Spicy Balinese Long Bean Salad with Pan-Seared Tuna

Tim and I tried another recipe from my Lobong culinary experience in Ubud, Bali since many of the ingredients overlapped with the chicken satay and peanut sauce...  tonight's recipe was a pan seared tuna steak on top of a spicy, fragrant long bean and cabbage salad.  

And by "spicy," I really mean, "burned our faces off."  Oops.

Despite the excessively pedas salad, this dish was still good.  Perhaps next time I would use fewer chilis.  Far fewer. 

The recipe seems to be Chef Dewa's riff on the traditional Balinese dish, ikan bakar sambal matah, which is grilled fish with a raw chili sambal.  He put the sambal and fish on some veggies and made it into a healthy and fresh tasting salad.

Here's the recipe, adapted and with my notes:

Ikan Bakar Sambal Matah Salad

Adapted from the Lobong Culinary Experience

Ingredients:

100 grams of tuna (Tim and I upped the tuna factor and got one super fresh tuna steak each)

15 shallots, halved and sliced super thin (This measurement is for the tiny Indonesian shallots... if using regular French style shallots, maybe more like 4 or 5)

10 bird's eye chilis, minced (Based on my experience, I would recommend fewer unless you want to lose functionality in your lips and tongue) 

5 kaffir lime leaves, shredded

4 lemongrass stalks, tender center white part only, thinly sliced

1 piece torch ginger (My grocery store was out of this, so I improvised by grating/micro-planing about an inch long chunk of regular ginger)

100 grams of cabbage, shredded (Chef Dewa says crunchy romaine is a good substitute, too)

100 grams of long beans, sliced into pea-sized pieces (You could substitute regular green beans here)

Handful of cherry tomatos, halved

90 ml of coconut oil (I used the fresh coconut oil made by the Lobong family, which was delicious. The only problem: it had solidified in our air conditioned apartment, so I had to dip the bottle in warm water to loosen it up... didn't that problem when cooking outside at the Lobong compound... don't substitute this with another oil, though, as the coconutty flavor is essential)

Squeeze of lime juice (my addition)

Directions:

1. Toss all ingredients except tuna together in a salad bowl.

2. Lightly salt and pepper tuna steak, then sear both sides briefly in vegetable oil over medium-high heat.

3. Either top the salad with the tuna, or break the tuna up and gently toss it with the salad.

4. Enjoy and cross your fingers that you don't blow up from the heat of the chilis.

Banana Shake

While in Ubud, Bali, Meghan, Liz and I got a little overheated as we walked around and decided to make a stop at the first restaurant we saw, Clear Cafe.  It looked promising based the large number of shoes left outside the front door... it was a good choice.  

A breezy, hippy haven of tasty organic and raw foods and beverages, we were quite happy to stumble upon it...  Meghan was particularly excited about the banana shake she ordered, which was so good that I ordered a second one and promised to try to recreate it at home.  

Below is my version of the creamy, slightly icy banana-licious drink.  I think I nailed it.

Here's how I did it:  

1. Freeze an oldish banana overnight (peel it first and stick it in a baggie!  I made the mistake of not peeling it and almost froze and/or cut my fingers off trying to cut the frozen peel off)

2. Throw it in your blender (or use your stick blender, as I did)

3. Add  3/4 to 1 cup of cold milk, a splash of vanilla extract (maybe 1/4 to 1/2 tsp?) and some honey (1 tsp? I used palm sugar syrup because I didn't have honey)

4. Blend until smooth

5. Drink

Balinese Chicken Satay and Peanut Sauce

While relaxing in Ubud, Bali (where there was less praying and loving than eating), Liz, Meghan and I took a cooking course (or "culinary experience," if you will) with the Lobong family, described in detail at my other blog.  The course was pretty awesome and I think we learned a lot, but recreating the recipes at home was a bit of a challenge, as once I looked in the recipe booklet we were sent home with, things were a little bit unclear, to say the least.  I may have to volunteer my editorial services (not like my blog is a paragon of perfect writing by any means, but this cook book is really struggling in the areas of English writing and completeness).

I decided to start with what I thought might be the simplest recipe we learned, Balinese chicken satay with peanut sauce.  In the end it's not all that time consuming, with the caveat that you've made the basic Balinese spice paste, base gede, in advance.  The spice paste is not difficult, but does involve unwrapping about a million garlic cloves and shallots, as well as peeling ginger, turmeric root, and galangal (or, in this case, lesser galangal or kencur).  Luckily I had a brand new peeler from Amy for this task (THANKS, AMY!).  The spice paste recipe makes a ton, can be frozen in ice cube trays for future use, and is used in a lot of Balinese recipes.

Once the spice paste is made, you basically just have to cut the chicken, toss it in some paste along with some keffir lime leaves, palm sugar and salt, marinate while you heat up the coals and then grill it.  The peanut sauce is pretty straightforward, too, although I couldn't get mine to thin out into a sauce- it was pretty thick and peanut-buttery despite all my best efforts.  I tried using my new big ole' mortar and pestle, but it was a little too much elbow work for my post-work arms, so I moved on to the food processor to finish off the peanut sauce.  Perhaps therein lies the problem.

Once I hear back from Lobong on the vagaries of their written recipes, I'll post the recipes here!