pecel — East Java, Indonesia

Pecel is an Indonesian vegetable salad built on a mix of blanched or boiled greens bound together with a spiced peanut sauce. Typical vegetables include spinach, long beans, bean sprouts, cabbage and cucumber, cut or torn into pieces and dressed while the peanut sauce is still warm, which softens the vegetables further and lets the sauce coat them evenly. The dish is reported from East Java and more broadly from the island of Java, and is closely related to gado-gado in its use of a similar peanut sauce, though pecel is generally kept simpler and served with plainer accompaniments. It is also eaten in Malaysia, where it is known as pecal and is said to have been brought there by Javanese immigrants, and in Suriname, home to a large Javanese community that keeps the dish among its everyday meals. To prepare it, roasted peanuts are ground with garlic, chilli, kencur or ginger, palm sugar, tamarind and salt, then loosened with water to a thick, pourable sauce. The chosen vegetables are blanched or boiled separately until just tender, drained well and arranged on a plate. The warm peanut sauce is poured generously over the vegetables just before serving, together with steamed rice, lontong or ketupat, and often a few crisp crackers on the side. This East Java version keeps the vegetables and rice components separate on the plate rather than mixed together, letting the peanut sauce serve as the unifying element while the exact vegetables used shift with what is in season and available locally.