I’ve been wanting to make peanut sauce for awhile now, so I decided to go to Indonesia for inspiration and a recipe. (I didn’t literally go to Indonesia, of course… that would just be silly.)

The recipe is from Vegetarian Times. I used to buy VT, many moons ago, but found the recipes kind of hit and miss. This one sounded like a winner, though.

My changes: I used onion instead of shallot; 1/2 sachet of coconut cream mixed with water instead of 1/2 cup coconut milk; added an extra tablespoon of soy sauce; omitted the lime juice (because I forgot) and the sugar (the sauce seemed sweet enough without it).

I served the peanut sauce over pan-fried tofu, plus greens from our allotment (spinach, perpetual spinach, turnip greens, broccoletto and chinese cabbage), a few ’shrooms and a package of baby corn. And rice.

The verdict? In a word: spectacular. Mr Thrifty even finished the leftover sauce with a bit of bread, followed by scraping the pot with a spoon.

The only problem with it is that the calorie content is probably quite significant.

But so worth it.