How To Make Popular Indonesia Salad (Gado Gado)

Gado-Gado is a popular Indonesian salad found at many gerobuks, food courts, and restaurants here in Jakarta.  It consists of boiled vegetables such as cabbage, spinach, carrots, and green beans and is covered in copious amounts of peanut sauce, then topped with fried shallots, fried tofu, fried shrimp crackers, and a hard boiled egg.  The sauce is delicious but in small quantities - typically Jeff and I prefer to pick out the veggies that escape the flood.  Of course I had to try it at home and put a little healthier twist on it. 

To make gado gado, you can use a mixture of cooked and raw vegetables.  I used cooked cabbage, spinach, snake beans, cucumber, lettuce, bean sprouts and potato.  For protein source, I pan fried some firm tofu and boiled an egg. The peanut sauce tops it all, providing essential fats, flavour and satiety to this humble meal.  You can prepare peanut sauce from scratch using dry roasted peanut or purchase ready made peanut or satay sauce from the supermarket. Take care to not overdo the sauce as it is high in fats, about 2 tablespoon of peanut sauce is enough on a plateful of vegetables.

Peanut sauce ingredients

Ingredients:

• 1 cup bean sprouts
• 2 cups spinach leaves
• 1 cup grated carrot
• 1 cup green beans cut into 1" lengths
• 1/4 head cabbage thinly sliced
• 1-2 hard boiled eggs sliced (if desired)

Sauteed tofu (if desired) 

Peanut Sauce Ingredients:

• 1 cup roasted peanuts
• 2 garlic cloves
• 2 finger length chilies (mild), deseeded and sliced
• 1 bird's-eye chili (spicy), deseeded and sliced
• 1" fresh kencur root, peeled and sliced (substitute ginger since this may be hard to find)
• 1 kaffir lime leaf
• 3 T kecap manis (sweet soy sauce - substitute regular soy sauce and a bit of brown sugar)
• 1/2 t salt
• 2 cups water
• 1 t fresh lime juice 

Directions:

1. Make the peanut sauce by coarsely grinding the peanuts, garlic, chilies, and kencur in a food processor.  Add a little water if needed to keep the mixture turning.  
2. Add the peanut mixture, lime leaf, kecap manis, salt, and water to a saucepan and simmer on low for about 1 hour stirring every 5 minutes or so.  Remove from heat and stir in lime juice.
3. Blanch the vegetables in salted, boiling water for the following times: green beans - 5 mins, cabbage - 3 mins, carrots and bean sprouts - 2 mins, and spinach - 1 min.  Add them to the pot in order listed so they are finished at the same time.  Remove from heat and drain well.
4. Arrange the salad on a serving dish and top with a few spoonfuls of the Gado-Gado sauce.  Add eggs and/or tofu.  Serve the remaining sauce on the side for those that want extra. 

The word  gado gado means ‘eaten without rice’ which implies it is a complete meal.  It is no wonder as this dish is one of the most complete nutritionally providing a good balance of protein, fats and carbohydrate with plenty of fibre.  It is a very filling salad, perfect for work lunches and better as a main meal.

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