Rojak – Malaysian version of fruit salad
Rojak is a Malaysian word – meaning “mixture”. It is a Malaysian/Indonesian/Singapore style fruit salad with a combination of fruits with a uniquely blended dark sauce as well as a nut garnish. Sometimes people will add dough fritters, prawn crackers, or steamed hard tofu.
For the salad, you can add any fruits you desire, but preferably crunchy, sourish, sweet and sour fruits – such as cucumber, pineapple, apple, yam bean (bang kwang/jicama or Mexican turnip), rose apple (jambu), and green mango – these blend well with the rojak sauce.
The sauce is the highlight of this salad, so what’s in the sauce?
The dark sticky sauce is a unique blend of sweet sauce (hoisin sauce), shrimp paste, chilli, soy sauce, sugar, tamarind juice (optional) and toasted belachan (shrimp paste powder). The flavour is mixed, with tastes of spice (optional), sweet, sour, tangy, salty and crunchy at the same time.
To make the salad, cut the fruit into bite size pieces, then toss that together with the rojak sauce, and garnish with chopped peanuts, sesame seeds and peanut candy (kong th’ng). The peanut candy adds an additional layer of punch to the sauce.
My rojak version – instead of mixing, I leave the sauce aside
Rojak is a widely popular street food, which can easily be found in food courts around Penang/Malaysia.
Talking about rojak, it brings back fond memories of my high school days. One of the highlights after school was to grab some rojak from one of the stall vendors outside the school grounds. We would be queueing at the rojak stall and I could still hear the students talking to the vendor “Ah Pek, I would like cucumber, no pineapple, please add more chilli, add more belachan etc…”. The old man vendor would be busy mixing the fruits with the sauce in a large bowl and wrap the rojak in newspaper that was layered with banana leaves.
Rojak sauce on yam bean is a simpler version of rojak – sliced juicy, crunchy and sweet yam bean (bung kwang) garnished with rojak sauce, topped with belachan powder, roasted crushed peanuts and toasted sesame seeds (see image below).
Rojak sauce on yam bean and garnished with belachan powder, roasted crushed peanuts and toasted sesame seeds.
Photo courtesy of Renee G-C
I would normally go for the this particular dessert, as it is cheaper, not as filling, and yet deliciously refreshing. The crunchy and juicy yam bean is very refreshing on a hot day, and when garnished with rojak sauce and sprinkled with peanuts and belachan powder, the pungent and salty flavour of the belachan powder (shrimp paste powder) coupled with the sweet and juicy yam bean and sweetness of the rojak sauce is a taste sensation worth relishing over!
I am not sure whether this particular dessert is popular outside of Penang, but it was certainly very popular during our school days in Penang.
I would like to thank Renee for show-casing the rojak sauce on yam bean – it brought back many beautiful memories of our high school days of relishing the dessert while chatting with school mates (and while licking our fingers from the drippings of the rojak sauce).
So, what do you add to your rojak? What types of fruits do you add to your rojak?
Rojak sauces and garnishing
| Image | Name | Description | Price | Buy | hf:att:pa_language | hf:att:pa_weight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Boy Brand Shrimp Pastes 230g | $5.55 | ||||
 | Richmond Rojak Sauce | $6.50 – $14.95 | ||||
 | Sesame Seeds 1kg | $11.95 | ||||
 | Belachan Powder Richmond - 200g | $4.75 | ||||
 | Fisherman Rojak Sauce 240g | $4.55 | ||||
 | Fisherman Shrimp Paste 230g | $4.45 | ||||
 | Belachan Powder - Vegetarian 200g | $4.95 |
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