childhood.

While I am typing this, I am actually waiting for my husband home, who is traveling to Minneapolis, US. Knowing that there is a big Asian supermarket, I purposely ordered to him “Cap Jempol” Indonesian hot sauce, “Bango”sweet soy sauce, and “Teh Botol” tea beverage in tetrapack. Those theree brands can not be found for purchase in Winnipeg, where I usually got those from Vancouver.

Spring mix salad is refreshing mix leaves and easy to find at the markets. This is mix of different young salad greens. Commercial mixes usually include arugula, mizuna, tat soi, frisee, oakleaf, red chard, and radicchio, mustard greens. Eventually, those leaves had to be ended up in an Indonesian kitchen. As a result, they were perfect for Indonesian peanut sambal, pecel.

To see more authentic vegetables for pecel, please visit here.

It is also great to be assembled with fried smelt fish. According to wikipedia, smelts are a family, Osmeridae, of small anadromous fish, and usually reach only 15 cm and are a food source for salmon and lake trout. They are common in the North American Great Lakes and in the lakes and seas of the northern part of Europe, and run in large schools along the coastline during their spring migration to their spawning streams. The family consists of some sixteen species in six genera. Smelts have a characteristic odour, similar to the smell of cucumbers. Smelt roe is bright orange in color, and is often used to garnish sushi.

Pecel’s Sambal
200 g homemade garlic peanuts, grind ==> I used organic peanut butter which only contained ground peanut.

Grind to a paste:
10 – 15 slices of fried garlic from making homemade garlic peanuts
3 candlenuts, toasted
4 red chillies, fried/toasted
5 bird’s eye chillies, fried/toasted
7 cm kencur (also known as kaempferia galangal), roast and peel off the skin
7 kaffir lime leaves
2 tsp tamarind and 100 ml lukewarm water, mixed, squeezed and drain
1 tsp terasi (dried shrimp paste), fried/toasted
50 g coconut sugar or more if you like more sweet taste
1 tsp sugar

Directions:
Combine all ingredients to make sambal. Add with lukewarm water until you get the thickness that you want.