So spicy it’ll wake you up
At her home in Flushing, Fefe Anggono, the founder of the monthly NY Indonesian Food Bazaar, hosted at Elmhurst’s historic St. James Episcopal Church, teaches us how to make her super spicy sambal ijo. In this Hot Sauce’d episode, filmed and produced by Cooking with Granny's Caroline Shin, Anggono pops copious amounts of three different peppers into her sambal ijo and talks about bringing the Indonesian community together in Elmhurst.
To make the chili paste, she uses a mortar and pestle she brought with her from Indonesia to mash the ingredients together. It’s a mean, green sauce, made with different varieties of green chilies—“for me, I like it spicy, so I just use all of them,” says Anggono with a laugh—plus garlic, shallots, green tomatoes, concentrated tamarind (“it’s easier, because it’s already liquid”). Everything gets sautéed and eventually the whole concoction is blended together into creamy, eye-watering perfection.
Anggono serves her sambal ijo with shrimp toast; she says it’ll wake you up when you eat it.
