Literally, sayur means vegetable and ketupat or lontong are two popular forms of rice cake. Although it clearly states the word ‘vegetable’, it’s not really a vegetarian dish since a lot of hawkers offer meat – or offals – as an option.This is ketupat or kupat sayur.

Traditionally, it will cost you several hours and a lot of work to make this. But thanks to modern equipments and technology, it helps in making things faster, better, and easier. No longer than 15 minutes of working time is needed, with another 15 on the stove.

Ingredients:
10 pcsshallot
8 pcs garlic
3 cm turmeric (or 20 gr turmeric powder)
1 cm galangal
2 pcs salam leaf
2 pcs lemongrass
1 pctomato
6 pcsred chilli – without the seeds
4 pcscurly red chilli – without the seeds
1 cmginger (or 10 gr ginger powder)
1 tbscooking oil

1500 cccoconut milk
200 ccwater
15 rground dried shrimp
10 gbelachan
60 grpalm sugar
30 grsalt
200 grchayote
100 grtempe

Additional ingredients:
Rice cake – any type you have, from ketupat, lontong, or instant rice cake will do.
Crackers – onion or shrimp flavoured
Sweet soy sauce (kicap manis)
Fried shallots

Optional:
– Whole boiled egg
– Chicken
– Boiled potato
– Tofu
– String/snap beans

Method:

Put shallot, garlic, turmeric, red chilli, curly chilli, tomato, and ginger on the food processor or stone grinder. Make sure everything grounds and mixes well. Now, heat some oil in the pan, put the salam leaf, galangal, and lemongrass first, wait for the aroma to be released and then pour the mixed ground ingredients. Stir well and wait to the full aroma to be released.

Heat the coconut milk in a stock pot, and put the stir fried mixed ingredients and paste in. Bring to boil in medium heat, stir slowly so the liquid won’t burn. . After boiling point, put any vegetables and/or protein you want, turn the heat into minimum, let it simmer and reduce for 15 (to 30 minutes max, depending on how soft you want it) and voila, everything is ready.

Put some pieces of rice cakes on the plate, have some spoonful of sayur and pour a sprinkle of fried shallot and crackers. Next thing you need is a perfect Sunday morning to enjoy with.