Sambel Tempe 🌶

Another spicy recipe

Spice up your lazy mid-week menu rotation with this home-cooked Indonesian classique. A fiery combination of nutty fried tempeh mashed into a bed of spicy red sambal. Simple, irresistible, and sure to be a fave.

Ingredients:

• 300g tempe, cut into 1-inch cubes

• 1 tomato, quartered

• 1 banana shallot (or 3 small Asian shallots)

• 5 garlic cloves

• 1 large red chilli (seeds and pith removed if you prefer less heat)

• 5-10 birds eye chillis, or to taste

• 1/2 tablespoon caster sugar

• table salt

• ground white pepper

• neutral oil, for deep frying

Instructions:

Heat about 5cm oil in a large, deep-sided pan; once the handle of a wooden spoon or chopstick bubbles when dipped in, the oil is ready for cooking. Fry the tempe, in batches if need be, for three to five minutes, until slightly browned and crisp, then lift out with a spider spoon and set aside.

In the same pan, fry the tomato, shallot, garlic and chillies for about 5 minutes until softened. Lift the fried vegetables out with a spider spoon and set aside.

Using a mortar and pestle or potato masher, mash the fried tempe into a coarse consistency. Set aside. Next, grind the tomato, shallot, garlic and chillis in a mortar and pestle or blend in a food processor to a rough paste. In the mortar and pestle or a wide bowl, add the tempe to the sambal. Add salt, ground white pepper and sugar to taste and mix well. Serve at once with plain rice or as part of a wider spread of dishes.