Pecel
Local name : Pecel
Blanched vegetables under a peanut and kencur sauce, served with crisp rice crackers on the side.
Photo : Gunawan Kartapranata · CC BY-SA 3.0
- Prep
- 20 min
- Cook
- 20 min
- Total
- 40 min
- Serves
- 4
- Difficulty
- Easy
Method
- Fry the peanuts in a little oil for 5 minutes until they brown, then drain them on kitchen paper.
- Fry the chillies and garlic briefly in the same oil, about 1 minute.
- Pound the peanuts, chillies, garlic and kencur in a mortar to a coarse paste. Work in the palm sugar, salt and tamarind until it forms a firm block.
- Blanch the beans for 4 minutes, the spinach for 30 seconds and the bean sprouts for 1 minute, each on its own. Drain and cool.
- Take 3 tbsp of the sauce block and slacken it with 150 ml hot water to the thickness of cream.
- Arrange the vegetables and cucumber on plates, spoon the sauce over and set the krupuk alongside.
The sauce keeps as a firm block for two weeks in the fridge, then gets slackened with hot water one portion at a time. That is how the pecel sellers in East Java markets carry it. Kencur, a rhizome with a camphor scent, can be swapped for galangal if you cannot find it.
