Mock fish sambal goreng with coconut greens

November 19. 2017

This is a slightly involved but deeply rewarding meal that Michael and I teamed up on, on a quiet Sunday. We were clearly feeling a little nostalgic for the holiday we had in Bali a couple of months ago!

The meal centres on a mock fish sambal goreng recipe from Sri Owen's Indonesian Food, a cookbook that long pre-dates our holiday. It's not intended to be vegetarian, but I glibly replaced the fish and shrimp paste with vegan imitations. I also subbed in a little almond meal for a couple of candlenuts in the spice paste, and was pretty generous with my use of tamarind concentrate and coconut milk. The spice paste is designed to be tangy and complex, and the sauce rich and runny. It was largely a success, and we reveled in drenching our salty 'fish' pieces and steamed rice in it. Nevertheless, I'll try reducing the coconut milk quantity next time, because it came close to smothering a really great spice paste.

Our accompaniment comes straight from our holiday cooking class, a flexible blanched-greens-and-coconut salad. It's robust to haphazard treatment, even benefiting from a bit of bruising to release the makrut lime flavour, and a bit of time at rest before being served. Sprinkling the fried shallots on just as it's being served guarantees it'll feel fancy.

Michael cheerfully gloated his way through the leftovers, packed for lunch, while I was committed to catering at a work function. I reckon we'll both have the appetite to make more of this soon.

Mock fish sambal goreng
(slightly adapted from a recipe in Sri Owen's Indonesian Food)

spice paste/bumbu
4 shallots, peeled and roughly chopped
2 garlic cloves, peeled and roughly chopped
3 large red chillies, stem and seeds removed then roughly chopped
1 teaspoon mock shrimp paste
1 generous teaspoon almond meal
1 teaspoon fresh ginger, roughly chopped
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon fresh galangal, roughly chopped
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons peanut oil
2 tablespoons liquid tamarind concentrate
2 tablespoons coconut milk

other sauce ingredients
850mL coconut milk
5cm stem lemongrass
2 makrut lime leaves
3 small tomatoes, roughly chopped
salt

1 tablespoon peanut oil
250g mock cod fillet, sliced into bite-sized pieces

Place the spice paste ingredients in a spice grinder or food processor and blend until smooth.

Set a medium-large saucepan over medium heat and add in the spice paste, stirring, for 5 minutes. Add the coconut milk, lemongrass and lime leaves, and bring everything to the boil. Turn down the heat to medium and cook, stirring regularly, for 50 minutes. Add the tomatoes and salt, and simmer for a further 10 minutes. Set the sauce aside.

Heat the peanut oil in a frypan over medium heat, and fry the mock fish until lightly browned on at least one side. Pour over the sauce and cook for 5 minutes, season to taste. Serve with steamed rice and coconut kailan.



Coconut greens
(slightly adapted from a recipe shared at Casa Luna Cooking School)

1 cup grated coconut
1 large bunch kailan or other green vegetable
2 tablespoons sambal
3 makrut lime leaves, shredded finely
1 tablespoon fried shallots
salt, to taste

Preheat an oven to 150°C. Place the coconut in a dry tray and gently roast it for up to 30 minutes; check and stir it every five minutes and remove it when it starts becoming golden (gold is great, but don't risk burning it!).

While the coconut is roasting, bring a large pot of water to the boil. Trim the stems from the kailan and chop it into large pieces. When the water is boiling, blanch the kailan for abotu 2 minutes, then drain.

In a medium large bowl, stir together all the ingredients, including the roast coconut and kailan. You can be a bit rough, allowing the ingredients to bruise and the flavours to mingle.

Black rice icecream

September 10-11, 2011

This black rice icecream was the rich finale to our Bali-inspired banquet. I was very pleased for the excuse to try something from the icecream section in Sri Owen's Indonesian Food, which is influenced as much by her travels to Italy as her country of birth. Between my pantry constraints, time constraints and vegan constraints, the recipe I've written below departs quite a bit from the original but is still pretty good.

For starters, there was no question that I'd be replacing the dairy. With so much coconut milk in the original recipe I didn't hesitate to take it all the way. My bigger challenge was locating black glutinous rice in my neighbourhood. None of my weekday haunts had any, and it was 3pm on Saturday by the time I brought a bag home from the Asian grocery near the Queen Victoria Markets. I slashed the rice soaking time by two thirds and the simmering time by another third, needing the mixture to be back in the fridge before we headed out for birthday party. As a consequence my rice was soft but not porridgy, and I decided to strain it out.

