Local name: Gado-gado
Indonesia's great salad, steamed vegetables with golden tofu and tempeh, coated in a spicy peanut sauce and served with krupuk crackers.
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Gado-gado is built from whatever is to hand: spinach, cauliflower or carrots work just as well. The sauce is the heart of the dish, taste it until sweet, salty and sour are in balance.
An estimate computed from the recipe quantities and the USDA food composition database. Real values vary with the products used.
Peanut butter tightens as it cools. Whisk in hot water a spoonful at a time until it coats again. Make it a little looser than you think you need, because it will only thicken further.
Almost always acid or sweetness. Add tamarind or lime in small amounts, then palm sugar, tasting between each. It should read sweet, salty and sour at once before it ever meets the vegetables.
Older tempeh turns more bitter. Browning it properly softens that note, and a minute in warm salted water before frying helps too. Choose tempeh whose white bloom is still clean, without spreading black patches.
Why tofu is not a meat substitute but a carrier of flavour, and traditional Asian techniques to give it real depth and texture.
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Fermented pastes, kombu and dried shiitake, tofu and high heat — four sources of flavour that stand in for meat in Chinese, Japanese and Korean cooking.
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