Vegetarian Sambal

The Nine Emperor Gods Festival started on 15th October this year for 9 days.  It's time to go strictly on a vegetarian diet.  Those vegetarian dishes, noodles, delicacies sold at the vegetarian food outlets and makeshift stalls are so tempting and delicious.  Sometimes I wonder how they make vegetarian pizzas and burgers and where comes the 'cheese' and 'mayonnaise'.  Anyway, I wouldn't want to try.

My family and I hardly go for processed vegetarian food but this vegetarian sambal uses only one ingredient which I'm sure is processed ingredient [vegetarian belacan]. It comes in paste or granules forms.  I was told that these are made from mushrooms.

The sambal goes well with fried noodles/rice and even noodle soups.  Gave some to some friends who are on vegetarian diet, they told me it's good, tasted quite like Thai sambal.   I have used this sambal for my vegetarian Cantonese Fried Flat Rice Noodles 'Sar Hor Fun'.   It was good.  Will definitely make more next round and should be good for Nasi Lemak [Coconut Milk Rice].

Ingredients

300 gm red chillies - seeded

25 gm small chillies [chilli padi] - optional for more spicy sambal

100 gm tomato [about 1 medium size] - chopped

3 tbsp vegetarian concentrated mushroom granules [looks like fried belacan]

60 gm castor sugar

1 tsp salt

100 ml calamansi lime juice

1. Wash chillies and remove the seeds.  Blend chillies and tomato together [not too fine].
2. Heat a little oil and fry mushroom paste until aromatic.  Add in the blended ingredients.
3. Fry for several minutes then add in the seasoning.  Continue frying on medium heat until mixture is fairly dry.
4. Add in the lime juice.  Bring to a boil.  Off heat and dish out to cool before storing in glass container.