Vietnamese Peach Salsa

I don't recall ever eating a peach in Vietnam.  Here, in northern California, peaches are abundant and deliciously sweet in summer.  Although I never cared from them much when growing up, I've become very fond of them in recent years.  I particularly enjoy white peaches, which have an ambrosial sweetness.  This recipe came about when I was chewing on some rau ram (daun laksa) and thought it would be an interesting match with peaches.  I was right.

This salsa would be great with grilled fish, chicken, or pork.  It also goes nicely with arugula for a quick summer salad.  Here it is simply served with Vietnamese sesame rice crackers--banh trang me--which I crisped in the microwave.

As with most salsas, this is quick and easy to prepare, and tastes best the day it is made.  You could certainly add more shallots, make it spicier with more chilies, or vary it to your taste.  The rau ram should be easily found in Vietnamese markets.  It is the herb that makes this a Vietnamese salsa for me.

Vietnamese Peach Salsa

3 to 4 peaches, peeled and diced (I used a mix of white and yellow freestone peaches)
3 TBS chopped rau ram
2 TBS lime juice
1 TBS shallots, peeled and finely chopped
1 TBS young ginger, grated or finely minced
2 tsp granulated sugar
1 tsp fish sauce
2--4 thai chilies, seeded and minced
2 kaffir lime leaves, central vein removed, finely minced

Mix ingredients together in a bowl.  Wait 20 minutes for flavors to meld. Can be made several hours ahead of time, but best served the day it is made.

Roti Jala

I gather from my nieces that in recent years Malaysia has tried to claim credit from Java for the development of batik.  While I'll definitely side with Indonesia on this issue, I believe Malaysia gets the nod for roti jala.

A crepe-like bread to accompany curries, roti jala is not something I have actually come across in Malaysia or Indonesia.  I first became aware of it several years ago when I bought a copy of Authentic Recipes from Malaysia, which calls them lacy Indian pancakes.  Named for its fishnet resemblance, roti jala is traditionally made with a special funnel with four or five spouts to form the net-like pattern.  I was at a Sundanese restaurant last summer that had several varieties of the funnels as decoration on its walls, suggesting that, at least in the past,  roti jala was enjoyed in Java.  The funnel I use is an inexpensive plastic one that I picked up in Singapore.  One could get much the same effect with more effort using a plastic squeeze bottle.

The recipe here is adapted from Resep Klasik Jajanan Pasar (Classic Market Snack Recipes), which contains 270 recipes for snacks that are often sold in Indonesian markets.  As supermarkets supplant the traditional markets, some of these snacks will undoubtedly disappear. One of the interesting things about the book is that one of the co-authors is a Japanese woman, Tomomi Kimura, who was studying at UGM in Yogya.  She collaborated with a catering company in compiling the recipes.

 

Roti Jala

printable recipe

1/4 cup thick coconut milk
1 3/4 cup water
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1 egg, beaten
pinch of turmeric (optional)
vegetable oil to grease the pan

In a bowl, whisk together the coconut milk, water, salt, turmeric (if using), and egg.  Gradually whisk in the flour until you have a smooth batter, about the consistency of whipping cream.  Strain the batter through a fine sieve to remove any possible lumps.  This is important if using a roti jala funnel because even the smallest lumps can clog the spouts.

Heat a large non-stick skillet over medium heat.  Pour in a splash of vegetable oil and rub it into the surface with a paper towel.  Ladle some batter into the funnel (if using), holding the funnel about a half-inch to an inch over the skillet.  Move the funnel in circular pattern to form a lacy, fishnet-like crepe.  Cook until the crepe is set and the edges begin to lift and curl from the pan.  Slide onto a clean plate.  Roll or fold into eighths.  Continue until all the batter is finished. 

This makes about 16-20 crepes.  Serve it with curries or other saucy dishes.  I served it here with an excellent Burmese shrimp curry from Naomi Duguid's Burma: Rivers of Flavor.  I'll be posting my take on this dish soon.

Sambal Serai--Lemongrass Sambal

 

Sambal is a part of just about every Indonesian meal.  Sambals can be cooked, raw, with vegetables or proteins, complex, or simple.  Some varieties can be found here.  Sambal ulek (usually seen in markets with the Dutch spelling, sambal oelek) is the most basic of sambals, simply freshly ground chilies and salt.  Sambals may be served alone as a snack, or as an accent to spark grilled fish or fried chicken.  You decide how much sambal your bowl of soto needs, but no soto is complete without it.

