Urab Sayur is a fragrant, warm vegetable salad with toasted coconut. It’s lovely and light, and slightly spicy. All you need is 9 ingredients and less than 25 minutes. Plus, you can switch out the cabbage and spinach for any other seasonal greens.
Toast the desiccated coconut in a sauté pan. Watch the coconut closely, it should go from white to golden, but not to brown. Set aside once golden.
Fry the chopped shallots in a sauté or frying pan, until translucent. Set aside.
Blanch all of the vegetables in a pan of boiling water. First allow the green beans to simmer for 1 minute 30 seconds, then add the cabbage for 30 seconds and then turn the heat off. Place the spinach and beansprouts into the pan and then immediately drain the vegetables. As this is a warm salad, there’s no need to plunge the vegetables into cold water, which would be usual for blanching.
Put the veggies, fried shallots, shredded kaffir lime leaves, and toasted coconut into a large mixing bowl. Mix with lime juice and sambal until it’s all coated well. Season with salt.
Add more lime juice, sambal and salt depending on how spicy or sour you would like the salad to be. Serve up either as a main, a side or as part of a Nasi Campur, and enjoy!
Notes
Usually blanching would mean plunging the vegetables into ice cold water after boiling for a short amount of time. As this salad is served warm, we don’t do this. We still use the term ‘blanching’ for ease.
The toasted coconut should be golden, not brown for the optimum flavour (please see the pictures).
Try swapping out the cabbage and spinach for seasonal greens, but try to keep the green beans and beansprouts, as these are key ingredients for a traditional version of this recipe.
This salad is best served on the day it is made. It will keep well in the fridge for a couple of hours, but any longer and it will start to release water and the vegetables will wilt.