Surinam Petjel Sauce

Petjel (petjil, pecel) is a healthy vegetable salad from Indonesia, which is often mistaken for gado gado. This is not very surprising. Both dishes are quite similar. Petjel is the East Java variety of gado gado and is also a mix of blanched vegetables, served cold or lukewarm.

The sauce for petjel of fresher and also somewhat spicier than the one for gado gado. A tasty combination of vegetables for petjel is: white cabbage, pointed cabbage, kangkung (water spinach, can also be replaced by regular spinach) and bean sprouts. This dish is almost always accompanied by fried tofu. The peanut sauce for petjel is poured lukewarm over the vegetable dish as a dressing and sprinkled with fried onions (preferably shallot) and served straight away.

Petjel can be served in combination with other dishes, but also with rice to form a complete main course. This dish is very well-liked among vegetarians.

Petjel is very popular in Surinam, where the recipe was once taken to by the Javanese. Surinam petjel always contains dagoe leaf (water spinach). The composition and flavour of the Surinam petjel sauce is slightly different from the original Javanese sauce.

Ratu Culinair's petjel sauce is traditionally prepared based on recipes that have been in the family for over a century. Put the contents of the package in a pan along with boiling water and stir into a delicious sauce. For the ideal thickness of the sauce, we recommend 80 ml of water to 100 grams of the basic mixture. Of course, you can add more or less water to adjust the thickness of the sauce.