Guilty Pleasures: Indonesian Peanut Sauce, Thai Sticky Rice & Dutch Patatjes Oorlog

A ball of sticky rice, spicy peanut sauce, and raw veggies.

As part of my 4th of July celebration this year, I decided to grill a bunch of "meat on a stick" using recipes from different Asian cuisines. (See the upcoming blog on July 10th entitled "Meat on A Stick Extravaganza" for those recipes). To go with Indonesian Beef Satay, I decided to make spicy peanut dipping sauce, something I haven't made in a while.

Just the thought of peanut sauce sent my mind spinning around the many, many possibilities that peanut sauce offers. It's not just a dipping sauce for meat on a stick. It is also the centerpiece for one of my favorite comfort meals of all time: peanut sauce with sticky rice and raw veggies. Peanut sauce appears in a classic Indonesian salad called Gado-Gado AND it is the unlikely companion to mayonnaise  in the Dutch heart attack known as patatjes oorlog (oorlog = "war").

Oh, yum! But first, I had to make the sauce, a lot of it. 

America is the home of peanut butter, so you might think finding good peanut butter would be easy.  But it's not. If I had been thinking ahead, I would have remembered to get some peanut butter from Whole Foods in Cleveland, where you can grind the peanuts yourself. Unfortunately, however, I had failed to plan ahead and was at the mercy of the local grocery store chains.

Before I got to the store, I had already decided that I wanted the most "natural" peanut butter available in a jar. I wanted nothing artificial, no additives and no sugar (or sweeteners of any kind), if at all possible. As I stepped up to the shelf, I naturally reached for the jar that said "Naturally," the one that assured me that it contained "what peanut butter should be":

Having been fooled before by labels, I turned the jar around to read the fine print:

Wow. I knew that processors sometimes added sugar or honey, but this was the first time I had ever seen 'flax seed,' 'wheat germ,' or 'egg white' on the ingredients list for peanut butter. And these were ingredients in addition to both sugar and honey. While no single item appears to be bad for you, the point is that this jar does not contain plain peanut butter.

My heart sank because the only other brand names on the shelf were the usual commercial suspects. Oh, but wait . . . they each had a "natural" version of themselves, in addition to their original formulas. Let's take a look . . .

I had to admit, Jif Natural was looking pretty good, compared to the first jar. Despite the sugar, I decided it was probably okay. After all, it was real sugar, not high fructose corn syrup or "corn sugar." Nonetheless, I decided to check out the third "natural" offering:

Yes!! That's more like it! Peanuts + salt = perfect!

Indonesian Peanut Sauce

• 1 medium onion, finely diced
• 1 inch ginger root, finely minced or grated
• 5 cloves garlic, crushed
• 2 T. vegetable oil
• 4 anchovy fillets, smashed
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 2 teaspoon ground coriander
• 1 cup good broth (vegetable or chicken) or water
• 1 can unsweetened coconut milk
• 4 kaffir lime leaves or 1 lemongrass stalk, cut into 3-inch pieces (optional)
• 2 1/2 cups of peanut butter
• 1 to 2 tablespoon crushed red chilies or sambal oelek (optional)

Saute the onion, ginger root and garlic in the oil until the onion is translucent. Add the smashed anchovies, cumin, and coriander and continue to saute for 2 to 3 minutes.

Do NOT omit the anchovies, however tempted you may be to toss them out or forget about them. When the sauce is done, you will not taste anchovies, I promise. However, if you leave the anchovies out, the sauce will not have the complexity and depth of flavor you want in a Southeast Asian dipping sauce. Without the anchovies, you might as well skip cooking altogether and just stick your meat on stick into the peanut butter jar.

Once the spices and anchovies start to "bloom" with aroma, add the broth or water and the coconut milk, along with the kaffir lime leaves or lemongrass, if you are using them. When the liquid comes to a boil, lower the heat to a simmer and put the lid on the pot. Allow the broth to simmer for 30 minutes or so, to allow the flavors to "marry."

