Taco Tuesdays ~ Gado Gado - Indonesian Salad

Hello There, We meet again here at my TACO TUESDAY post!!

Taco Tuesday is a regular post I make on Tuesday, and it's my foodie post on hive and specifically on Free Compliments community. Here on Free Compliments, every Tuesdays we share our foodie posts and as for today, My post is about Gado-Gado

What is gado gado anyway? Gado gado is an Indonesian Traditional Salad, which it is a mix of various vegetables with some peanut sauce seasoning. It does not consist only vegetables, but people add some more in, such as egg, tofu, soy cake and corn.

The vegetables that people use are the boiled one. In some reference you might find that they can be raw, boiled or steamed but please believe me... most Indonesian use boiled vegetables because steaming is more complicated if you do on various type of vegetables all together and for raw... There is a similar dish but using raw veggies, so the name will change.

In general, gado gado consist of these:

• potato
• long bean
• bean sprout
• spinach
• chayote
• Bitter groud
• tofu
• tempeh / soy cake
• cucumber

and some region have something added like:

• cabbage
• vermicelli

and egg is always an option with some additional price. Most gado gado stall will sell those egg in hard boiled one, only a very few stalls willing to serve with omelet or sunny side up.

Recently there are some premium gado-gado with several differentiation, from using organic vegetables, mixing Cashew nuts in their peanut sauce, and many more.

Here is one of a good youtube video of Gado gado, not the best video but atleast it will give you more information about what gado gado is. I want to correct some part of the video, first it is not onion, but shallot. People here say Bawang for onion, garlic, and shallot. We call them all bawang.

Second, it's not $1, I do not know how that dude get $1 Gado Gado or 15.000 rupiah. Most gado gado are sold above 20.000 or 1,3 USD. so I guess he was very lucky or the stall owner loved to have him as his visitor.

My Gado Gado

I prefer some street food cart gado-gado rather than buying them from restaurant. I find that Gado Gado taste better from people who only make and sell gado gado. As you can see from picture below, To save up time people prepare the peanut sauce in dried dried paste which later they will hydrate it with sour water (a mix of boiled water with some onion and spices inside) to became a sauce.

The sauce itself is not a default recipe which you only too add some water and it is over. People can ask for extra spiciness by adding some chili pepper into the sauce. Some people who like a salty taste, usually ask for more salt. So go talk to the server and ask him/her how you want your sauce to be. Some people even ask for an extra portion of sauce, or more watery one.

Gado-gado is generally freshly made, sometimes in front of the customers to suit their preferred degree of spiciness, which corresponds to the amount of chili pepper included. However, particularly in the West, gado-gado sauce is often prepared ahead of time and in bulk. Gado-gado sauce is also available in dried form, which is simply rehydrated by adding hot water.

It is not only the sauce, people can as for what you put inside the gado gado. The name Gado Gado itself means a mix, which in the past people just mix everything into the peanut sauce and later they name it Gado gado which mean mix of various things.

The first one is this mix vegetables: bean sprout, spinach, cabbage and long beans. This mix is different from each stall, depends on their recipe. You can not custom this, they just put them all into the sauce.

They make this one to save more time, because it's a long time to make some small cut or shredded mix vegetable.

However this part you can custom better. Things like cucumber, potato, tofu, tempeh / soy cake, corn and eggs. You can ask which one to be in or out from your plate.

and Hoila.... this is my order, a spicy Gado Gado. Of course I ask for some crackers or crisps, whatever you call it. I have some fried shallot on top of the seasoning or topping, but I do not want some extra soy sauce. Most people here like sweet things so extra soy sauce is well asked everywhere, but it doesn't work for me who prefer spicy over sweet stuff.

That's all for my Taco Tuesday, Thank you for reading it and don't forget to leave any comments below as you pleased

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