CSA week two - Sayur manis bayam dan jagung muda

Roughly translated from Indonesian, that's stewed spinach and sweet corn. Less roughly, bayam--usually translated as "Indonesian spinach"--is amaranth, or, around here, callaloo.

Technique-wise, this recipe is very simple and pretty similar to a standard Islands preparation, but the inclusion of a lot of typical Indonesian flavors makes it distinctive. I found it at bigoven.com, but it's on most of the big recipe websites so there's no knowing where it came from originally.

Ingredients:
a little cooking oil
1 thumb-sized knob of ginger, julienned (my ginger was too dried out to slice so I just threw it in whole and fished it out later)
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
hot peppers to taste (I chopped one and left another whole)
1 small shallot, sliced (the original recipe says onion, but shallot goes nicely with the other aromatics)
1 stalk lemongrass, cored and crushed
1 thumb-sized knob of galangal, sliced (I only have dried so I put in a big chunk)
1 salam leaf
1 cup chicken stock (the original recipe calls for vegetable stock, which might be fine if you wanted to go vegan, but I'd be concerned that the particular mix of vegetables wouldn't go well with Indonesian flavors.)
7 ounces (by weight) sweet young corn (the original recipe calls for "baby corn" but those little cobs would be pretty odd to use here so I'm pretty sure that's not what they mean)
2 bunchs callaloo, thick stems removed (around 10 ounces total)
1 cup coconut milk
salt and pepper to taste

1. Heat the oil in a large pot over medium high heat. Add the fresh aromatics (garlic, peppers and shallot in my case). Cook briefly until aromatic. Add the dried or otherwise inedible aromatics (ginger, lemongrass, galangal and salam for me). Cook a little longer until even more aromatic.

2. Add the stock and corn. Season with a little salt and pepper. Return to a boil. Add half the callaloo. Stir to wilt until there's room for the rest. Add the rest and stir a little more. Cover, turn heat down to a simmer and cook seven minutes. Stir in coconut milk, recover and cook five minutes more.

3. Remove inedibles, adjust seasonings and serve over rice.


Callaloo and coconut milk are, of course, a classic combination. Corn less so, but cornbread is a common accompaniment so corn isn't a big leap. So that's all pretty accessible. The overlay of the floral citrusy Indonesian flavors is something else entirely, at least if you've got some expectation of Caribbean flavors. But, if you set aside your preconceptions, I think they do counterpoint against the callaloo's distinctive flavor. I know you guys don't have the galangal or salam leaf, but try using the lemongrass when you cook up your callaloo. It's not bad at all.

CSA week 18 - Gulai kacang udang

a.k.a. Sumatran shrimp and green beans

I think this is the first dish I've made with green beans and coconut milk. First one that I've blogged about anyway. It struck me as an odd combination, but I do recall seeing green beans as part of a lot of coconut-milk-based curries. Googling turns up Thai dishes with them paired along with some Malaysian and some Caribbean ones too. I'll have to put those on the to-do list when I get some more beans.

This particular recipe, according to The Indonesian Kitchen cookbook, is a typical Sumatran dish in that it's hot and acid without sweetness to balance as you'd find in a lot of other Indonesian cooking. I don't think it was quite as challenging as advertised, though.

Ingredients:
1 14 oz can coconut milk
1/4 cup onion, thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, sliced
1 stalk lemon grass, crushed and/or slit open
1 teaspoon salt
1 salam leaf
1 small piece of laos
1/2 teaspoon fresh ginger, sliced
1 fresh hot chili pepper, sliced and crushed
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 pound string beans, cleaned and broken into 2-inch pieces
1/2 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 small tomato, diced

0. Brine the shrimp and the string beans.[Don't skip brining the shrimp. They cook too fast to take on any flavor from the sauce (or add any either). The original recipe called for simmering the shrimp for a full ten minutes which would solve that problem but create a worse one if you ask me.]

1. Mix everything but the beans, shrimp and tomato into a pot over medium heat. Bring to a boil.

2. Add the green beans and simmer for 5 minutes, stirring often. Add the tomato and cook for 5-10 minutes more until the tomato has started breaking down and the green beans are tender. Add the shrimp and cook 1-3 minutes until cooked through.

Fish out the lemongrass, salam leaf and laos. Serve hot or warm over rice, garnished with crispy fried onion (or shallot or garlic), sweet soy sauce and chili-garlic sambal.

I couldn't get a good picture in the bowl since the sauce drained down into the rice. Here it is finished but still in the pot.


