What’s For Dinner? Gado-Gado

Well dear readers, I’ve decided to start a new, somewhat regular feature called: what’s for dinner? (I ask myself this question everyday as soon as I finish lunch). Since I’ve been back home in California the last few days, friends and family have been asking me about Indonesian food, so I decided that from here on out, I will ask more friends and co-workers for recipes.

Gado-gado comes in many different varieties and is one of my favorite Indonesian dishes because it involves fresh vegetables (every now and again you need a break from fried foods) and delicious peanut sauce. Gado-gado is a salad dish and the name means hodgepodge or mix-mix.

The recipe I am listing below was from my first week in Indonesia when I cooked lunch with a teacher at language school. The amount I made at school was enough to feed over six people. So, I’m going to list the ingredients, and you can eyeball for the portion size that you need. I will list the peanut sauce amounts for six people. If you are making this for one person, you will have left over sauce. I’ve eaten many versions of gado-gado since my first week in Indonesia and not all of them include all of the ingredients listed below and some include others. So take a look at some other recipes before you start, here and here, if you are curious.

Indonesian Fruit Installment 5: Markisa — Passion Fruit

When I first saw a markisa, Indonesian passion fruit, I was perplexed. What was it? Is this a weird orange? But it is definitely not an orange. How do you eat it? Should I bite into it? I have to admit that my fruit adventures here have brought back a wonderful sense of discovery that brings me back to childhood. The oddly constructed, tasty, and colorful markisa had a lot to do with this sense of discovery.

Like all fruits, the markisa pictured is one of many varieties. Passion fruit comes from all over the world, so you may be familiar with the purple variety. According to Wikipedia, there are two varieties in Indonesia, and I chose the one meant for eating — lucky me. Chloe and I debated for some time how to eat markisa. When we held the orange outside and pressed down it bounced back in a rubbery way. It is one of the most bizarre feeling fruits I have so far encountered. We decided it would be wise to cut into the markisa and past the bouncy part.

The cut revealed a layer below the orange inside that was completely white. The white layer felt alien. It didn’t seem natural at all. The texture was a combination of some kind of stretchy yet soft rubber mixed with a little shag carpet. Cutting into the white layer revealed the fruit: