Indonesians eat a little sambal (a fiery chili condiment) with every bite of food. You’ll find it served with noodles and fried rice, plonked into soups and curries, dolloped over fritters, even eaten on its own with just a plain bowl of rice. When the idea struck to pair crisp, golden chunks of potatoes with sambal – a nod to the iconic Spanish dish patatas bravas, in which fried potatoes are served with spicy tomato sauce, sometimes topped with mayonnaise – I ran to the kitchen.
While traditional patatas bravas, and most Indonesian potato recipes, use a deep fryer, I’ve opted for roasting them in the oven until golden for ease. This simple sambal begins with a paste of red chiles, garlic, shallots and ginger, a quintessential base for many Indonesian meals. The sauce, once reduced, reaches a peak of tomatoey-umaminess hot enough to tingle your mouth.
Combined with the crispy, golden potatoes and a liberal coating of Kewpie mayonnaise (use vegan mayo if you prefer), it will keep you diving back in for more. Is this dish an appetizer, an entrée or a side? It could be any of these, but whatever you serve it with, it will be certain to steal the show.
Mapo tofu has been on the menu since back when Mission Chinese Food first popped up in San Francisco. Over the years, we’ve tweaked the recipe approximately one hundred times, and this vegan version is the best yet, not to mention the easiest for the home cook. What used to take days to make is ready in less than an hour.
Note: This recipe calls for doubanjiang, a coarse reddish paste of fermented soybeans, broad beans, and chilies common in Sichuan cooking. Look for “Pixian” on the label, which means it hails from a town in Sichuan province known for making the product.
One of the most popular recipes in The Green Roasting Tin is the Indonesian gado-gado: crunchy potatoes with an addictive peanut, coconut, and chili sauce. It occurred to me that the dressing, slightly adapted, would work beautifully with grilled corn on the cob —and joy, it did! This is now a summer staple.
Raw broccoli is a powerhouse salad ingredient, and covering it in yogurt dressing makes for a match made in heaven.
Herbed goat cheese and spicy, salty chorizo on bread needs little introduction, but you may be wondering about the honey. While it may seem odd, the sweetness of the honey brings this toast together in a very fortunate way: sweet, spicy, savory, and addictive.
Cheesy, tangy and oh-so-comforting, these stuffed potatoes are a lunch worth waiting for. I often bake the potatoes the evening before, when I already have the oven on for my evening meal, and allow them to cool overnight, ready to put together in no time for lunch. Alternatively, you could let your slow cooker do the first bake. Opt for vegan cream cheese rather than vegan hard cheese to get a creamier, more buttery texture.
Any sausage roll is a good thing, but these are a very good thing indeed. Savory is a really old herb that was used in cooking centuries ago. We wanted to recreate a sausage roll that you might have unearthed in an ancient English recipe in some dusty old book somewhere. And we’ve used plenty of savory to bring that nice herby taste to the fore. These are great for picnics or packed lunches, eaten hot or cold.
For this Asparagus Puffs recipe, we blanched the asparagus spears until tender before incorporating them into the cheese mixture. And we were sure to thoroughly thaw the puff pastry so it did not crack when unfolded.
A favorite from Alexis Alvarez Armas, this dish is inspired by Cuba's Chinese- Criollo cuisine. After cooking delicate trout fillets in a bamboo steamer, Alexis dresses them with a Chino- Latino blend of soy sauce, fermented black beans, olive oil, and lots of scallions and chives. It's a dish we could eat every day.
A velvety-smooth soup spotlighting cauliflower's many delicate flavors, accentuated by sautéed onion and leek.