Indonesian Food : Orek Tempe

Do you know what is Tempe? If you're Asian, I'm sure that you know what is Tempe..

Tempe is one of Indonesian food.. for me, it's more like a main ingredient like meats, fish, or chicken because you could make many foods with Tempe.. Tempe made by fermented soybean..

If anyone asks me, "if you just could choose one food to eat, what would you choose?" I'll confidently answer, "TEMPE"!

For me, Tempe is a kind of food that I can eat in any situation, weather, place, country, mood... anytime! There's a small and traditional restaurant called "WARTEG" in Indonesia.. It's a Javanese small restaurant from Tegal.. if you come to Indonesia and go to any WARTEG here, you will find that every single WARTEG here must sell any food by Tempe! and it sounds odd for me if there's any Indonesia who doesn't like Tempe..

Anyway, Indonesian food is not as complicated as what people have said out there actually.. like "salt and pepper" for western food, Indonesian food have "garlic" as our secret recipe.. My Father said that "garlic" is like the "Goddess" of our foods..

The key of Indonesian kitchen is, "don't leave your kitchen without garlic and shallot!" yup, garlic and shallot are some must ingredients that We should always have in our kitchen.. ;)

and for some western and eastern Indonesian foods like Sumatran, Sulawesi, Manado, we love chili so bad! and me? I'm definitely Sumatran combined with Javanese.. that's why I love sweet - spicy food!

so the point is, I will ever leave my kitchen with this 3 main ingredients.. Garlic, Shallot, and Red Chili.. sometimes I put some Cayenne Pepper also if I want to make "Sambal" (I'll post later my Sambal recipe)..

Ok, enough with the "Indonesian food's secret ingredients".. let's back to Tempe!

What's the best food You could make from Tempe? It's definitely OREK TEMPE! It's sweet, spicy, but yet a little bit sour.. it's the best moment when you chew the Orek Tempe and feel every taste in your mouth.. and if You're a vegetarian, then this one is really good for you!

Actually, if you search "OREK TEMPE recipe" on the internet, you'll find some recipe that used "galangal", bay leaves, brown sugar (gula aren), tamarind, and lime leaves.. I know it's some ingredients that hard to find in out of Asia.. and it's expensive.. and for me, it's really complicated to use all of that ingredients..

So here, I have a really simple recipe that for my "Orek Tempe" sytle! I've used this recipe since I wan in high school.. It's a really simple ingredients, and simple way to make! Check it out!

OREK TEMPE recipe :

500gr           tempe (chopped)

3 cloves       garlic (finely sliced)

1 cloves       shallot (finely sliced)

3                   red chili (finely sliced)

150 ml          cooking oil

2 tbs             sweet soy sauce

1 tbs             ketchup

2 tbs             chili sauce

a pinch of     salt

1. Pour the cooking oil into a big pan or pot in the stove with medium heat. Fried the Tempe until it's golden. Drain.

2. Pour the used cooking oil into your oil can, but leave about 2 tbs on your used pan to make the "Orek Tempe".

3. Put back the pan on the stove. Turn on the stove to medium low heat.

4. Put in the garlic until you could smell evaporated. Put the sliced shallot and red chili. Stir-fry for 10 seconds.

5. Put the sweet soy sauce, ketchup, and chili sauce. And give it a pinch of salt. Give a little stir-fry, and wait for about 20 seconds.

6. Put the fried Tempe into the sauce, stir it until blended.

7. Pour the Orek Tempe into a bowl.

Voila! It's done!

Some people used to slice the Tempe.. but me prefer to chopped because it makes me to could feel the tender from the Tempe..

So, it's easy right? You don't need any complicated ingredient.. you could find the ingredients in my recipe everywhere..

Let's try to make it, and give it to your family as for lunch!

Happy Cooking! ;)