The Story
Selamat pagi para pemasak dan para pecinta makanan! This week we’ve crafted something extra special and delightfully different, a fusion of cuisines that is particularly close to my heart. And is quite possibly one of the tastiest things that I’ve ever cooked! My roots might be in Italy, and my home in Australia, but Indonesia is where I really grew into myself. So I’m very excited to present our latest creation: fagottini made with cassava leaf dough and cooked as potstickers, filled with slow-cooked beef rendang, and served with green sambal, chilli eggplant, and toasted coconut.
I was lucky to grow up only a few hours’ from Indonesia, by plane. For our international friends, these days it takes me almost twice as long to fly from Canberra back to Perth. As a result, not only were our holidays fantastic, but the Indonesian community in Perth was large, and I spent about 10 of my school years learning Indonesian. It was therefore only natural that I continue on my language studies to university; by which I mean the Indonesian lecturers cut me a deal to drop my visual arts degree in exchange for an express ticket to fourth year level Indonesian classes, and Yogyakarta.
Yogya is still a special place to me, even though my time at university there was short (I specialised in ancient Indonesian history, linguistics, and a little bit of gong playing in the uni’s traditional orchestra). I was 19 and straight out of home, with a very open mind and street slang respectable enough to grant me an instant band of local troublemakers and a complementary agenda of local mischief. I guess that it was my coming of age, and so from that point on Indonesia has been as closely tied to who I am as Italy is.
It should come as no surprise that a big part of the Indonesian experience for me is the food. Indonesia is incredibly diverse, with over 1300 distinct ethnicities spread over more than 6000 inhabited islands. The language itself, commonly referred to as Bahasa Indonesia, was only formalised in the 40s as a lingua franca to try and unite speakers of over 700 local languages. And with all of that diversity comes a whole lot of food. Though it’s hard to pick a favourite cuisine, and I enjoy just about anything from across the archipelago, Padang food (or Minang food as it’s locally known) has always stood out to me. All I can say is the Minangkabau people, of West Sumatra, sure know how to cook.
Generally speaking, think chillies, coconut milk, and more chillies. And a whole lot of food. If you go to a Padang restaurant, prepare yourself for an onslaught of literally dozens of dishes. Stews, soups, thick curries, thin curries, fried things, grilled things, fish, eggs, beef, beans, chicken, breads, rice. I could name at least 50 different items without slowing down. You don’t order, just grab a seat, wait for the plates to come to you, and then only pay for what you eat. If you ever get the chance, visit a Padang restaurant! It is an incredible food experience.
For all of the climbing active volcanoes, racing scooters across rice fields, scuba diving, pinching something from a farmer’s field to roast as a midnight snack, flirting, having babies thrust at me for photo opportunities, growing out my hair, and that one time that a stranger asked me to play a Ronan Keating song at his wedding, one of the true highlights for me was my weekly Padang takeaway. A couple of pieces of rendang (beef stewed until dry in coconut milk and spices), gulai nangka muda (light curry of young jackfruit), daun singkong (cassava leaves, boiled or in a light curry), sambal ijo (fiery but fresh green chilli sauce), and some rice. Give or take a few things depending on my mood. All wrapped up in a big banana leaf, ‘dibungkus’, for about $1.
So this week’s dish is a play on that delicious little bundle. We’ve taken the rendang (with a recipe that I’ve fine-tuned over almost 20 years), and wrapped it up in little pasta potstickers made with cassava leaf. These are served with a classic green sambal, and another wonderful Padang dish terong balado, or eggplant with chilli. With a scattering of toasted coconut, and in an ode to student me sitting down in my tiny room to tuck in, it’s all plated up on banana leaves. Let’s cook!
The Pasta
Look at this collection of ingredients! It’s incredible to think of the things that you can now pop down the road to collect, compared to even 10 years ago.
