Mixed Vegetables Coconut Stew – SAYUR LODEH

11 April 2020 By

I have loved this dish from a very young age. We used to have jackfruit trees and often we would use the baby jackfruit to make this dish along with a variety of other vegetables. It’s fragrant, utterly comforting, tasty, nutritious and the variety of textures within the stew makes every mouthful a delightful experience. Lots of ingredients to prepare but I can eat this dish the whole week!

Ingredients - Serves 6 to 8

MIXED VEGETABLES COCONUT STEW

  • 90 ml cooking oil
  • 1.25 litres light coconut milk
  • 4 Indonesian bay leaves
  • 1 carrot, peeled and cut into 3 cm lengths
  • 10 long snake beans or stringless beans
  • 2 potatoes, diced
  • ½ cabbage, coarsely chopped
  • 1 baby eggplant, sliced into rounds
  • 300 g jackfruit tenders, tinned or fresh
  • 3 green chillies, sliced lengthways
  • 1¼ cups glass noodles, soaked in hot water and drained
  • 2 pieces bean curd, fried in hot oil and cut into 6 pieces
  • 1 piece tempeh, fried and cut into 6 pieces
  • 4 pieces bean curd skin, soaked in hot water and drained
  • Salt

Finely Ground Spice Paste

  • 15 dried chillies, seeded, boiled and drained
  • 1 tbsp ground coriander
  • 8 candlenuts
  • 2 stalks lemon grass, finely sliced
  • 10 shallots, peeled
  • 4 cloves garlic
  • ½ cup dried prawns, soaked in water and drained (optional)
  • 1 cm galangal
  • 1 cm fresh turmeric

Nasi Impit Rice Cakes

  • 420 g rice, washed, soaked for a couple of hours and drained
  • 1.5 litres water
  • ½ tsp salt
  • 2 pandan (screwpine) leaves, knotted

Method

MIXED VEGETABLES COCONUT STEW

  1. Make the spice paste by crushing the ingredients in a blender.
  2. Heat the oil in a large stock pot and sauté the finely ground paste until fragrant.
  3. Add the coconut milk and bay leaves and bring to simmer. Add the potatoes and cook for 10 minutes, then add the carrot, beans, cabbage, eggplant, jackfruit, bean curd skin and green chillies.
  4. Add the tempeh, bean curd and glass noodles and simmer for 5-6 minutes. Season with salt.
  5. Serve with Nasi Impit Rice Cakes and Spicy Chicken Soup.

NASI IMPIT RICE CAKES

  1. Clean rice well.
  2. Add water, salt and pandan leaves and cook as you would normal rice either on the stove top or in a rice cooker until rice is very soft. Then, remove the pandan leaves, and mash the rice with a hand mixer.
  3. Tip into a square cake tin. Press the rice down tightly and level off evenly. Place a heavy object on top. Leave to cool before cutting into cubes.
  4. Serve with Sayur Lodeh and Spicy Chicken Soup.