Sayur Asam/Sour Vegetable Soup

Sayur asam or also known as Jangan Asem is a simple dish that I always enjoy at home and when we eat outside. It seems simple but I have had some difficulty to duplicate the exact taste, especially here, far away from our beloved tropical country. My mother usually serves that accompanied by local fried chicken or similar to that. It is heavenly and one of my comfort food to go for.

Last year, I cooked this a lot using instant spices in packaging. Of course it contains monosodium-glutamat, or something like that. I know I should limit the intake of that particular stuff, but, it was SO EASY using those instant things. Especially if you are a working mother, with two active toddlers who 2 minutes are best friends the next 5 minutes are the worst enemy of each other but still love each other (it is confusing, really ^_^), no family where you can go for help with anything less than 15 minutes driving distance (in our case, it is at least 16 hours door-to-door, flying not driving), and a lot of different deadlines.

Growing up in a tropical country, I have been spoiled by the relatively easy access to affordable food, variety of food, friendly service, a lot of smile and love and plenty of sunshine. We were surrounded by delicious and affordable food in uncountable varieties. The food comes in both simple and intense flavors. I still think that it is the effect of getting a lot of sunshine.

I love to introduce my children to those varieties of flavors, to remind them to their parents's root and how big is the world. And since it is not easy to get original taste and food here, I cook a lot. At least according to my previous standard, I cook more than before.

Sayur asam is actually one of relatively easy to cook dish. A few weeks ago, we visited our friends in Dusseldorf. She showed me how she cooked her delicious sayur asam from scratch. It was delicious!! She inspired me to cook this not using my instant spices. I was quite afraid that the taste will not be up to my expectation. I did that last week, and it was good. Since I do not have all ingredient in hand, I replaced some with local ingredients.

The children, and also my husband enjoyed the dish. I hope you too.
Just take out your food processor or simple blender, and you are ready to prepare the "bumbu" (Indonesian word for seasoning) for this dish.



Ingredients
1 big red onion (cut)
4-5 cloves garlic (cut)
1 red paprika (cut) - (if you eat spicy food, replace this with 3 or 4 chilli, removes the seed)
3 ltr water
2 tsp salt
2 tsp sugar
1 tbsp tamarind (without seed)
1 tsp baked/fried shrimp paste (terasi)
1 tsp galangal powder


Cut Vegetable:
Cabbage (cut)
Long beans (cut)
Chayote (peeled and cut) - we call this Labu Siam, and here I use Kohlrabi as substitute
Sweet corn (cut)
Courgette (cut)


Method:
1. Cut the onion, garlic and paprika using food processor.
2. Boil the onion, garlic and paprika mixture in 3 lt water
3. Add tamarind paste, shrimp paste, and galangal powder.
4. Once it is boiled, remove it from the stove and strain the soup to separate the onion and paprika. Do not remove the tamarind yet.
5. Add the vegetable and boil the soup again.
6. Add the salt and sugar to taste.


It is best to serve it with warm steamed rice and fried dish you like. We love to eat this accompanied by Yellow fried chicken (or baked in the oven), or fried fish.

I will definitely make this dish again from scratch. However, when I do not have extra time, I will still use my treasure instant spices. One of the products I love, is the instant spice from the local home industry from my parents hometown. I will discuss that in my next posting.

For now, please kindly enjoy the picture of my sayur asam.