Most of these bits and pieces are going into the rendang that we used to fill our pasta, and that takes about 5 hours to cook, so it’s a good place to start. If it helps with timing, you can make it a few days in advance and keep it in the fridge. We also cooked up about four times as much rendang as we needed to fill the pasta, then froze the rest for future us to have as a traditional curry. So anyway, blend up your paste, a little bit at a time if your food processor struggles with the coarser ingredients, and then fry it gently in oil before adding the meat. Toss in the rest of the sauce ingredients, and cook it partially covered until it’s dried right out. Note that to prevent it being too dry as a filling, we left it a little wetter than usual.
As that’s cooking, get started on your pasta dough, and the two side dishes. While our potstickers are technically made with a pasta dough and as a pasta shape, the Italian influence ends there. For this dough, we’ve taken a classic green fettuccine recipe, and swapped the spinach for cassava leaves. Make sure that you cook these leaves well, for at least 10 minutes on a vigorous boil, as raw cassava roots and leaves are extremely harmful if ingested. If you can’t find cassava leaves, substitute for kale or just stick with spinach. Blend up your dough in a food processor to distribute the colour evenly, and then knead for 10 minutes before resting for at least 30.
Onto the chilli eggplant. This is a fairly straightforward job. Just slice the eggplant into thin rounds and steam for 20 minutes. While that’s cooking away, blend together the chillies, shallots, garlic, and tomatoes, and fry for 5-8 minutes with the torn lime leaves. Toss it all together, and you’re done.
The green sambal is similarly easy, although we decided to add in a step by fire roasting the chillies first. This gave them a delicious bit of smokiness, and gave little Al a good opportunity to test his tong skills. Turns out he’s kind of a big deal in the tong world.
Seal them in a bag for 10 minutes to loosen the skin before peeling. If you’re not roasting them, steam the chillies, shallots, green tomatoes, garlic, and lemongrass, and then smash it all up into a coarse paste. Fry this with the lime leaves for 10 minutes to finish.
Finally, back to the pasta. Roll it out to a medium thickness (we used a setting of 5 on a 9-setting machine) and then cut it into 10cm squares. Mash up the rendang, and then spoon a walnut-sized piece into the centre of each square.
To fold, gently draw the corners together to meet lightly above the filling, and then carefully seal the edges together to form little square-based pyramids.
Heat up an oiled pan to medium-high, and then fry them in small batches for about 3 minutes or until the undersides are crispy and brown. Pour in about half a cup of water, then cover and cook for another 4-5 minutes. Perfection!
Plate it all up with a sprinkle of toasted shredded coconut, and get stuck in!
Everything that we make on Pasta et Al is made with love, but this is a particularly personal dish. I’m really excited to have created something new like this from the foods that I love the most, and it’s so good to be sharing it with this wonderful community of passionate cooks and food lovers. Even if it is pushing the bounds of ‘pasta’ a little…
Cook with your heart (and this week eat with your hands). Selamat makan, dan Selamat Hari Kemerdekaan ke-76 buat minggu depan!
– Al & Al.
Equipment
- Food processor
- Pasta roller and cutter (if not using a rolling pin and knife)
- Enamelled cast iron pot (or large regular pot)
Ingredients
Curry Paste
- 10 shallots roughly chopped
- 2 inches fresh ginger peeled and roughly chopped
- 2 inches fresh galangal peeled and roughly chopped
- 10 garlic cloves peeled and roughly chopped
- 6 lemongrass stalks outer layer removed and roughly chopped
- 8 dried chillies soaked in water and roughly chopped
- 12 candlenuts
- 1 tbsp shrimp paste
- 1 inch fresh turmeric
- 1 tbsp coriander seeds toasted
- 2 tsp fennel seeds toasted
- 1 tsp cumin seeds toasted
- Pinch of nutmeg
Curry Sauce
- 6 tbsp oil
- 1.2 kg beef roast chopped into large cubes
- 800 ml coconut milk
- 1 litre water
- 2 tbsp tamarind puree
- 2 cinnamon sticks
- 6 star anise
- 6 cardamom pods cracked open
- 6 cloves
- 12 dried kaffir lime leaves
- Zest of 2 limes
- 2 tbsp dark sweet soy sauce
- Salt and white pepper to taste
Terong Balado
- 320 g red chillies
- 1.6 kg long eggplant
- 16 shallots
- 16 cloves garlic
- 8 tomatoes
- 8 tbsp olive oil extra virgin
- 16 lime leaves torn
- Salt and black pepper to taste
Sambal Ijo
- 32 long green chillies
- 16 shallots peeled and halved
- 8 green tomatoes roughly chopped
- 8 cloves garlic
- 4 lemongrass stalk outer layer removed and roughly chopped
- 12-16 fresh kaffir lime leaves bruised
- 4 tbsp olive oil extra virgin
- Salt and sugar to taste
Pasta Dough
- 1 kg 00 flour
- 400 g cassava leaves sweet variety (we used frozen, chopped leaves)
- 200 g semolina flour
- 8 eggs
- 4 egg yolks
- 1 tbsp olive oil extra virgin
- 2 tsp salt
To Cook the Pasta
- 8 tbsps olive oil extra virgin
- 2 cups water
To Serve
- Large handful desiccated coconut toasted
- Banana leaves to serve on, optional
Instructions
Rendang
- Blend all of the curry paste ingredients together until evenly chopped, and then fry with the oil in a hot wok for 1-2 minutes, until aromatic.
