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Gado Gado is an Indonesian salad of vegetables, peanut sauce and boiled eggs, and easily in my top 10 favourite dishes!
Traditionally the core ingredients are cucumber, blanched-but-still-crunchy vegetables such as carrots and green beans, peanut sauce, hard boiled eggs, tofu, cubed potato and lightly blanched bean sprouts. Gado Gado can be made with endless variations and customisations, which is another reason to love it! I'll often rustle up some Gado Gado when I need to use up some odds and ends in my vegetable crisper, and rarely do I make it the same way twice. I almost always use steamed jasmine rice instead of potato, but it's all down to personal preference. My peanut sauce recipe is an amalgamation honed from three sources: the Moosewood Cookbook, an ex-boyfriend's dad's recipe from his restaurant in North Sydney which was a 1990s institution called Silk Road, and a couple of personal tweaks. If you're pressed for time there is no shame in using a pre-made satay sauce. I find Ayam good- I sometimes add a splash of coconut milk and peanut butter to it. An all-weather, all-company dish that can be served any way you like, from individual servings to a grand platter, from slap-dash to fancy, Gado Gado is long overdue to join the Village Wholefoods recipe repertoire.
When I think back to the 2010s, there were definite trends in my eating habits. Tortillas and quesadillas became weeknight staples. Friday nights regularly featured a Halal Snack Pack. Vegetables were snuck into desserts for my children (sweet potato brownies and chocolate beetroot cake are standouts).
But by far it was my embracing of hearty, vegetarian salads as a meal in themselves that really changed my repertoire and remains so today. Thanks to the introduction of satisfying, nutritious grains like quinoa, amaranth, freekeh and more, salads finally got their well-deserved Main Character Energy. In recent years I've neglected quinoa in place of legumes and other grains. But I've recently come back to quinoa, and I'm bringing you all with me! Now for why I call it Sizzle Salad. The dressing for this salad is made by toasting whole spice seeds in a frypan until crunchy and aromatic, adding vinegar and olive oil, then pouring the whole mixture over cooked, still warm quinoa so the dressing soaks in and imparts next-level flavour to the otherwise simple salad. This salad is as great as a main as it is as a side, and it's suited to all seasons too! |
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