Cooking Lunch for BFF - Lontong : Ketupat, Kuah Lodeh and Kuah Kacang

Today I invited my best friends, Malaysians that I first met when I arrived in Saigon 4 years ago. We became close friend ever since we spent time shopping for wet groceries at Ben Tanh market. Actually, we are 4 of us but one of us have left to Jakarta for good. They love my cooking and I'm the one who used to host lunch for them since I'm the only Muslim and can reasonably cook Malay food that they missed so much. That's include nasi lemak...he ..he.. But for today one of them missed the lontong so much and requested me to cook lontong for her. Since I'm moving to a new apartment soon, so I decided  to cook lunch and bid farewell to my current place with them. They used to come to my current place for "makan-makan" , chit chatting and  playing badminton, so this would be their last lunch at my current place before I move to a new apartment just across the highway.

My simple lontong

1. Nasi ketupat

2. Kuah Lodeh :

5 shallots

3 garlics

1 inch galangal

1 inch ginger

4 spoon dried shrimp

(blended all of the above)

1 lemongrass - just smashed it with knife handle

1 cup coconut milk

4 cups water

3 spoon cooking oil

salt and sugar 

1 eggplants

1 carrot

1/4 cabbage 

1 tofu (fried a bit)

dried tofu (soaked in water until soft)

- fry all blended ingredients until the aroma came out. Add in water , carrot, salt and sugar. When the carrot getting softer, add in eggplant , cabbage, tofu  and dried tofu. Lastly, add coconut milk and  simmer it . When it started to boil, turn off the fire/ stove.

3.Kuah Kacang

5 dried chillies

3 shallots

2 garlics

fry all of the above.

1 cup groundnuts (fry)

1 lemon grass - smashed

1 asam keping (Garcinia atroviridis) / 3 spoon of tamarind juice

salt

sugar

- pour all blended and non blended items in a pot and add with 2 cups of water and simmer it until it boils.

Senang kan? :)

cake /tiramisu cutting session by myself as a host. The tiramisu was made by my friend June.

Should be 4 of us but now only left with 3 ....stoogers