Krengsengan

I am soooo tired today. After working, I dashed to Paris to meet a long lost friend from junior high school, madame RA, who happens to be in Europe for her husband's art exhibition. One of the advantages of living next to the ville of tourist, is that I get the chance of meeting several friends who want to sip the beauty of Paris. Funny that most of them have other friends too living there. And madame RA, said that she wanted to get to know her French root from her mother's side, that is why she is here. Anyway, I had a very good time, though fatigue did not want to escape from my "illy" body.

And when I went home it was quite late already, hubby was already home, hungry and impatient. So I had to prepare a dinner which is quick and easy. Lucky that I found this Krengsengan recipe from a book, (Masakan Indonesia, Yasa Boga, Gramedia 2008) that another friend, Lita, brought me last week when she hit Paris town. I bought this lovely useful book when I visited Indonesia last year. But stupidly, I left it at my mom's place. So when Lita, in a very short notice, told me that she would arrive in the city of love, within 4 days I quickly phoned my mom to transfer the book in the good faith of her (huh, why suddenly I used the language of law here? WTF?!).

Lita is a friend that I knew through the net, because we shared the same passion: Cooking. Unfortunately, she had to shorten her visit in Paris since her father had passed away a couple of days after she arrived in France. Luckily, I had the very good chance to meet her for a couple of hours. I found a short free time before work, to lunch on Saturday afternoon , a day before she received the nightmare (my deepest condolences for her and her family).

Meeting beautiful Indonesian ladies in one week, makes me very happy..and missing Indonesia quite deep now...Darn... now I find my brain telling myself: “M-U-S-T not fall into infatuated tragic feeling of missing my home country...” repeated 2 x.

Krengsengan

• Two slices of lamb's leg meat, cut
• 1 tsp of sliced chillies
• 1 tomato cut in dices
• 1 tsp of petis paste (a black paste, mixed of Indonesian sweet soy sauce, ground palm sugar and shrimp paste, 1 tbs :1 tsp: 2 tsp)
• 1 tbs of kecap manis (indonesian sweet soy sauce)
• 1 tsp of ghee
• 500 ml water

Spices

• 1 tsp of ginger
• 3 shallots sliced thinly
• 2 cloves garlic crushed and sliced thinly
• 0,5 tsp of salt
• 0,5 tsp of white pepper

Directions:

1. Stir fry the spices with the ghee, add the lamb and tomato, let it cooked (till the stock is dried), add the remaining ingredients.
2. Let it cook until gravy is thickened, and there is less of it in your pan (I used medium fire, which i had to stir every now and then, to avoid the sauce burnt on the bottom of the pan)
   
3. Serve.