The 4 T's of Jawastan

Any man with the essence of Jawastan in his blood will attest to the efficacies of the  4 T's.

This comes to mind because it's Usrah night tonight, and our ustaz who himself hails from Jawastan was the one who declared the above.

So too might have the grandparents of my own jawastani-blooded man, he who is home for a jaunt from the still-blizzardy steppes of Kazakhstan.



And  what I'm thinking of offering for the obligatory but non-mandatory potluck tonight makes use of two  of the 4 T's.

It's non-mandatory for you can come empty-handed but potluck pricks on my conscience and for me it has become obligatory. Something that I like and want to do - willingly, too.

Anyways, being married to one for close to 29 years now, I daresay that any true-blue jawastani will approve as part of a meal  any or all of the following:

1. Taugeh
2. Tauhu
3. Tempeh
4. Taucho

And somehow yours truly herself and her man as well, had  at one period or another evolved to become much like his favourite foods.

Just look:

This was when we were both taugehs.

 

Then plump tauhus.

 

 And now one is tempeh keju and the other tempeh goreng

- both slightly mouldy but nutritious nonetheless

This is the Kazakh way of holding a cup 

of the T that does not need mention - TEA!

Thankfully when the time comes that we are taucho, it won't be possible to show pictures.

In a little while I will be off to the kitchen to prepare a dish bearing 2 key ingredients akin to our evolution - tauhu and tempeh, the dish being Sambal Goreng Jawastan. 

This is my recipe, recorded for posterity due to the stage of my evolution.

Prepare little similar-sized heaps of diced tempeh, diced tauhu, diced beef. (My sister-in-law also uses shrimps and diced beef liver).

Likewise slice just enough long beans or french beans to get a similar sized volume. This is to get  a balanced proportion of each ingredient so that none overwhelms the rest.

Also slice enough petai to suit your taste, but for this it's best to err on the side of caution. You HAVE to slice up the petai because chunks of it in the dish make it look horridly unpresentable and you risk being branded as lazy. Similarly thinly slice some red chillies in the same quantity.

Pre-soak some soohoon and dried tauhu skin - also in enough quantities and neat sizes for balanced proportions.

Tumbuk or blend together some serai, lengkuas, shallots and garlic.

Heat up enough oil in a kuali to first saute the diced tempeh to a light golden yellow. 

Remove and set aside, then saute the diced tauhu the same way. Also remove and set aside.

Leave enough oil to  quickly stir-fry the bashed condiments (longer if you had blended them, that goes without saying) and sliced red chillies, then toss in the diced beef and stir until the beef is about half-cooked. *Add in the long beans, stir a while until cooked uniformly. (*Update: I accidentally left this out in the first publishing).

Plonk in the petai, tauhu and tempeh. Stir a bit.

Pour in just enough coconut milk to moisten everything,  too much  and the dish becomes masak lodeh.

Squeeze a little tamarind juice and add to the mix, some salt and a sprinkle of sugar to taste. I also sprinkle in some belacan powder for the ooomph.

Lastly mix in the drained soohoon and tauhu skin and leave to cook for 5 to 10 minutes on slow heat.

Taste and adjust accordingly.

Here's a picture of this well-known dish of the colonial-era Jawastani immigrants.  I had whipped this up a couple of months or so ago. Maybe it needs a little more green, don't you think?

 But whatever  - it's cheap to prepare, high in protein and simply divine taken with just hot rice or even on it's own. Maybe not for gout sufferers but most of my clan members of Bugistan ancestry who attend usrah are now, I'm very proud to say, enthusiasts of Sambal Goreng Jawastan.