Sate Padang

We usually see sate or satay as chicken skewers with peanut sauce. The meat can be either chicken, duck, rabbit, goat, lamb, beef, horse, buffalo, deer, snake, dog, or pork. Altough 80% of Indonesian are muslims, there are some parts in Indonesia where muslim is minority. Or there are some region where many muslims don't do their religion rules and still follow indigenous beliefs, thus make them not consider some food as non halal. So we still see pork, snake, or even dog's meat to be eaten. Just be careful, B1 is Biang (dog, some call it as RW or sate jamu) and B2 is BaBi (pork), particularly when you visit Medan and Manado which famous with the exotic food (mice, bats, etc) or Solo, where there are many dog's meat, or Bali, Kupang, and Papua where pork is common.

Javanese cuisine notably using palm sugar and sweet soy sauce. But in minang cuisine (padang is actually the capital city of West Sumatera, the term padang cuisine in fact refers to minang cuisine)  they never use it and use spices and curry instead. So do the sate padang. Sate padang is beef and cow's innards skewers (most of it are innards, btw) doused with thick curry based gravy and served with chunks of rice cake (ketupat) and spicy cassava chips (keripik lado, lada or lado in minang is chili).

Unlike javanese satay, sate padang is not cooked when we order, all were already cooked and just warmed in the charcoal. The gravy constantly cooked to keep the thickness (when it's cold, the gravy become watery). So the skewers don't include the fats. In javanese satay, as the satay to be burned as order, fats are tucked between the meat to protect the skewers to get burnt, and also to intensify the flavor. Of course you can order to not include the fats if you worry about your health (just like me and my parents).

The taste is.... well, some people love it. It has the hot, spicy, salty, and savory flavor. Other people couldn't accept the taste, because it against their palate (especially javanese who accustomed with sweet satay). The one i took the picture is a well known sate padang in a padang restaurant in Semarang. The flavor is so intense and the hotness is maximum. I and my family quiet enjoy it. Yeah, it's all about our own taste. Some people like it (love it, or even crazy with it), some people don't. But if you like spicy curry, you may try this.