Vegetarian recipes from Indonesia

In Indonesia, meatless protein comes from one bean treated two ways: soy pressed into tofu, and soy fermented into a firm cake, tempeh, whose home is Java. Fried in thin slices it becomes tempeh goreng, eaten as a snack or added to rice. The second pillar is the peanut, pounded into a thick sauce with garlic, chilli, palm sugar and tamarind: it binds gado-gado and pecel, two plates of blanched vegetables where the sauce makes the dish as much as the vegetables do.

The aromatic base is called bumbu: shallot, garlic, chilli and candlenut ground to a paste and cooked slowly in oil before anything else is added. Coconut milk extends that paste into a vegetable broth such as sayur lodeh, where squash, long beans and tofu cook together. Rice stays at the centre, served warm and ringed with small portions; reheated in a pan with chilli paste and thick sweet soy sauce it becomes vegetarian nasi goreng. A sweet-hot condiment and crackers almost always come alongside.