Brand Street: Make Rojak with MCM Rojak Sauce ... Easy Peasy!

The Malaysian Rojak

Ask anyone in Malaysia if they don't know rojak, and chances are you'd be scoff at. Everyone in Malaysia knows what rojak is, and the different types of rojak. There's the rojak buah, the Mamak rojak and the Penang rojak. To simplify things, here's one recipe we found on the Internet. But to make things even simpler, instead of making the rojak sauce from scratch, we can use MCM Rojak Sauce, which is sold on Brand Street. 

Ingredients:

1) Fritters

    - 300ml water

    - 1 large (Grade A) egg

    - 80gm tapioca flour

    - 80gm rice flour

    - 1 tablespoon of fennel seeds

    - salt to taste

    - oil for deep frying

2) Sambal

    - 6 red chilies, sliced

    - 3-4 bird's eye chilies

    - 20gm belacan, roasted and crushed

3) Sauce

    We'll save you the bother of making the rojak sauce from scratch by introducing MCM Rojak Sauce, a brand of Kum Thin Food Industries Sdn Bhd. How much do you need? As much as it takes to mix the rojak well.

MCM Rojak Sauce

4) Basic Rojak    
    - 200gm yambean (sengkuang), cut into wedges

    - 200gm cucumber, cut into wedges

    - 200gm pineapple, cut into wedges

    - 200gm green mango, cut into wedges

Below are optional ingredients to add to the rojak:

    - guava (jambu batu), cut into wedges

    - rose apples (jambu air), cut into wedges

    - amberella (kedondong), cut into wedges

    - water spinach (kangkung), cut into lengths and scalded

    - beansprouts, scalded

    - hard beancurd (taukwa), cubed

    - Chinese cruller (yutiao, yau char kwai or chakoi)

    - soaked dried cuttlefish, scalded and sliced

    - deep fried fish skin

    - wild ginger flower (bunga kantan), split and sliced finely

5) Toppings

    - 150gm peanuts, roasted and crushed

    - 60gm white sesame seeds, toasted

To prepare fritters:

Combine the flours, egg and water in a mixing bowl. Before adding salt and fennel seeds, make sure the mixture is mixed well and then strained.

Using a wok, heat enough oil for deep frying over medium heat. When the oil is hot enough, but not so much that smoke is rising from it, scoop up a small size mixed batter and let it slide down the sides of the wok. The batter will fan out as it hits the hot oil to form a fritter. Repeat this until all the batter is turning to fritters in the hot oil.

Fry them until they are golden brown on both sides. Scoop up the fritters from the hot oil with a metal strainer and make sure that you hold the strainer over the hot oil until the last drop of oil falls. To further dtrain the oil from the fritters, put them into a paper towel and leave to cool before putting them in an airtight container until needed.

To prepare sambal:

Pound the chilies and the belacan together to a fine paste.

To prepare the rojak:

Take a mixing bowl and toss the cut fruits and vegetables together with the rojak sauce. Make sure that the rojak sauce is mixed well together with the fruits and vegetables. Then add the optional ingredients, if you like, and mix them well. Then add the crunchy ingredients such as the Chinese cruller and fritters. You can break the fritters into pieces before adding them into the rojak mix. Finally, sprinkle crushed peanuts and and sesame seeds generously before serving.

Voila! You have made your very own rojak. This particular recipe is a combination of the fruit rojak and the Penang rojak, but you have a choice of adding all the optional ingredients, or choosing only some of them such as the Chinese cruller and guava, but not the bean sprouts, deep fried fish skin and wild ginger flower. The choice is up to you as our aim is to make the simplest rojak as possible. Bon appetit!