Even strained, this icecream was a rather fetching mauve, with a very gentle sweetness from the coconut and rice as much as the palm sugar and agave. I'd like to make another batch, giving the rice the full time it wants, to taste it at full rice power.

Black rice icecream
(adapted from a recipe in Sri Owen's Indonesian Food)

70g black glutinous rice
560mL coconut cream
400mL coconut milk
1/4 teaspoon salt
small cinnamon stick
1 1/2 tablespoons palm sugar
1 tablespoon agave nectar

Cover the rice with cool water and let it soak for 2 1/2 hours (original recipe has 4-8hours so go longer if you can!). Drain the rice and place it in a saucepan with the coconut cream, coconut milk, salt, cinnamon and palm sugar. Bring it all to the boil, then keep it on a high simmer for an hour, stirring regularly. (The original recipe had a 1 hour 35 minute simmer, bringing the well-soaked rice to a thick porridge.) My rice was still very granular, but also very tender. Refrigerate the mixture until completely cold, about 4 hours.

Transfer the mixture to a food processor and add the agave nectar. Blend until as smooth as possible. Optionally, strain out the rice (I did). Churn it in an icecream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions, then freeze until firm.

Mock crab cakes

September 11, 2011

As promised, here's a recipe for mock crab cakes! It's based on a recipe for real crab cakes in Sri Owen's Indonesian Food. Michael efficiently chopped up all the aromatic elements while the potatoes boiled. I mashed up some chickpeas and stirred together a cornflour paste as replacements for the crab meat and egg.

While the shallow-frying in a very hot wok had me a little anxious, these turned out very nicely; most of the cakes held together with a lightly golden crust. Inside they're a little mushy - I'd like to try leaving the chickpeas half-mashed next time for a little extra texture, though I fear it would also lead to more crumbling.

These mock crab cakes derive almost all their flavour from the 'extras' - the lemongrass, chilli flakes, kaffir lime leaves and ginger are not delicate. It's important to chop them up as finely as you (or your cooking partner!) can. I liked dragging the patties across my plate through the rujak dressing, and I wonder what dipping sauce I could otherwise serve them with. I think it'd start with kecap manis and tamarind.

Mock crab cakes

(adapted from a recipe for real crab cakes
in Sri Owen's Indonesian Food)

2 x 400g cans chickpeas, rinsed and drained, then lightly mashed

225g waxy potatoes, peeled and boiled until tender, then mashed

3 tablespoons finely chopped spring onions

3 tablespoons finely chopped flat leaf parsley

2 tablespoons finely chopped kaffir lime leaves

1 tablespoon finely chopped lemongrass, inner part only

1 teaspoon finely chopped ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric

1 teaspoon chilli flakes

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 tablespoons cornflour, made into a paste with 2 tablespoons water

vegetable oil for shallow frying

The ingredients will take a while to prepare. Drain and rinse those chickpeas, get the potatoes on to boil, and then do all that chopping. Mash the chickpeas and potatoes together in a bowl, then stir through the remaining ingredients (frying oil excepted). Form the mixture into small patties with your hands and place them on a tray. Refrigerate the patties for about half an hour.

Heat the oil in a frypan or wok and shallow-fry the patties in batches until they form a lightly golden crust. Drain the cooked patties on absorbent paper. Serve with salad and a sauce of your choice.

July 10, 2011: Tempeh Rendang

Cindy's enthusiasm for her newest cookbook spilled over into Sunday, with our afternoon plan revolving around the long, slow process of making ourselves a rendang. The original recipe in Sri Owen's book was for a beef rendang, but she provided some basic instructions on how to switch the beef out for tempeh, the traditional Indonesian veg protein. Making this dish is a commitment! We ended up simmering things for around three hours to reduce the 2 litres of coconut milk down to the dryish final product pictured above.

I made a mistake in transferring the mix to our electric wok while it was still too watery, meaning it didn't quite fry off and brown the way I was hoping it would, but it still worked out okay. The spice paste seemed like it would be super flavoursome when I whizzed it up, but the coconut milk took most of the sting out of it, making this a bit milder than I prefer. Next time I'd probably increase the various spices by 50% or so and maybe drop out a can of coconut milk - I wonder if maybe beef soaks up the liquid more than tempeh does? Still, it was pretty fun to watch this slowly turn from a big soupy mess into a wok full of chunky spice-crusted tempeh. I reckon we'll make this again, but with the few tweaks discussed above.


