Urapan with endive and watercress

Vegetarian friends love this urapan salad. It’s endive the Indonesian way; mixed with lettuce like watercress or lamb’s lettuce a dressing of grated coconut and spices.

Beb uses bean sprouts in her recipe. I love that. It gives a lot of extra flavor and crispyness.

Use regular sambal (sambal ulek) to make it vegetarian. Sambal trassi is made with shrimps.

Urapan I #448 translated from Beb Vuyk’s Groot Indonesisch Kookboek page 361.

Ingredients

• 1 small endive
• a handful of watercress or lamb’s lettuce
• 100 grams of bean sprouts
• 1/3 of a coconut

Herbs

• 2 tablespoons of chopped onions
• 1 teaspoon of sambal terasi
• 1/2 teaspoon Kaempferia galanga (kencur)
• 2 tablespoons of kitchen tamarind (sweet asem)
• salt
  
  

1. Pour hot water over the bean sprouts.
2. Cook the endive (cut into pieces) for a few minutes. It must stay crispy.
3. Cut the washed watercress (or lamb’s lettuce) into pieces.
4. Grate the coconut. If you use coconut flour dissolve santen (coconut cream) in the water and mix into the coconut flour.
5. Rub onions, sambal, Kaempferia galanga, asem, and salt together.
6. Mix the herb mix with the grated coconut and vegetables.

I do not use fresh coconut but already grated, dried coconut. It needs extra santen like Beb’s says in her preparation, to make it a bit moist.

Beb uses kitchen-tamarind (sweet asem). I use asem from a jar (I get at the supermarket).  This asem is not sweet so I add a teaspoon of sugar.

I add the onions, sambal, kencur, asem and salt (I use 1 teaspoon for this amount of endive) in a jar and use my blender to blend it into a fine paste. This paste is called a bumbu.

Sure you can use the cobek (mortar). It will blend flavors better. On the other hand the emersion blender grinds the bumbu extra fine so the dressing will be nice and smooth. 

I dissolve a small amount of santen (coconut cream) in a bit of heated water.

I scoop it still warm through my grated coconut. Now it seems like freshly grated coconut. Perfect!

Now I mix the herb paste, with its beautiful color and great smell, with the coconut.

I cook the endive now but very shortly. I boil water and place the finely chopped endive in for a minute. It really should not cook longer because it is going to be too tender otherwise.

I wash the endive with cold water after I drained it. I shake it up and mix it with the lamb’s lettuce and bean sprouts. I pour hot water over the bean sprouts, but you can leave them raw.

I add the coconut mix and serve immediately. I love urapan; cripsy, healthy and packed with flavor. Selamat Makan!

Want to see more Indonesian salads, check out this link.
For more vegetarian dishes, go to this link.