Balado Terong Ijo (Green Round Eggplant Stir Fry with Chilli Sauce)
At this point, you probably can tell our love for spicy foods and sambal (Indonesian chilli sauce). Chilli has easily become that one staple ingredient we must regularly stock up at any given time. Easy to say that our daily menus are essentially decided upon what’s dish best to be paired with this sambal or what kind and how many chillies left on the fridge. I definitely have taken a lot of menu inspirations from my mother homemade cooks including this Balado Terong Ijo. Balado, similar to Lado (from Tahu Lado Merah recipe), means chilli in Minang Dialect.
If memory serves right, I was not a big fan of eggplant at first. So I can assure you it is that good for a picky eater like me to finally decide trying it in the first place and loving it now so much. I completely have no idea why I never once attempted making the dish whilst we were still in Jakarta. It was only recently during one of our wet market visits, I saw for the first time since moving to Singapore a basket full of green round eggplants sitting at the corner of a vegetable stall and it immediately reminded me of this recipe my mother made. As soon as I brought it home, I immediately texted with my father to get my mother on the phone wrote me down all the ingredients and steps in cooking it. Dito obviously was nervous about the menu having some reservations about eggplants in general unless they were batter-fried. So by cooking this partly to hopefully convert him just like how my mother did to me back then and YES, he loves it!
This recipe just has the right amount of balance between spicy-savoury-sweet and such an easy and quick dish to make. You obviously can alternate with regular long purple eggplants if the green round ones are hard to find in your area.
Ingredients:
400 gram green round eggplant
4 garlics
7 shallots
1 tsp shrimp paste
1 medium sized tomato
5 red chilli peppers
10 bird chillies
1 tbsp sugar
Salt and pepper
Cooking oil
Water
Cooking steps:
Prepare the eggplant. Wash and cut them into four.
On blender, mix garlic, shallot, shrimp paste, red chilli pepper, bird chilli, and tomato. Add a little bit of cooking oil and grind into a puree.
Heat the oil in frying pan over medium heat. Put the blended spice puree and keep stirring to avoid burn. Continue to cook until it is fragrant and become paste like consistency.
Add the eggplant and mix well with the spices. Pour a little bit of water until half bottom of the eggplants is soaked. Continue to cook until the water reduces and the eggplants tender.
Add sugar, salt, and pepper to taste.
Note: If you have extra sauce left, fried some sunny side egg and toss it together. You now have different meals with the same sauce.