The sauce is richly flavored, spicy, creamy and fragrant with lemongrass and laos. A very nice complement to the shrimp, too. But the green beans are a spash of khaki against all that color. Blah in and of themselves and they don't really connect with the flavors in the sauce. Really disappointing. I should have brined them too maybe. I bet it'll be better tomorrow when the flavors have blended a bit.
---
OK, it's tomorrow and the dish is substantially better. Both the beans and the shrimp have absorbed a bit of flavor and the sauce has picked up a bit of depth too. Also, I hit it with a big shot of sriracha which did it no harm. I can now recommend this dish; just make it ahead and reheat.

Kederok and Tahu Kering

I mail ordered a bunch of Indonesian ingredients a couple months ago and then promptly stopped cooking anything Indonesian. But Indonesian cuisine has evolved for the sort of oppressively tropical weather we've been having so now's definitely the time to break it out.

I don't know how useful it is to you guys for me to post about dishes that require ingredients you don't have, but I suppose my conception of a food blog as a practical rather than a voyeuristic endeavor is something of a minority view. For whatever it's worth then, here's a west Javanese salad and an east Javanese tofu dish both from The Indonesian Kitchen.

Kederok

1 fresh semihot chile, thinly sliced
1 clove garlic, sliced
1 teaspoon salt
2 small slices dried kencur, soaked in water for 30 minutes [a.k.a. lesser galangal. I was going to use some regular galangal as I haven't been able to get kencur, but it didn't soften enough smush in the mortar. I used a little ginger instead which is a fair approximation.]
3 Tablespoons crunchy peanut butter [I've got smooth so I added some coarsely ground peanuts I keep around for garnishing.]
1 teaspoon tamarind, dissolved in 1 Tablespoon water
2 teaspoons sugar
1 cup thin-sliced cucumbers
1 cup bean sprouts
1 cup lettuce, broken into bite-size pieces [I have no lettuce either so I used a cup and a half of cukes and an equal amount of sprouts.]

1. Crush chile, garlic, salt, kencur and peanut butter in a mortar.

2. Strain seeds out of tamarind. Add tamarind and sugar to peanut butter mix.

3. Toss sauce with vegetables until well mixed. Served chilled or room temperature.


Tahu Kering

12 ounces tofu
1/2 cup high smoke point oil for frying
2 cloves garlic, sliced
1/4 cup onion, sliced
2 semihot red chiles, sliced thin diagonally
1 salam leaf
1 piece laos [a.k.a. galangal. I used the two small pieces that didn't work in the salad.]
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons tamarind, dissolved in 1 Tablespoon water
1 Tablespoon sweet soy sauce

1. Cut tofu into 1/4-inch thick slices in whatever size in the other two dimensions as you'd like. [The original recipe says 3/4-inch square, but I left mine in slabs a couple inches across and I liked the result.] Heat the oil until not quite smoking, add tofu and fry in batches for five to seven minutes until they are golden brown on the outside. Do not let them cook through or they'll become leathery. If you do it right, they'll crisp up once they're out of the oil.

2. In small bowl mix sugar, salt, strained tamarind liquid and sweet soy sauce.

Remove all but 1 Tablespoon oil. Turn heat to medium. Fry garlic, onion, chiles, salam and laos until the onions and garlic brown. Add tofu and sauce mixture. Turn the tofu pieces to ensure they're all coated with the sauce and fry for five to eight minutes more until all the liquid has evaporated (except the oil which will still be liquid. Don't be fooled!). Serve with rice or on toothpicks with cocktails before dinner.


The salad is not as good as I hoped. I used a natural peanut butter that was pretty dense and had to water down the sauce to get it thin enough to dress the vegetables. That was fine, but then the salt in the dressing made the vegetables express their own liquid and soon we're talking about peanut soup. Actually, recontextualized like that, (and with the seasoning punched back up) it's not bad. It's a little sweet, a little spicy, a little tart, and the peanut does go well with the cucumber and sprouts. On the other hand, I don't like how limp the vegetables got while waiting for me to finish cooking the tofu. Leave the dressing thick and serve immediately and it's worth doing.

The tofu is deeply savory from the browned vegetables and reduced soy sauce plus a little sweet and a little sour. The salam and laos are subtle but distinctively aromatic. It's got a surprisingly meaty chew and a little crispness around the edges. I don't think I can explain it better than that; it's rather odd and since its primary flavor is umami, there's not a lot of appropriate English vocabulary. Pretty tasty though.

