I simply love the earthy taste of tempeh. Love eating it in Gado-gado (an Indonesian salad) but preparing the ingredients and making the peanut sauce is too much for a lazy person like me :P Been craving for tempeh, so when I saw it at the supermarket 2 days ago, I decided to buy it. Was wondering if I should just fry and eat it as it is <Lazy mode> but that would end up more like something to snack on. Then I remembered seeing a post on a homemade sambal recently which looked so gooood (I was literally drooling when I saw the pictures)!! I told myself "Yeah, I will try making that.... SOMEDAY... when I'm not lazy." Haha... And after thinking hard for some time, I thought, why not change that 'someday' to 'today'? Of course, mine is a simpler version, basically just pounding everything together. You can choose to use the food processor, which makes the work much easier, but I felt that pounding makes it more authentic :) You can also add more chillies for extra oomph, but our tolerance for spicy food isn't that high, so this is the most we can take, without crying or heading to the toilet. Lol!

My dried shrimp sambal belacan tempeh :D

Tempeh is a traditional soy product made by a natural culturing and controlled fermentation process that binds soybeans into a cake form. It is a form of soy that is closer to soy in its whole food form. Some say it is one of the world's healthiest food because the fermentation process increases the digestibility of soy (especially its proteins), nutrient absorption from soy and its retention of the whole bean give it a higher content of protein, dietary fiber, and vitamins.

Ingredients:

The ingredients and my cute small mortar & pestle. Hehe.

• 1 small packet of tempeh (Approx 120g)
• 2 red chillies
• 1 cili padi/bird's eye chili
• 4-5 dried chillies, soaked in boiling water til softened
• 1/4 cup dried shrimps, soaked
• 2 shallots
• Belacan/shrimp paste, pan-fried/roasted (Optional) *See picture below
• Salt & sugar, for seasoning
• Oil, for pan-frying

*This is the belacan papar that I bought from Sabah. They come in long thin rolls and I used about 1-inch of it for this recipe.