Sambal sereh is a cooked sambal that is a great accompaniment to grilled chicken, but also tastes great as a dip for rengginang or krupuk.  Although not for the faint-hearted, the level of heat can be adjusted by the types of chilies used.  Here in Sacramento, the Asian farmers market--a few blocks west of the official Sunday farmers market--finds the stalls overflowing with a variety of  chilies, some hot, others blistering.  Cabai rawit--bird chilies--are particularly hot and can be found throughout the year in local markets.  Cabai keriting--curly chilies--are hot, but not as hot as cabai rawit.  They are rarely found in local markets or at other farmers markets, but they do appear in late summer at the Asian farmers market. 

The Indonesian recipe that I adapted this from calls for 100 grams of cabai keriting.  I used about 80 grams and added a gypsy pepper, a mild red pepper.  This made for a very hot sambal, but one that I can still enjoy just eating with rengginang.  If you prefer a milder sambal, use fewer of the curly chilies and more of the gypsy chili or red bell pepper.  I suppose vegetarians could leave out the dried shrimp and terasi, but the sambal would be less complex.  Terasi (belacan) is an acquired taste, but once you've become accustomed to it, you will long for it.

Sambal Serai--Lemongrass Sambal

printable recipe

80 grams (a good handful) chilies  (cabai keriting, but any hot red chili may be used), seeded
1 mild red pepper
3 cloves of garlic, peeled and minced
2 tsp ebi (dried shrimp), soaked in 2 TBS warm water for a few minutes and drained
1 tsp salt
1--2 TBS gula jawa (palm sugar)
1 TBS terasi (fermented shrimp paste)
3  tomatoes, roughly chopped
2 TBS vegetable oil
3/4 cup of water
2 stalks of lemongrass, outer leaves removed, crushed with a pestle and tied into a knot

In a blender or food processor, process the chilies and red pepper until you have a fairly smooth paste. Reserve.  Grind the garlic and salt to a smooth paste in a mortar.  Add the drained ebi, gula jawa, and terasi and grind with a pestle until smooth.  Add the tomatoes and continue to grind until all the ingredients are well mixed.
Heat a frying pan.  Add the oil and then the tomato and garlic mixture.  Fry until fragrant, then stir in water.  Add the chili paste and lemongrass. While stirring, cook over low heat until the mixture thickens.  Ideally, you want a sambal that is moist but not too liquid.  Scrape as much of the sambal as you can from the lemongrass.  Suck what remains on the stalks and count your blessings.

Serve the sambal with grilled/fried fish or chicken.  Or add to an omelet.  Or use as a dip for crackers, chips, krupuk, or rengginang.  Any way you serve it, you will enjoy.

Giving Thanks

Despite its excess, its gaudy commercialization and celebration of intemperate consumption, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It is not the food, for I don’t particularly care for turkey or pumpkin pie, but the communal celebration, the sharing a meal with the people who matter in my life, that holds Thanksgiving’s appeal.

I am fortunate in that most of my close relatives live nearby. My mother lives about 7 miles away in the house I grew up in, a house she and my father bought in the early 50s. My brother and his wife live 3 or 4 miles from her. My sister and her husband, in whose house we will celebrate Thanksgiving, live about half an hour drive away up in the foothills. Two of my wife’s cousins and a nephew live about a mile from us. Although we get together in different combinations many times throughout the year, on Thanksgiving we all gather together for a few hours.

The absence of a loved one—a soldier deployed overseas, a family member who has moved away or cut off contact with others, a hospitalization or death—the void of this absence resonates at Thanksgiving like at no other time. We come together to share our blessings, to bask in the company of each other. That absence reminds us of both our good fortune and our loss, evoking memories of Thanksgivings past and awareness of losses to come.

The foods of Thanksgiving, the familiar dishes we return to year after year, anchor our celebrations. While some pimp the traditional with whatever the current culinary rage might be—cranberry foam on spherical turkey ravioli with bacon crusted Brussels sprouts—most of us long for the comforting reassurance of the dishes we remember from when we were children, and were loved and protected from the world. We might not like the green bean casserole with cream of mushroom soup and fried onions from a can, but if that is what we had as children, we find comfort in its presence on the table.

