Nonya Achar

If you like spice, something sour and veggies, then you will like this dish. This dish is a great accompaniment for any meal or snack if you just want to munch on something in the afternoon.

Ingredients (look at the picture below for the quantity to make 2 bottles):
-toasted peanuts (crushed)/ just buy the cooked peanuts from the packet and crush it
- dried chilli (soaked in water first)
- normal big red chilli
- shallots
- normal ginger
- yellow ginger (tumeric)
- blue ginger (galangal)
- lemon grass (thinly sliced)
- garlic
- cucumber
- carrots
- cabbage (1/2 only)
- toasted white sesame seeds
- candle nuts (about 3-4) *not in picture
- one whole pineapple
- one bottle of white vinegar
- sugar
- salt

The ingredients (including the candle nuts and dried chilli) in the clear plastic plate on the right should be set aside to blend for the chilli paste. You will also need belachan (2 tsp) for blending. But before that, wrap the belachan in aluminium foil and throw in over together with your peanuts and white sesame seeds to toast. Do until the fragrance of the belachan is out. As for the peanuts and sesame seeds, put in over till it is lightly browned.

1) Start slicing up the vegetables. Cut it length wise in strips. Not too thin as you would like some crunch in the veggies when you eat. Remove the seeds in the cucumber. Keep the skin of the cucumber.

2) After slicing the cucumbers, carrots and cabbage, season it with a handful of salt and toss with your hands.

3) Then leave your veggies in the strainer, cover it with a cloth for an hour

4) Slice up your pineapple and big chillis

5) Pound your toasted peanuts

6) Start preparing your chilli paste by blending the ingredients found in the clear plastic plate in the first picture.

- lemon grass
- big chilli
- ginger
- yellow ginger (tumeric)
- blue ginger (galangal)
- garlic
- shallots
- belachan (slightly cooked already in oven)
- a bit of water

7) Fry the blended ingredients with a little oil in pan

Fry till you see the colour become slightly darker and the fragrance of the chilli is strong

8) Then at this stage, you add 6 TB of sugar, 100 ml of vinegar and 50ml of water to the pan

After adding sugar

After adding vinegar and water

9) Then leave it to cool for about 15 mins

10) Next, you take the rested veggies and squeeze dry all of them part by part, using a clean cloth.

11) Set up a pot of boiling water (400 ml of water), 150 ml of vinegar, 1 TB of sugar, 1 tsp of salt. Then, put the "squeeze-dried"  veggies into the pot for only about 8 seconds. Then off the fire and drain the water from veggies with a strainer. 

12) Then let the veggies cool down for 10 mins before putting the veggies into the pan with chill paste to mix

13) Throw in the cut pineapple and chilli in

14) Finally put in the chopped peanuts and white sesame seeds in as well

15) Mix it evenly and taste it! (*Tasting along the way is very important so that you can adjust the ingredients according to your liking)

16) Finally, just transfer to glass containers for storage in the fridge. You can eat this with chicken rice, for dinner, or just munch it as a snack when you are hungry!

Enjoy!