CSA week 19 - Semur terong

which would be steamed eggplant in dark sauce. Eggplant stew is the exact translation from Indonesian, but that doesn't tell you much. "Dark sauce" is all that helpful either, I suppose.

Anyway, I didn't much feel like cooking tonight. I've been suffering from the dreaded oogy tummy syndrome lately. But even if I don't want to eat, I've still got to blog so here we are.

This is a modestly modified version of a recipe from my go to Indonesian cookbook The Indonesian Kitchen. I really ought to get another one of these days just to compare the different takes on the cuisine.

Ingredients:
1 pound eggplant, cut horizontally in 1/2 inch thick slices
1 egg, beaten with 1/4 teaspoon salt
6 Tablespoons peanut oil
1/4 cup thin-sliced onion
1/4 cup thin-sliced pepper
2 cloves garlic, sliced thin
1 cup beef or chicken stock
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg (less if it's fresh)
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 teaspoons sweet soy sauce

1. Steam eggplant slices for five minutes. Remove and cool. (I had to pile up my eggplant to fit them all in the steamer. A dual level Chinese-style bamboo steamer might have room to lay everything out. I also found that the eggplant started falling apart as I removed it to a bowl. I decided to just go with that.)

2. Dip eggplant in egg and fry in 4 Tablespoons oil over medium high heat for two to three minutes, until light brown on both sides. (Individually dipping each slice in egg, even if they were holding together, would be a huge pointless pain so I just tossed the eggplant with the egg and dumped it all into a hot pan.) Remove and set aside.

3. Add remaining 2 Tablespoons of oil to pan, heat and add onion, garlic and peppers. Fry two minutes. Add stock, salt, sugar, nutmeg, pepper and sweet soy sauce. Cook three minutes more. Return eggplant and cook two minutes. Serve over rice.



Not much to look at, particularly with the eggplant all broken up like that, but, well, it's not much to taste either. It's rather bland and mushy. Just what my stomach can handle, but that wasn't my intention.

My cookbook has a second semur terong recipe which has made its way out onto the open web, so you can find it here. In retrospect, that looks rather better. Make that instead.

CSA week five - Oseng oseng hijau and sayur lodeh

OK, I admit that last post was pretty lame. If I didn't have to correct the record on sautéing callaloo I wouldn't have posted it at all. To make up for that I'm going to give you a bonus recipe in this post. I made a couple of recipes from central Java tonight and, while you've got everything you need for the sautéed lettuce, you're unlikely to have the ingredients I used in the eggplant stew. I had to mail order them in. I'll append a recipe for semur terong--steamed eggplant in dark sauce--that I like. The only unusual ingredient in that is sweet soy sauce. That you can find locally or you can fake it by using regular soy sauce and a little dark brown sugar. If you're interested in those other ingredients, I talk a bit about them in this post.

Let's start with the sayur lodeh. It's got lots of ingredients but it's really easy. I put:
1 red sweet pepper, cubed
1/4 cup onion, sliced
1 clove garlic, sliced
1 salam leaf
1 piece of laos
1/4 teaspoon Chinese shrimp paste
1/2 teaspoon tamarind paste dissolved in 1 Tablespoon water
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 kemiri nut, crushed
and
1 cup chicken broth
into my dutch oven, brought it to a boil, turned down the heat to medium and cooked it all for five minutes.
Then I added
1 cup coconut milk
and
1 pound eggplant, cut in 1 inch cubes.
I brought it back to a boil and simmered uncovered for ten minutes, stirring frequently until the eggplant was soft but not falling apart. And that was it.

My cookbook, The Indonesian Kitchen, says you can substitute 2 cups of string beans and 1 cup of cabbage for the eggplant, but I really like the way the eggplant has absorbed the spiced coconut broth. It would probably cling to the cabbage, but it would run right off of the beans. If I were making it with the alternative vegetables I think I'd fish them out and then reduce the broth to a saucier consistency.



The Oseng oseng hijau has an odd ingredient list that avoids the typical Javanese flavors:
2 Tablespoons onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, sliced
1 Tablespoon butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 cup water
1 head lettuce, torn or cut into coarse chunks. The Indonesian Kitchen suggests Boston or Romaine lettuce but I used the komatsuna.

1. Melt the butter in a wok or large pan over medium heat. When the butter has stopped sizzling add the onion and garlic. (I accidentally browned the butter. Whoops!)

2. Fry the onion and garlic in the butter for three minutes. Add the salt, pepper and water, cook for a minute and add the lettuce.

