Rojack Salad : A Malaysian Dinner

Certain cuisines demand a well-stocked pantry, and for a European-American such as myself, kitchen standbys tend to run in the direction of olive oil, garlic, basil, dill and potatoes - staples of Mediterranean and Northern European cooking. Much as I love the foods of East Asia, my larder has never exactly runneth over with the necessary ingredients for creating even a barely passable attempt at authentic Thai or Malaysian cuisine. Soy and fish sauce, palm sugar and shrimp paste have certainly made inroads to my refrigerator and cupboards, but Siamese watercress, betel leaves, galangal and tamarind water make far rarer appearances. And yet, to attempt assembling a traditional meal without such basic ingredients at hand would be akin to a Greek meal prepared sans olive oil (won't vegetable oil do?), oil-cured olives (how about canned chopped black olives?) or feta (can I substitute a few slices of cheddar?).

So when the urge for fiery Thai or Malaysian dishes arises, we either jump in the car and head north of the 8 Freeway to dine out in Kearney Mesa, or I, uh, jump in the car and and head north of the 8 Freeway to pick up necessary supplies at 99 Ranch Market, the "Chinese supermarket chain," in which I am often one of merely several white people amid a sea of nationalities, and where iced octopus bundles rub shelf space with bags of dried prawns and clumps of durian fruit (the only fruit, so far as I know, to be banned entrance to certain elevators, hospital rooms and hairdresser salons due to its pungent smell). On my last visit, I was both chagrined and somewhat pleased to note that the only Caucasian aside from myself in the building was an obese woman loudly yelling at a bemused individual behind the to-go food counter that she didn't want any rice with her moo goo gai pan because she was "allergic to rice. Aren't you listening to me?"

My latest trip to Ranch 99 coincided with a desire to assemble a nice Malaysian summer salad, a fruit-and-vegetable dish known as rojak or rujak. The word itself can be used in reference to any eclectic mix, and the salad is very flexible in the types of ingredients capable of use. I decided to follow the basic outlines of a rather traditional recipe presented in a favorite southeast Asian cookbook, but allowed myself a little creative license to pick and choose among the fresher varieties of fruit and vegetable in order to make our rojak.

A few ingredients were non-negotiable. My first step required making a fiery dressing that would chill and deepen in flavor as I prepared the fruit portion, and as with so many sauces, pastes or dressings from this corner of the world, thick dollops of shrimp paste and red chili peppers were required.....

....along with a handful of dried shrimp, which I ground into a flaky paste and toasted over the stove top.

The chilis were pounded into submission, while both varieties of shrimp paste were folded in to the mixture, to which I added palm sugar and the juice of several limes. The whole assemblage was then subjected to some pretty serious mortar-and-pestle time.

As the dressing was covered and set inside the refrigerator to cool, I set about unloading the fruits and vegetables that would make up the main body of the rojak salad. Some of the ingredients were less than exotic to me - cucumber and pineapple, for example. Others were a bit less common to my kitchen, such as a lovely specimen of jicama, which my cookbook had actually referred to as "yam bean" (which, as you can see below, makes a lot of sense).

My recipe also called for green (unripe) mango, guava, and starfruit. While I had no trouble locating some extremely nice and tart green mangoes and a decent guava, the starfruit on hand proved less than inspiring. Taking a bold leap into the unknown, I decided to leave the starfruit out and substitute papaya, given the easy availability of extra-fresh local crops. I am well aware that starfruit and papaya have absolutely nothing in common aside from the letter "a," but I am also fully aware that a fresh slab of luscious papaya is nothing to quibble over. It was added to the salad.

I also sliced up some small strips of white ginger (galangal root), a nice citrusy/soapy/ cedarbox variation on the heat and bite of regular ginger. I also sliced up sections of the bud of the red ginger - a real treat, unique to the flavors of Malaysia and surrounding environs.

With the fruits and vegetables fully mixed and a pinch of dried shrimp paste tossed inside, I was ready to dollop the red dressing over the rojak.

In the end, the salad could have been a little spicier - while my wife and I are both heat wimps compared to your average resident of Malaysia, we like to sweat as we eat. I had followed the recipe faithfully and discarded the seeds from the red chilis, but in hindsight, leaving a few in would have boosted the flavor. Nevertheless, the dressing had a lovely, slow-rising burn that increased as the meal progressed, and we found our side dish of green onion "twist buns" proved a worthy foil to the acidic sting of this very raw salad. We both agreed our rojak had at least the appearance of authenticity. As always, success was measured by posing the question, "Might you see something like this in a hole-in-the-wall East Asian restaurant?"

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Rojak / fruit and vegetable salad

(salad)

1 cucumber, halved lengthwise and cut into small rounds

1/2 pineapple, in chunks

1 small jicama (yam bean), sliced into chunks

1 small starfruit (carambola), segmented

(my recipe included 1 medium papaya, sliced into chunks, instead of the starfruit. Utilising both wouldn't be the worst idea in the world)

1 unripe/green mango, peeled and sliced

1 guava, sliced

white ginger (galangal root), several thin strips

1 bud of red ginger plant, thinly sliced to taste

(dressing)

3 tablespoons black shrimp paste

8 fresh red chili peppers, seeds discarded

1 tablespoon dried shrimp paste, toasted in dry skillet

2 tablespoons palm sugar (regular sugar would be ok)

6 limes, juiced (tiny bit reserved)

1) Place chilis into mortar and mash to a paste (this took a while, and you may be tempted to use a small food processor instead. The flavor is more intense, however, if you take the slow route).

2) Add toasted shrimp paste and blend with chilis. Mix in black shrimp paste, mash fully.

3) Add sugar and nearly all of lime juice to shrimp/chili paste. Mix fully. Place in refrigerator to cool as you prepare salad.

4) Place all chopped vegetables and fruit into a large salad bowl. Add a pinch of toasted dried shrimp paste and a bit of leftover lime juice.

5) Pour cooled dressing over salad, and toss. Should be served immediately. If you have leftovers, the dressing and juices should be poured off of the main salad and stored in a separate container, so as to avoid general mushiness. The flavors will also intensify overnight, which I think is a very good thing.