- Add the beef into the wok and brown, and then stir in all remaining curry sauce ingredients. Drop to a gentle simmer, and cook partially covered for 4-5 hours, or until most of the liquid has evaporated.
Terong Balado
- To prepare the terong balado, steam the eggplant over boiling water for 20 minutes, until they are soft to the touch. Alternatively, toss lightly in oil and roast in a 200 degree Celsius oven for 20 minutes.
- Use a mortar and pestle or food processor to blend together the red chillies, shallots, garlic, and tomato, and then fry for 5-8 minutes on medium heat with the 8 tbsp of oil and lime leaves.
- Toss the cooked eggplant into the pan, and stir gently to evenly coat.
Sambal Ijo
- Steam the green chillies, shallots, lemongrass, and green tomatoes over boiling water for 15-20 minutes, until soft. For a little more flavour in your chillies, roast them over an open flame for 3-4 minutes instead, until they're lightly scorched and soft. To remove the scorched skins, seal the chillies up in an airtight container for 10 minutes to make peeling easier.
- Use a mortar and pestle or a few pulses of the food processor to loosely smash up the steamed ingredients, chopping the lemongrass if necessary, and then fry the paste in the oil over medium-high heat with the lime leaves for 10 minutes.
Pasta
- Start off by boiling the cassava leaves for 10 minutes in a large pot of water, over high heat. Cassava is extremely dangerous if not cooked before consumption, so make sure that you don’t skip this step. Remove the leaves, rinse, and drain.
- Use a food processor to blend the leaves as finely as you can, and then add in all other pasta dough ingredients, apart from the 2 tbsp of oil. Combining them in a food processor like this will assist in the even distribution of the cassava leaves.
- Once the dough is holding together, turn it out onto a lightly floured benchtop and knead vigorously for 10 minutes. Transfer to an airtight container and rest for 30 minutes, away from heat and direct sunlight.
- Divide the dough into four pieces, and store those not being worked on back in an airtight container. Roll it out into sheets using either a pasta machine or rolling pin. If using a machine, make sure that you pass it through on the thickest setting a few times (folding over itself in between passes) before stepping up to your desired setting. For this pasta, we recommend a setting of 5 on the manual machine.
- Using a straight-edged pasta cutting wheel or square cookie cutter, cut the dough into squares of approximately 100mm, and then spoon a walnut-sized amount of filling into the centre of every square.
- To form into our fagottini-shaped potstickers, lightly spritz a mist of water across the pasta, and then bring together two opposing corners. Draw the other pair of corners into the centre in a similar manner, and firmly crimp all four sides together to seal.
- Cook the pasta in batches of around 7-8, using 2 tbsp of oil at a time, in a medium-hot pan until the undersides are golden brown and crispy. Add 1/2 cup of water, cover, and cook for 3-4 minutes until all water has been absorbed or evaporated and pasta is al dente.
- Plate up the pasta with the toasted dessicated coconut, the terong balado, and the sambal ijo.
