Recipe : Sayur Lodeh

Sayur lodeh is a popular Indonesian vegetable stew in coconut curry. This dish is also very popular in Malaysia and Singapore and essentially served in Malay homes and restaurants. Honestly, I have never been a fan of this dish as I prefer chicken or meat curry vs vegetable curry. But then, my Hubby-D loves this dish and I had an easy solution to make it, thus I made it much to his surprise! Hurray! I scored points!

Simple ingredients :-

1) Ready-made Sayur Lodeh Spices by Asian Home Gourmet. This is available in most supermakets. :) If you need the recipe to make the spices from scratch, please scroll all the way below.

2) Vegetables - I just scanned thru my fridge and took whatever was available.

- Half a carrot - sliced to semi-thin sticks

- French beans - 8-10 string beans

- Napa cabbage and some round cabbage

- Onions - one

- Potato - one potato sliced in cubes

3) Usually the ingredient requires firm tofu but since I did not have any, I kinda improvised. I took some chicken breast, cut into cubes, marinade with salt, pepper and a dash of soy sauce and stir-fried till cook. Dish and keep aside. Smart eh....I made Vegetable Lodeh and disguised the chicken as tofu!! Haha....

Simple Steps -

1) To make sure that my vegetables turned out fragrant and cook at the same time, with a little oil in wok, I fried some of the vegetable for 5 minutes. The potatoes take a bit longer time to cook hence I put in the potatoes first, then the carrot and then the french beans. Remove and keep aside.

2) In the same wok, remove paste from packaging, add 2 bowls of water and 1 bowl of coconut milk. Bring it to a boil.

3) Add in all the vegetables plus the tofu...ahem...chicken cubes :)

4) In low fire, let it simmer for 20 minutes. Voila! Ready to eat! Yum yum!

My hubby was ecstatic and very appreciative. Made me feel like such a wonderful wife!! :)

For all of you who wants to make the spice from stratch, here is the recipe :
Spice blend recipe
2 tablespoons chili paste
2 teaspoons shrimp paste (belacan)
2 medium onions
4 garlic cloves
2 stalks lemongrass
20 small dried shrimp, soaked in hot water to soften
1 inch fresh ginger
1 teaspoon coriander powder
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon cumin
1 tablespoon chili powder
4 tablespoons oil

Blend all this ingredients in mixer till fine!