Halo!
For today’s post, I’ve decided to write about the different types of ‘salad’ Indonesia traditionally have. There is quite a few type of food here which I personally think can be categorized as a salad, however we don’t actually refer to them as one. As I see it, every food that consists different types of vegetables or fruits, preferably raw, and can be tossed with a kind of dressing can be called a salad.
Before we go further, here’s some pictures if you want to get a glimpse on how Indonesian salads look like.
Gado-gado:
Pecel:
Lotek:
Rujak:
At a glance, they might look alike. However, each has their own uniqueness, whether it’s the dressing or the ingredients you can mix in.
The main difference between Indonesian and western salad lies on the dressing and how the ingredients are prepared. For these salads in particular, we call these dressings as bumbu, which actually means spices. We usually differentiate them with the dish name afterwards, such as bumbu pecel, bumbu rujak, or even bumbu kacang. FYI, kacang means peanut. And yup, unlike oil and milk based dressings often used in the West, Indonesian mainly use peanut-based dressings. Sounds odd? Well, our dressing is certainly different from the peanut butter you probably have in your mind. For one, the sugar is not that much, I think.
Our peanut dressings use peanuts and a variety of spices blended together. The amount of peanuts and how finely crushed, type of spices, and consistency (AKA how much liquid you put in) may vary depending on the type of salad in question, but they all undoubtedly has that savoury and creamy undertone of crispy peanuts fried to perfection. We also mostly use palm sugar in these peanut dressings, which make it has a perfect balance between savoury and sweet that won’t make you bored. Other than those two main ingredients, we also use other spices, such as garlic and shallot, chili, candlenut, plus, of course, water. Nowadays, vegetarian versions have also come up to accommodate vegetarians of various types.
When paired with sweet soy sauce, this peanut dressing is also commonly used in other non-salad dishes, such as with satay, meatball-tofu and siomay (a type of dumpling), and others, mostly snack items though. I personally quite like eating crackers with this peanut dressing; the blank palate but crunchy texture of the crackers contrasted deliciously with the spiciness and smoothness of thick peanut dressing. Topped with the sweetness of sweet soy sauce, it’s a match made in paradise known as Indonesia.
When making peanut dressing, you can easily adjust the texture of the peanut, how watery it is, how spicy it is, even how savoury it is. For example, the one for lotek is commonly thicker and clung to the ingredients, kinda like mayonnaise. The one for pecel, on the other hand, is usually thinner and served separate from the ingredients, more like Italian salad dressing. You can even add coconut milk to give it a smoother but richer flavour, though do be careful as too much coconut milk is not good for human. Just experiment on them and found your own favourite combination.
Of course, not all of our dressings are peanut-based. Rujak, for example, more often than not is paired with a sweeter and thin dressing with a common base of palm sugar. There is also one, called urap-urap, which does not actually use any sauce but is complimented with shredded coconut cooked in spice.
For the vegetables, on the other hand, each type of salad has distinctive ones. Though even one type of salad dish can also have different vegetables in it depending on where they came from. Another difference with western salad lies here: Indonesian salad’s vegetables are mostly cooked first. Here, cooked mostly means blanched, or more like boiled since we don’t traditionally know or practice blanching.
Pecel typically consists of beansprout, long beans, cucumber, labu siam (which Google Translate said is called chayote in English), and water spinach (AKA kangkung). Gado-gado, on the other hand, typically consists more of cabbage, long beans, cucumber, potato, hard-boiled egg, and fried tofu and tempeh. We sometimes also eat fried tofu and tempeh with pecel but as a side, not as a part of the whole dish, whereas in gado-gado, the fried tofu and sometimes fried tempeh is part of the whole dish. Pecel is also more commonly eaten as a company to rice and meat, including fried chicken and fried catfish. They are also, more often than not, come accompanied by crackers. Pecel’s cracker is usually a peyek, whilst gado-gado’s is usually smaller garlicky crackers. Of course, we also have many other type of crackers, which we call kerupuk. I’ll explain about them in another of my post (which I will write when I have enough motivation).
Different from the previous two, rujak is made mostly of fruits. The common fruits used are pineapple, young mango, jambu air (which apparently called water apple in English? It’s very odd to me, as jambu means guava and air means water, so I never consider them as apples…), papaya, starfruit, and what we call bengkoang (which is apparently translated as jicama in English). As you can see, it’s all tropical fruits with harder texture (you won’t see banana here, and only harder papayas are used) to accommodate easier consumption. This is because rujak is mostly eaten by taking the fruit, usually cut up into batonnet or slices, and dip it into the dressing/sauce. I think it’s like the baby vegs popular a few years ago, where you can have baby carrots or celery and dip it in a sauce before eating it. Well, we’ve been doing it for a long time.
Another unique ‘salad’, which I don’t really consider as a salad but more of a side, is lalapan. Lalapan usually consists of raw and fresh cut cucumber, tomato, curly lettuce, cabbage, and basil leaves, and is served as the vegetable companion for deep-fried or roasted food such as deep-fried chicken, grilled beef ribs, and sweet grilled carp (gurame). Another reason I don’t consider it as a salad is that it has no dressing, though more often than not people dip the vegetables in the sambal which almost always accompany those dishes. Below is a depiction of lalapan with sambal and grilled gurame (the lime pieces are there as grilled gurame companion, used to cut back the greasiness).
Anyway, that’s all for my Indonesian salads edition. As a bonus, bellow I attached a complete recipe on how to make lotek which I got from my grandma’s maid. Different from pecel which uses peanut sauce as a dressing (AKA they sauce and vegetables are served separate or the sauce is put on top of the vegs), the peanut sauce in lotek is tossed together with the vegetables so the vegetables are coated thoroughly with the sauce. I actually only know the existence of lotek when I live for a while in my grandma’s house to finish my studies, and my aunt confirmed that this dish is kinda hard to find anywhere else other than in West Java or even Bandung.
Thanks for reading, and stay healthy~
LOTEK
Portion: 2-3 pax
Time: 20 minutes
Ingredients:
2 cloves of garlic
5 small pieces of aromatic ginger (kencur)
1 tsp of salt (or as desired)
40 gr of brown sugar (or as desired)
½ of a potato
75 gr fried and crushed peanut
1 slice of lime
Vegetables as desired, usually beansprout, kangkung (I think it’s called water spinach in English), chayote, and long beans
Instructions:
Cut, wash, and boil your desired vegetables until soft (you might want to boil them one by one as different vegetables have different cooking times). Set aside.
Let’s make the dressing:
In a mortar (cobek), add garlic, aromatic ginger, and salt, then use the pestle to mash them together.
Add the brown sugar and continue mashing.
Add the potato and continue mashing. By using a bit of potato, the consistency will be stickier, which we look for in lotek.
Lastly, add the crushed peanuts and mash them until blended but not completely smooth (still has grainy texture to it).
Put the cooked vegetables into the mortar and use a spatula to mix them together, like tossing a salad with its dressing.
Transfer to a plate and lotek is ready to be served!
Note: It might not look appetizing, moreover if you boil the vegetables until they are completely soft, but the taste is amazing for Indonesians especially with white cracker^^
Note 2: Be careful to not use too much aromatic ginger. Too much and the inside of your mouth (and nose cavity) will feel like aromatic ginger all day.
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