Tempeh Rendang
(adapted slightly from the recipe for rendang daging in Indonesian food by Sri Owen)

6 shallots, sliced
4 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced
1 inch piece of ginger, peeled and chopped
1 inch piece of turmeric, peeled and chopped
6-10 fresh red chillies, seeded
1 inch piece of galangal, peeled and chopped
(I would increase the quantities of all of the above next time!)
2 litres of coconut milk
1-2 bay leaves
1 lemongrass stem
2 teaspoons salt
1.2 kg tempeh, cut into 2cm cubes

Blend the shallots, garlic, ginger, turmeric, chillies and galangal with 4 tablespoons of the coconut milk until it all turns into a smooth paste.

Combine this paste with the rest of the coconut in a large pot, add the tempeh and the rest of the ingredients.

Stir it all together and bring to a gentle simmer, uncovered for an hour and a half or so. I gave up after 90 minutes, but probably should have kept going. You want a fairly thick coconut milk mush that has reduced down substantially.

Transfer the whole mixture to a wok and keep cooking, until the coconut milk starts to turn oily and starts to fry rather than boil. Once the frying starts, you need to stir constantly. Keep cooking until all the coconut milk has disappeared and the oil has been absorbed into the coating on the tempeh. Take out the lemongrass and bay leaves and serve with steamed rice.

July 9, 2011: Peanut rice chips

During our Easter holiday I picked up a heavily discounted copy of Indonesian Food by Sri Owen. It was a great buy, well timed. Our days by the beach were largely rained out so I had plenty of hours to browse the gorgeous glossy photos and read the text from front to back. Owen links the recipes and ingredients to the various phases of her life and a little of the local history and customs, from cooking with her grandmother as a child through to street snacks, the dishes of her student days, travelling all over (and eating and making ice cream!), setting up her own shop in London, writing book after book and modernising the recipes of Central Java.

There are a few vegetarian recipes scattered throughout (Indonesia is the home of tempeh after all!) and there are plenty more that I'm determined to adapt - the spice mixes are just too irresistible. (And did I mention the ice cream? Ahem.) The first recipe I've tried out is ready to go as-is: vegan and gluten free, straight up. Rempeyek kacang had me hooked the moment I read Owen's translated name: savoury peanut brittle. I wasn't even perturbed by the prospect of deep-frying.

This is essentially a thin batter made from rice flour, dotted with peanuts, and shallow-fried first into small rounds. Then the rounds get deep-fried for extra crispiness and deeper flavour. I had trouble getting the peanuts to stick within the batter (hence the free-floating ones in the picture above) - they just clumped in the centre while the batter stretched out across the pan, then fell off the dough as I transferred it to a plate. The reference picture was ruthlessly cropped and I wasn't quite sure what these were supposed to look like or if they were going to get crispy enough. There were totally crispy enough... just not containing many peanuts. Imperfect but delightful!

Next time I think I'll try spooning out the batter to fry and then spreading the peanuts on top, instead of mixing them directly into the batter. I might also try doubling the garlic. Owen notes that rempeyek kacang can have chopped chilli, garlic, chives, crushed peppercorns or shredded kaffir lime leaves stirred into the batter. The latter is going into my next batch for sure.

Peanut rice chips
(adapted slightly from the recipe for rempeyek kacang in Indonesian food by Sri Owen)

2 macadamia nuts
1 clove garlic (I'll double this next time)
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 teaspoon salt, plus extra
100g rice flour
optional: chopped chilli, garlic, chives, crushed peppercorns or shredded kaffir lime leaves
100g peanuts
200ml water
peanut oil

Mush together the macadamias and garlic in a mortar and pestle to make a paste. Put them in a bowl and blend in the coriander and salt. Mix in the rice flour, then whisk in the water. Add any optional flavours you want. Sprinkle in the peanuts and stir them through the batter (or don't yet - leaving them to the dry-fry stage next time).

Heat a tablespoon of oil in a non-stick frypan and have a plate lined with absorbent paper at the ready. Drop tablespoons of the batter into the hot pan and fry them for 1-2 minutes, then rest the fried discs on the paper-lined plate. (Next time I will try sprinkling the peanuts directly onto the frying batter discs before they set.)

When all the batter is cooked, transfer any remaining oil to a saucepan or wok; add more so that you can deep-fry and heat it all up. Line another plate with absorbent paper. Deep-fry a few discs at a time until they're golden and crisp, transferring them to the new plate to cool.

When you're ready to snack, transfer the chips to a bowl and sprinkle them with a little more salt. Store any leftovers in an airtight container.