Family Affair and Fruit Salad in Rujak Manis Sauce

It amazed me how the weather these days, it feels like Autumn knocking on our door, but Summer won't swap the place. During the weekend, with this much loved Spring like weather, when we decided to stay at home rather than go wander. Mostly we are trying to finish off our project. Yeah .. there'll always be some project waiting to be handled. We have done a big cabinet for our dining room, that's what I'm most grateful for. The most challenging one had to be finished first. Will tell you about this on later post.

Our last project was a redecorating coffee table from lounge room, that has a glass top, into display coffee table. AG, which is hubby, laid a board underneath the glass so kids could decorate with sand and put our shell collection in to display. The table was actually a different kind of white shades, we, umm, this time AG sprayed  an antique white, with additional brown coat as the Mrs requested. (On the picture below was actually my tanned hand when painted our previous project.)

While we finished off this coffee table AG requested a fruit salad, such a good idea in this kind of warm weather. I've checked what's in the fridge as we haven't done our weekly shopping.

We only had cucumber, granny smith and royal gala apple, these won't make a prefect fruit salad, but rujak manis is another good idea for another kind of fruit salad. Normally to make rujak manis you'll need to prepare some tropical fruit such as pineapple, young mango, jicama, young paw paw and star fruit. Without them it won't stop you from making Rujak manis, right?

I had stock of puff tofu which how people from my region serve this salad, accompanied with tapioca crackers. Well, that's how we celebrate warm weather with Indonesian food.

Peanut Sauce for Rujak Manis

  

250 gr palm sugar or gula merah (available in Asian Grocery)

100 ml water

4 pieces red bird eyes chilies (depends on how hot this sauce to be)

1 garlic thinly slice and  and fried

1 tsp cooked shrimp paste (optional)

1 tsp salt

3 tbs fried peanut, grind on food processor

1/2 tbs tamarind, make paste with a bit of warm water

Boil palm sugar in water with slow heat, until it dissolves and thicken. Using  pestle and mortar grind chilies, fried garlic, shrimp paste, and salt into paste , add ground peanut and mix. Add this mixture to dissolved palm sugar, add tamarind paste, mix well. Let this sauce cool before serve.