.: evil jungle prince :.

"Good grief!" said Mom as she entered the kitchen, watching as a rolled my rempeyek (peanut rice balls) around in hot oil. I still don't know what she meant exactly, but it is true enough that my food preferences have always perplexed my family. Even after declaring strict vegetarianism in high school, my grandparents continued to choose steakhouses as the focalpoint of family dinners together. "But they have salads, too," they'd always say.

So far, I've gotten Mom to try eating hiyashi ramen ("good"), Greek yogurt ("too thick"), spinach with peanut pecel ("interesting"), rempeyek with sambal tomat ("I like the rice balls but not the sauce"), and Thai fried rice (no comment). Mom never says anything after the first few bites, which always concerns me. I ask how she likes it, and usually I get one or two words at most. I think she still struggles to understand why I don't stick to American fare, but I give her credit for trying new things. Of course, I leave everything spicy out so she can at least try it.

This was my first time cooking rempeyek (spicy peanut rice cakes) and I thought they turned out pretty well, although Amber has mentioned that this type of rempeyek looks nothing like Malaysian style rempeyek. My recipe was written by an Indonesian -- could the two styles differ so much? Anyway, here's the recipe in case you'd like to try yourself...

1. In mortar, pound 1 clove garlic, 1/2 inch piece of chopped ginger, and 1/4 tsp turmeric. Then add 1 tsp sugar, 1/2 tsp salt, 1 tsp chili sauce, 2 tsp fish sauce, 2 tsp chopped cilantro, and the juice of 1/2 a lime.

2. To this mixture, add 3 oz of cooked rice and pound until smooth and sticky. Add the remainder of 1 cup of cooked rice. We hands and shape the mixture into balls.

3. Roll the balls in chopped peanuts to cover them entirely. Fry in vegetable oil briefly until crisp and then place on paper towels to remove excess oil.

The tomato sambal I made was not very good and next time I will seek out another recipe. If anybody has a good sambal tomat recipe, I'd love to have it. Likewise, I'd be curious if anybody has ever eaten the ball-style of rempeyek before or if this is just a quirky recipe?