SAMBAL BAJAK

Servings: 1
Ingredients:

1/2 lb Red hot chilies (fresh),          1/2 t  Laos powder
-chopped coarsely                   1 T  Trasi (dried
1 lg Onion                                    -shrimp paste)
6    Garlic cloves                       1 t  Salt
8    Kemiri nuts,                        5 T  Tamarind liquid
-chopped fine                       2 T  Sugar
3 T  Peanut oil

Chop the chilies, onion and garlic in a food processor. In a small frying
pan, saute this mixture in oil until well-cooked. Do not brown. Add the
kemiri nuts, laos, trasi and salt. Stir and mash until it is well blended.
Add the tamarind liquid and sugar; simmer until the oil separates out. Cool
and serve cold.

NOTES:

* Fried chili-pepper sambal relish — Indonesia is not known to have
nuclear weapon capability, but visitors to Djakarta often suspect that if
enough Sambal Bajak is put into an artillery shell it will have the same
general effect. Indonesian hosts normally warn Westerners that this is ‘an
acquired taste.’

* Laos is a form of ginger. Other names for it are galangal, Java root,
galingale, or lengkuas. If you can’t find it, use about 1 t of powdered
ginger mixed with about 1/4 t of powdered cinnamon. Trasi is shrimp paste;
it can be left out. Tamarind liquid is made by soaking dried tamarind pulp
in hot water for 1 hour and then straining. To make about 5 T of tamarind
liquid, use about 1/4 cup of pulp and about 1/2 cup of hot water.

: Difficulty: easy if you have the ingredients.
: Time: 30 minutes.
: Precision: approximate measurement OK.

: Brian Reid
: DEC Western Research Laboratory, Palo Alto, CA
: reid@decwrl.DEC.COM -or- decwrl!reid

: Copyright (C) 1986 USENET Community Trust

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