3. Turn the heat up to high and stir fry the lettuce for three more minutes until the lettuce is wilted but retains some texture.

The komatsuna works nicely here because you get two textures with the wilted leaves and firmer stems. The buttery lettuce is not bad just like that, but I thought the dish woke up when I added a little bit of sweet soy sauce. Clearly there's no real reason to stick with Indonesian condiments here but you'll probably want to add a shot of something.

And here's the Steamed Eggplant in Dark Sauce

Ingredients:
1 pound eggplant, cut horizontally in 1/2 inch thick slices
1 egg, beaten with 1/4 teaspoon salt
6 Tablespoons peanut oil
1/4 cup thin-sliced onion
2 cloves garlic, sliced thin
1 cup beef or chicken stock
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 teaspoons sweet soy sauce

1. Steam the eggplant slices in a Chinese-style steamer for five minutes. Remove and allow to cool.

2. Dip the eggplant in the egg and fry in 4 Tablespoons of oil for two minutes or until light brown on both sides. Set aside.

3. Fry the onion and garlic in the remaining 2 Tablespoons of oil for two minutes. Add the stock, salt, sugar, nutmeg, pepper and sweet soy sauce. Cook for three minutes. Return the eggplant and cook, basting for two minutes.

It's been a while since I've made this but I recall liking how the nutmeg combined with the sweet soy sauce and how the resulting flavor complimented the eggplant.

Tahu goreng - fried tofu in peanut sauce

This is one of my favorite Javanese recipes. It's quick and easy to make and has a great distinctively Indonesian flavor.

You'll need:
1 pound medium to extra firm tofu. (You can get a lot of different textures from fried tofu depending on the firmness you start with and how long you fry it. I like mine a bit dried out and chewy but I think I'm in the minority. You definitely don't want the airy store bought pre-fried tofu. That's a different ingredient entirely and is good for different sorts of recipes.)
1/2 cup oil for shallow frying
1 large handful bean sprouts
1 clove garlic, sliced
1/2 green hot chili, sliced (something small and very hot is typical for Java)
1 teaspoon sugar
4 Tablespoons sweet soy sauce (a.k.a. kecap manis)
2 Tablespoons water
1 teaspoon lemon juice
2 Tablespoons crunchy peanut butter
2 scallions, sliced thin
3 Tablespoons crispy fried onions


Those crispy fried onions are a traditional Javanese condiment that's pretty similar to a traditional Ashkenazi Jewish condiment that goes with chopped liver. I think that's fried in schmaltz instead of peanut oil. If my mom's reads this, maybe she'll clarify in the comments.

You'll need:
1 small onion, halved and thinly sliced
1 large pinch of salt
1/2 cup oil for shallow frying

1. Toss the onion with the salt and spread on a paper towel over a draining rack. Let sit for five minutes.

2. Meanwhile, Heat the oil in a medium pan (cast iron preferably) until the surface shimmers and a test piece of onion sizzles but doesn't burn. Turn heat to medium.

3. Roll up the paper towel and squeeze gently to get a bit more water out of the onions and to get some of the salt to stick to the paper towel.

4. Add the onion to the pan in a single layer. Cook, stirring frequently, for 5 to 7 minutes, until the onions are a golden brown.

5. Remove onions to a new paper towel spread over the rack. Let sit for 15 minutes. They'll darken a little and get crispier.

6. Save the oil for deep frying the tofu.


OK, now back to the main recipe.

1. Start some rice cooking. Short grain and kind of sticky would be appropriate. Sushi rice is a fair approximation if you don't rinse it.

2. Cut the tofu into inch-thick slices. Pat dry and maybe squeeze out some of the moisture. Heat oil the same way as for the onions and fry at least until light brown on both sides. I prefer to go a little longer, but it's up to you. Remove to a paper towel on a draining rack and set aside.

3. Put a medium pot of water on the boil.

4. In a mortar, crush the garlic, chili and sugar until enough juice has been released to dissolve the sugar. Add the soy sauce, water, lemon juice and peanut butter and stir until fairly smooth.

5. When the water has boiled add the bean sprouts. Wait until the water has returned to a boil, no more than 30 seconds. You just want a quick blanch. Remove bean sprouts.

6. Cut the tofu into cubes. Or don't if you don't want to.

7. For each serving, put the rice in a bowl, then the tofu, cover with the bean sprouts, spoon over the sauce and garnish with the scallions and onions. You can serve hot or at room temperature, but remember that room temperature in Java is around 85 degrees.

