Celebrate Jakarta's 493rd birthday by cooking your own version of the city's traditional food: Ketoprak!
Taken from Chef Petty Elliott's cooking book, you can now prepare your own version of this healthy food. Ketoprak is a classic dish from Betawi consisting of rice cake, rice noodles and bean sprouts served in peanut sauce. The raw garlic gives this dish a very strong flavour. This dish is composed almost entirely of carbohydrates. I would suggest introducing protein by adding fresh vegetables, and a soft-boiled egg. It should be served with a small portion of rice noodles and a light roasted peanut sauce. Traditionally, fried peanuts are used to make gado-gado and ketoprak sauce, which is not a good idea, as frying negates the health benefits of the legume.
Ketoprak Recipe: Rice Noodles and Vegetable Salad with Peanut Sauce
Serves: 4 – 6
Ingredients:
- 100gr rice noodles or bee hoon, boiled (Follow the instructions on the packet; normal cooking times is around 2 minutes). After cooking put the noodles into 500ml of ice cold water, drain and set aside.
- 2 medium-sized organic carrots, peeled and grated into shavings
- 100gr bean sprouts, washed in mineral water
- 4-6 large eggs boiled for 7 minutes from cold water
Sauce:
- 250gr roasted peanuts
- ½ -1 clove of garlic (or as preferred), peeled and roughly chopped
- 3 bird’s eye chillies, cabe rawit merah or your favourite chillies, blanched
- 2 tablespoons palm sugar or brown sugar
- 2 tablespoons sweet soya sauce
- 100 ml water
- 50 ml tamarind water (soak 100g tamarind pulp in 150ml hot water)
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 160ºC. Place the peanuts on a baking tray and cook in the oven for 10 minutes or until golden brown. Alternatively, heat a frying pan on low-medium heat, add the peanuts and cook for 20 minutes or until golden brown. Stir from time to time, and then set aside to cool.
- Place the peanuts into a food processor and process until you have a mixture of finely ground and roughly ground peanuts. Put the garlic, aromatic ginger and chillies in the mortar and grind finely with the pestle. Add half of the peanut mixture, palm sugar and grind until a very thick and sticky mixture is produced.
- Put the mixture into a bowl and add the rest of the ground peanuts from the food processor, mix well.
- Add water and tamarind water little by little until you have a creamy peanut sauce. Season with salt and set aside.
- Mix the rice noodles, grated carrots and bean sprouts well.
- Place them on individual serving plates and garnish with the sliced eggs. Pour the dressing into individual serving glasses, or you can drizzle the dressing over the vegetables and noodles before serving.