Turn off the heat and discard the lime leaves and/or lemongrass. Carefully stir in the peanut butter. Be careful about splashing the hot broth on yourself. As you stir, it will seem--at first--like the peanut butter is not melting and is lumping up, but persevere. Keep stirring and stirring. Eventually, the peanut butter will melt and you will end up with a thick, smooth sauce. Add the chilies or sambal, if you are spicing up the sauce.

My main reason for making the sauce was to serve it with these: Indonesian Beef Satay...

But I purposely made too much sauce for the amount of satay sticks I had. This recipe makes a quart, so feel free to cut the recipe in half, if you like. Or, better yet, keep the excess in your fridge or freezer for other delicious peanut-sauce meals . . . like peanut sauce with sticky rice!

EASY Thai Sticky Rice  

Sticky rice is usually steamed on the stovetop with special equipment and cheesecloth and a lot of patience.

A few months ago, however, I came across a recipe that used a rice cooker. It's a very simple, very easy recipe:

• 2 cups Thai glutinous rice (this rice is gluten free, by the way; 'glutinous' refers only to its stickiness, not to any gluten content)
• 2 1/2 cups water
• 1/2 tsp. salt

Put the rice and the water in your rice cooker. Do not turn the cooker on yet, however. Close the lid and allow the rice to soak for 1 to 4 hours depending on the rice.

On this particular day, I opened the bag of rice for the first time. It was a brand name I'd never seen before, so I had absolutely no experience with this particular product. Based on past experience with other sticky rices, however, I decided to soak the rice for 3 hours. As it turned out, however, the rice was a little too soft for my tastes. When I make this again using this brand of rice, I will soak the rice for only 2 hours. The rice was delicious, by the way, even though it was a little softer than I like it. (I like it chewy.)

Add the salt and stir it into the rice and water, then close the lid and cook the rice. (If you don't have a rice cooker, you can cook this on the stovetop. Keeping the lid on, bring the water and rice up to a boil, then turn the heat down as low as you can get it. Cook for 20 to 30 minutes, until all the water is absorbed by the rice.) As soon as the rice is done, make sure the machine and/or is turned off.

Allow the rice to cool to room temperature because Thai sticky rice dipped in peanut sauce is a sensual experience that is always done with naked fingers!

Mel's Patatjes Oorlog -- Oven Fries with Mayonnaise and Peanut Sauce

Another guilty pleasure of mine, when it comes to spicy peanut sauce, is something I was introduced to when I lived in The Netherlands during the 1990's. Patatjes Oorlog translates to something like "fries, war-style" or "war fries." They were a very popular street food at that time--a paper cone or paper dish piled high with fried potatoes and doused (1/2 and 1/2) with mayonnaise and peanut sauce.

When I asked one street vendor why they were called "war" fries, he said, "Well, it's like the war, you know, when Indonesians and the Dutch fought after World War II." Ah! It suddenly made perfect sense: A war for independence that is, in reality, a love affair.

As you can see, my homemade version of patatjes oorlog involves oven fries instead of deep fried potatoes. I try to tell myself that they're healthier than the Dutch version, but I know I'm stretching the truth. The truth is that I have no business eating this plate of guilty pleasure, especially given my sedentary American life style, a life in which I sit to do almost everything from working to socializing to being entertained to moving myself from home to work and home again.

In Holland, I ate those supposedly evil, deep fried patatjes oorlog, but I walked and biked everywhere, paddled paddle boats in canals, carried my groceries home in my arms almost every day (because without preservatives, food must be purchased fresh), did not own a car, and I spent almost no time in front of the television. Actually, I would be better off in Holland eating patatjes from street vendors!

Nonetheless, this meal was a delightful remembrance of a very special place and time in my life.

Go ahead. Give it a shot.

I know it sounds odd--mayonaisse with spicy peanut butter--but try it.

Open wide....   I dare you!