(both recipes are adapted from The Indonesian Kitchen by Copeland Marks and Mintari Soeharjo)


In each bite you can get soft rice, chewy tofu, crunchy bean sprouts and scallions and the crisp onions. The tofu gains a savory flavor from the frying, the sauce is sweet and earthy, the onions salty and the vegetables...um...herbaceous? Anyway, there's an enormous amount going on for such a simple dish. And if you don't care about that, it's just really tasty.

It occurs to me that this dish has kid-friendly flavors and is pretty easy to pack (rice, tofu and vegetables in one bowl, sauce in another and a small bag of onions). I'll bet it makes a mighty impressive elementary school lunch. (It probably makes an impressive work lunch too, but my coworkers have long ceased inquiring about all but the most aromatic of what I've brought in.) If any mothers want to try it, do please report back on how it goes.

The Indonesian Pantry

If you're not familiar with Indonesian herbs and spices there were a lot of unfamiliar terms in that last post. There may have unfamiliar terms even if you do know Indonesian cooking; there are a lot of languages in Indonesia and these ingredients are used in southeast Asia too so I know of at least a couple names for each. In this post I'll give a basic introduction to everything I used along with one common characteristic Indonesian ingredient that didn't make it into these two dishes. I believe you can get everything I mention here at Lucky Oriental Mart at 8356 Bird Road. That's right across from Tropical Chinese restaurant, one of the few good places for dim sum in Miami.

Kemiri nuts, a.k.a. Candle nuts
This is a large oily nut similar in scent to macadamias (which can be substituted if you can find them raw and unsalted). They're common in curries. They're poisonous when raw and I've never seen a recipe where they're the primary flavor in a dish so I can't actually say what they taste like.

Salam leaves, a.k.a. Indian Bay leaves, a.k.a. Curry leaves
There's room for a fair bit of confusion here as I've seen salam leaves labeled as Indian bay and as curry leaves and I've seen casia leaves labelled the same way. Or possibly I've seen casia leaves labelled as salam leaves. Casia can be substituted so grab whatever you find on the shelf. Salam leaves smell a somewhat like black tea with lemon. They are also mainly used as grace notes in complex dishes. I've just now learned that I'm supposed to have been soaking these before using them. Huh.

Laos, a.k.a. Galangal
I'm not actually certain of this as the descriptions in a couple of cookbooks I have don't exactly match and the proprietors of the Indonesian grocery in Manhattan I used to go were actually Thai so they weren't certain either. I haven't shopped for these at Lucky yet so I'll have to take a look to see what they've got. Galagal, at least, is the dried slices of a root related to ginger with a similar but somewhat more floral flavor. Laos is definitely the dried slices of a root of some sort. (That cool pop-art background is my raw meat cutting board, by the way.)

Tamarind, a.k.a. Thai fruit paste
You've probably seen tamarind soda around and the fresh pods in Miami markets. In Indonesian cooking it's more commonly in the form of an intensely sweet and sour concentrated paste. As in the two recipes I made, it is disolved in at least an equal amount of water and then strained if your sauce doesn't already have lumps of a half dozen different things floating in it.

Shrimp paste a.k.a. shrimp sauce
You can find two sorts of shrimp sauces in Oriental markets: a foul-smelling fermented paste and a shrimp-chili-salt mixture. While the latter has its uses (and is commonly used in Filipino cooking), you want the former. It's rather unpleasant by itself (and you'll want to keep it tightly sealed and the bottle in a plastic bag in the refrigerator. But a quarter teaspoon brings out a lot of flavors in a recipe. It's kind of like adding a little soy sauce to a mushroom risotto to bring out the mushrooms' mushroominess.

Jeruk Purut, a.k.a. Dried citrus peel
This is the dried peel of the citron, a close relative of the lemon. It tastes of lemon and jasmine.


Finally, we've got the two common Indonesian condiments:
Kecap Manis
This is a thick sweet soy sauce also used as an ingredient. It goes well with barbeque and most coconut milk based sauces.

Sambal
'Sambal' is the Indonesian word for 'mixture' so it turns up a fair bit in recipes. It is also used for a typical hot pepper sauce that also includes salt, garlic and vinegar. Vietnamese chili garlic sauce is just about the same thing. You want the thick sort with the chili seeds that you spoon out of bowls at Vietnamese restaurants, not the bright orange stuff in the squeeze bottle. (Sorry, I couldn't get a good picture of my bottle.)

I think that covers it. If any of you decide to give Indonesian cooking a try do please let me know. Or if you know that I've made some mistakes here, do please let me know that, too.