gado gado

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.