Rujak (hot, Spicy Fruit Salad)
Ingredients
- 1 pomelo or ugli fruit or Texas grapefruit (jeruk Bali)
- 1/2 cucumber
- 1/2 pineapple
- 2 apples, Granny Smith or Cox's (kedondong)
- 2 mangoes or slightly unripe pears
Instructions
In Indonesia, we would usually add also bengkuang (yam-bean) and jambu (guava or the fruit - not nut - of the cashew are types of jambu). Peel and segment the pomelo (or ugli, etc). Slice the cucumber; this may be peeled or not, as you prefer. Prepare the other fruit, washing and peeling as required, and cutting everything into small pieces. Put the pieces straight into a bowl of cold water with 1 tsp of salt. When you are ready to serve, drain off this water and pile all the fruit in a plate or bowl. For the bumbu: 1 cabe rawit (Thai hot peppers) 1 slice grilled terasi (a dark colored paste made from shrimp), optional 120 grams (4 oz) gula Jawa 1/3 cooking banana (stone banana, chopped skin and all), optional large pinch of salt 1 tbsp tamarind water (soak 1 oz of dried tamarind in about 1/2 pint water) Pound all these, except the tamarind water, until they are smooth; add the water and mix well. You may need to add another tbsp of tamarind water. This bumbu should look like a fairly thick, sticky syrup. To serve, pour all the bumbu over the fruit and mix well; then serve and eat as you would an ordinary fruit salad. Alternatively, put the bumbu in its own small bowl, and let everyone help themselves." Gula Jawa is brown sugar made from juice of the flower of the coconut palm. It is sold in hard cakes; the amount needed is cut off and crushed, or scraped off. Gula aren is similar, but comes from the sugar-palm. A general name for both types is gula merah, 'red sugar', and similar palm sugar are found elsewhere - e.g. jaggery in Burma and gula Malaka in Malaysia). You can use dark, soft, brown sugar or Demarara sugar, and either of these is quite satisfactory.