Name: Acar
Yield: A Show-Stealing Side for 4
Cuisine: Indonesia
Ingredients: salt; 2 cm/¾ in.knob fresh ginger, peeled and minced; 100 g/3½ oz cabbage cut into 2 cm/¾ in chunks; 50 g/1¾ oz/⅓ cup sesame seeds, toasted; 50 ml/1¾ fl oz. scant ¼ cup peanut (or sunflower) oil; around ⅔ regular cucumber; 1 tsp chilli (red pepper) flakes; 100 g/3½ oz green beans, topped and tailed; 6–8 small florets cauliflower; 75 g/2¾ oz/½ cup macadamia nuts, crushed (authentically, this would be the candlenut or kukui, but I’d hazard a guess that you’re all out of those); 1 large onion, very finely diced; 2–3 fresh green chillies, chopped (optional); 1 tsp ground turmeric; 100 g/3½ oz/⅔ cup peanuts, crushed; 6 garlic cloves, minced; sugar and salt, to taste; handful of fresh coriander (cilantro), chopped; 100 g/3½ oz fresh pineapple, cut into 1.5 cm/⅝ in.cubes; 2 medium carrots, peeled; 200 ml/7 fl oz. generous ¾ cup rice vinegar

Preparation info

A Show-Stealing Side for
4

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

Salmagundi

By Sally Butcher

Published 2014

About

Well here’s an embarrassing-drool-inducing little number. It’s got all the cheek-suckingly addictive qualities of proper pickle, with added sweetness and crunchy nuttiness (that last sentence is best imagined in a breathless, faux mid-Atlantic made-for-TV accent).

The word acar crops up in many Indo-European languages and is used to denote a number of varieties of spicy pickle: many of my Afghan customers use it in reference to curry paste as well. This particular salad is to