Indonesian Gado Gado - a delicious “blend”
March 27th, 2020 | main dishes
Gado Gado is an Indonesian national dish (one of the few without rice) that could be described as a large, colorful vegetable plate with exotic peanut dressing. If Gado Gado is served in the crew mess, my dearest captain usually gets a bright and proud message from an Indonesian crewmember: “Today it’s Gado Gado, Captain!” Because he likes this dish so much, we now prepare it at home from time to time…
Literally translated, Gado Gado means “blend”, because you can put together all kinds of vegetables either raw or blanched. In addition to the vegetables, boiled eggs, krupuk and fried tofu are essential.
For the peanut sauce there are certainly an infinite number of different variants and each family has its own secret recipe. I got the following from an Indonesian chef – it’s delicious!
Indonesian Gado Gado
(4 servings)
GOOD TO KNOW
* Blanching means: Briefly pre-cooking vegetables in boiling water, then quickly cooling them in ice water.
** Krupuk is an Indonesian cracker made from tapioca flour, salt, ground shrimp and spices. You can get ready-baked Krupuk in the Asian grocery or buy Krupuk chips there and deep fry them fresh at home. It is best to use highly heatable peanut oil as the deep-frying oil. Warning: the crab chips only need seconds in the hot fat, otherwise they turn brown.
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