Recipe: SAMBAL KACANG MONYET

Talking about native Indonesian food, which we have learned to love so much, here is a recipe for a “Sambal” I like very much. This calls for cashew nuts but it may be made with peanuts or other toasted nuts.

Take half a cup of cashew nuts and toast them in a dry skillet until yellow in colour. Do not burn or fry in oil!
Pound in a mortar:
two cloves of garlic;
three thin slices of Galangar (“Kah” in Thai or “Laos” in Indonesian)
the cashew nuts;
a little of the green rind of the Makrut fruit;
five to ten sliced red chillies without the seeds;
five peeled small red onions;
half a teaspoon of toasted shrimp paste (on a stick or fork over an open fire or wrapped in some foil);
palm sugar and lime juice to taste.
Of course, depending on your tolerance for hot spiciness, you may add more or less red chillies or even add “Prik Kee Noo”, the small blistering capsicum frutenscens with quite a different flavour and worshipped by Thais and Indonesians alike. This Sambal is like a Thai Nam Prik eaten with raw and blanched vegetables (Lalab) like cucumber, cabbage, lettuce, long beans etc., etc.