Tempe Mendoan (Half-Fried Tempeh Fritters)

Name: Tempe Mendoan (Half-Fried Tempeh Fritters)
Total time: 25 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: Javanese (Banyumas)
Ingredients: 300 g Tempeh, sliced 3 mm thin into wide sheets; 100 g Rice flour; 40 g Tapioca starch; 220 ml Water; 3 Garlic cloves, crushed to a paste; 1 tsp Coriander seed, ground; ¼ tsp Turmeric powder; 1 tsp Salt; 3 Spring onions, finely sliced; 400 ml Oil, for shallow frying; 8 Green bird's-eye chillies and kecap manis, to serve

Banyumas's tempeh fritter, and the word tells you the technique: mendo means half-cooked. Thin slices of tempeh dipped in a coriander-and-garlic rice-flour batter and pulled from the oil while the batter is still pale and soft, never crisp. Eaten with raw green chillies and sweet soy.

Source

Recette de Javanese home kitchens · 🏺 Traditionnel · Javanese household cooking

Banyumas · the fritter pulled out early — An ownerless regional snack, so no cook is credited. The cited article confirms mendoan as a fried food from Banyumas, Central Java, named from the Banyumasan word mendo meaning half-cooked — cooked quickly in hot oil so it is deliberately not completed — and usually made of tempeh and tofu. The batter, the oil depth, the pale-colour cue and quantities are this book's own.

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⏱ 25 min🍽 4 portions🔥 260 kcal🇮🇩 Indonésie🌶️

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Étapes

Whisk the rice flour, tapioca, water, garlic, coriander, turmeric and salt into a batter the thickness of pouring cream. Stir in the spring onions.
Heat 1.5 cm of oil in a wide pan to 170 °C — a drop of batter should sizzle at once but not brown fast.
Dip each tempeh slice in batter, let the excess run off, and lay it in the oil. Fry 60–90 seconds a side, only until the batter has set and turned a pale straw colour.
💡 Pale. If it looks done, it is overdone — the batter must stay soft enough to fold. That half-cooked softness is the entire identity of mendoan; a crisp one is just tempe goreng.
Drain briefly on paper and serve hot, with whole green chillies to bite between mouthfuls and kecap manis for dipping.

💡 Astuces

The sambal kecap — kecap manis with sliced chilli and shallot stirred in — is the correct dip, and takes a minute.
It does not keep or reheat; the softness turns to sogginess in ten minutes. Fry only what will be eaten now.