Indonesian Sambal

[caption id="attachment_205982" align="alignright" width="375" caption="Sambal Tomat - Indonesian sambal made with tomato base"][/caption] After living about 35 years in Indonesia, I have come to a conclusion that Sambal is something Indonesian couldn't live without. This fiery hot paste of different kind of chillies, mixed with different kind of ingredients, is a guaranteed an appetite rouser for most of people here. I said "most", because there are a little part of the population that could not stand sambal, namely; babies and children, and very rare number of adults who think sambal tends to disrupt the taste balance, and serves no more than a fetish for capsaicin, and I am one of those. Though born and raised in a family line of good sambal makers, I was one of the very rare adults mentioned above. I couldn't even stand a regular Siomay peanut sauce, which by default is always medium spicy -- doing otherwise would be considered as heretic among the Siomay sellers. Hence why up to high-school years I always eat Siomay with kecap manis only, the sweet fermented soy sauce most Sundanese couldn't live without. Things are changing when I entered college. With occasionally eating out in cheap street side vendors lat at night after design studio hours, I became quite well acquainted with the dish Pecel Lele, a deep fried catfish with sambal pecel that made from tomatoes, chillies, garlic, all fried, and then grounded to the watery salsa consistency. It was back then, my resistance to sambal grows, up to the point that now I can enjoy some types of sambal.

Sambal Varieties