Cooking | Dec 23, 2008 | 0 Comments

Tofu Salad with Special Black Peanut Sauce

Tahu Tek Surabaya – or loosely translated as Tofu Bean Sprouts Salad with Black Peanut Sauce – is quite a special dish for East Javanese in Indonesia. As you already know, Indonesians are serious food fanatics. Many would go overboard going to the farthest corner in a small alley tucked away somewhere in a market 2 hrs drive or even further, for the best dish of its kind. Like the best suckling pig in Bali, is at Bu Oka’s behind an old temple of Ubud, or for Tahu Telur Petis Surabaya, the best of its kind is at Pak Ali’s little warung on Dinoyo Street in Surabaya. How I miss home talking about this now ….

But thanks to Mbak Lisa for her recipe, I managed to bring some of the authentic Surabayan flavours to my home in Inner Mongolia. Two packs of petis udang brought from Indonesia are now being put to use.

Petis udang is a black shrimp paste, pretty similar to ‘belachan’ or ‘terasi’ but not quite, as it has a stronger pungent scent, richer flavours and slightly moister than their counterpart.

The dish is mostly vegetable based and eggs, except for the peanut sauce which contains some shrimps. I didn’t make it too spicy for Mike and by cooking the peanut sauce seems to take away some of the strong flavours of petis & garlic. Otherwise he wouldn’t touch the thing and I would have to cook something else.

TAHU TELUR PETIS SURABAYA

Ingredients:
* 1 block of tofu, cubed bite size
* 1 egg whisked
# Whisk the egg with salt, add tofu and spring onion.
# Make a tofu omelette, then cut into bite size

Black Peanut Sauce:
* 2 cups of fried peanut, processed
* 2 pcs fried garlic, minced
* 2 pcs red chili minced
* 2 tsp shrimp paste (petis udang)
* Dark sweet soy sauce (tiny bit only)
* salt, palm sugar to taste

# Cook garlic + chili, add peanut and a cup of water over low heat
# Cook till the sauce change to a thicker brighter reddish color
# Add petis, salt, drizzles of soy sauce. Stir for 1-2 mnts

Serving directions:

Place tofu omelette, then a one-minute blanched of bean sprouts, sprinkles of chopped spring onions, drizzles of black peanut sauce and top with fried shallots. Some krupuks on the side would be nice too

ALL ABOUT “PETIS” in Indonesian  -  Petis is presumably only made in Indonesia. It’s the real shrimp paste (deep dark color like licorice, not dry at al like terasi or belacan but gooey, stronger & richer flavours great for salad mixing and most East Java dish)