Gado Gado has simply got to be one of Indonesia’s best contribution to the culinary world. This superior-tasting dish is a combination of simple ingredients put together in a simple manner, yet yielding extraordinarily wonderful results. Gado gado consists of an assortment of lightly blanched vegetables such as cabbage, ‘kang kung’ (Water Spinach), bean sprouts, string beans, boiled potatoes, lightly fried tofu, peeled and sliced boiled eggs, fresh cucumbers and lettuce, tofu, tempeh (an Indonesian traditional fermented soy product with a nutty texture) and crunchy prawn fritters (‘keropok’), all coated in generous amounts of homemade peanut sauce.
This dish is an incredibly healthy one, which is a definite bonus as it allows you to gleefully help yourself to a second serving, minus the guilt. As all the vegetables are either raw or blanched, they tend to retain their vitamins and minerals, giving you mouthfuls of nutrients with each bite. However, vegetables containing Vitamins B and C has the tendency of losing up to 75% of their vitamin content during this process as they are water soluble vitamins. Worry not, for I have some tips to reduce this loss! Firstly, it is a good idea to keep the water that the vegetables are boiled and blanched in, and use it as a stock when preparing your finger-licking peanut sauce. I would also advice against chopping the vegetables thinly. Besides preventing you from enjoying their flavours in a more satisfying manner, chopping them thinly increases their surface area and hence their exposure to water, thus allowing more precious water-soluble vitamins to be drained out. Another important tip is to only add in the vegetables when the water is boiling and you see those translucent bubbles making their way to the surface of the liquid in a hurried manner. This ensures that the vegetables will only have minimal contact with the hot water, allowing them to preserve their nutrient content.
This dish is definitely a hearty one, and it can be eaten as a complete meal. Some people favour the idea of adding lontong (boiled rice which has been compressed and cut into cubes) to this dish. Their plain flavour goes amazingly with the peanut sauce, and they succeed in making the meal heavier besides being an excellent source of carbohydrates. The eggs, tofu and tempeh provides proteins, whereas the vegetables supply a host of vitamins and minerals. All in all, this dish is a pretty complete and mouth-watering one, and the best part is you could prepare it in no time at all!
Prep time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 10 minutes
Serves: 4
1 hardboiled chicken egg, cut to 2cm thickness
1 cup cabbage, blanched and chopped roughly
1/2 cucumber, skin and seeds removed and cut lengthways
1/2 cup beansprouts, blanched
1/2 shop bought fried tofu, cut to 2cm thickness
For the peanut sauce,
200g or a handful or roasted peanuts, outer skin removed
2 garlic cloves, skin removed
2 birds eye chilly
1 cm fresh galangal/ginger root
2 shallots
1 tablespoon palm sugar
1 tablespoon lime juice, seeds discarded
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon shrimp paste
1 teaspoon black soy sauce
2 tablespoon peanut oil
boiled water, adjust according to consistency
1. Blend peanuts, garlic, shallots, birds eye chillies, galangal, palm sugar, salt, black soy sauce, shrimp paste and a little bit of water together.
2. Remove blended ingredients from blender and pour it into a pan filled with peanut oil
3. Stir fry ingredients over low heat for 8-10 minutes
4. Add lime juice to the peanut sauce
5. Arrange blanched vegetables and tofu on a clean plate.
6. Drizzle peanut sauce over vegetables
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