This Thanksgiving we will be missing someone special. I’ve known my sister-in-law’s mother, Teddy, since I was in high school, when Richard Nixon was President and we were still fighting the Vietnam War. She has always been an extremely gracious, giving person with an unflappable air of calm about her. While my sister-in-law might be raging or bubbling over with excitement, Teddy would always murmur, “Oh, Lisa,” or “hmm, hmm. That sounds wonderful.” Over the years, Ted and Fred (my sister-in-law’s father), have been extremely generous towards our family, welcoming not only my wife, but also her extended family of cousins, nieces, and nephew.

Teddy passed on all her cooking skills to her daughter, so it’s fortunate that Lisa married someone who likes to cook. Otherwise, Lisa would be living on a diet of canned, boxed, and frozen food. Teddy tells of the time she cooked her first Thanksgiving turkey and was so pleased to find the turkey came pre-stuffed, not realizing until after it was cooked that the neck, gizzards and liver weren’t intended as stuffing.

Someone else cooks the turkeys for our Thanksgiving dinners, but Teddy’s cranberry jello mold has been a fixture for many years. Although Teddy won’t be able to make it to this year’s gathering, her jello will be there. As difficult it sometimes is to please Tjing’s demanding palate, she loves Ted’s jello salad. Fortunately, Tjing requested the recipe from Teddy several years ago, and, of course, Teddy graciously passed it on. Shopping for the ingredients this week, I was unable to find either the Cranberry Jello or the Raspberry Jello called for in the recipe. I substituted Black Cherry Jello for the cranberry and a generic raspberry gelatin for the Jello brand.

Holiday Jello Salad

(recipe courtesy of Teddy)

1 large pkg Cranberry & Fruit Jello
1 small pkg Raspberry Jello
3 cups boiling water
1 can whole berry cranberry sauce
2 small cans mandarin oranges, drained
1 large can crushed pineapple plus juice
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

In a large bowl dissolve the two jellos in the boiling water. Add cranberry sauce and stir to dissolve. Stir in mandarin orange segments and pineapple. Mix in walnuts. Pour mixture into jello mold(s) and chill until set.

Tempeh Kering

Ok, you've made your tempeh, now what? One dish that is popular with the Javanese is tempeh kering--a sweet/savory dish that is like eating sticky, spicy candied pecans. Besides tempeh and laos (galingal--a relative to ginger that is used in a lot of Indonesian and Thai dishes), tempeh kering has chilies, shallots, garlic and tamarind, along with a load of palm sugar. By itself it would probably be too sweet for most palates, but it is a very pleasing complement to other Indonesian dishes. The central Javanese are known to have a particular fondness for sweet dishes, and this is a dish that one can readily find at rumah makans in Central Java.






Tempeh Kering
Approximately 14 ounces of tempeh (one block of the homemade tempeh), sliced into pieces 2" x 3/4" x 1/3"
2 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
2--4 shallots, thinly sliced (shallots in Asian markets tend to be smaller)
1 TBS tamarind concentrate in 1/2 cup water
4 red chilies thinly sliced
5--9 TBS gula jawa (palm sugar), you can substitute dark brown sugar, but it's not quite the same
3--4 quarter size slices of laos (galingal)
several daun salam (salam leaves)
1/2 tsp kosher or sea salt
oil for frying

Fry the tempeh slices in several batches. Each batch takes about 3 minutes or so. Make sure the oil isn't too hot or you'll burn the outside of the tempeh while the inside will remain soft. You want a uniform crispness. Drain and set aside

Pour off most of the oil. Fry garlic and shallots over low heat until softened but not browned.

Add chilies and sugar. Fry until sugar is melted. (Gula Jawa is sold in cylindrical
packages. Although it is solid, it should still be soft and fairly easy to slice into coins. I didn't have any gula jawa in when making this recipe and used Mexican palm sugar, piloncillo, which is much harder. I dissolved this in the water for the tamarind in the microwave and then added to the chilie, shallot mixture.)

Add tamarind water, laos slices, daun salam and salt. Reduce the liquid until it is syrupy and fold in the fried tempeh. Serve with rice and other dishes.