Gado gado is one of those dishes that sounds like a project and turns out to be an assembly problem. The work is in the dressing — once that's done, everything else is boiling and chopping. Hayden's version gets this right: the dressing is built first, cooled while you work, and the salad is assembled around it rather than dressed at the last minute. The dressing method is worth paying attention to. Frying the red Thai curry paste in oil before adding peanut butter is not decorative — it blooms the aromatics and gives the sauce a depth you can't get by whisking everything cold. The coconut milk goes in split: 175ml to cook with, 25ml to loosen at the end. That second addition keeps the sauce from seizing into a paste as it cools. Small technique, large payoff. The vegetable selection is sensible without being restrictive. Baby potatoes, green beans, corn, spinach, and boiled eggs cover the texture spectrum — something starchy, something crisp, something sweet, something soft. Hayden explicitly invites substitution: tofu, tempeh, beansprouts, prawn crackers. This is accurate to how gado gado actually works in Indonesia, where the bowl is whatever the warung has that day. The charring of the corn is the one step that might get skipped under time pressure — the recipe title promises it, but the method just says boil for five minutes and cut the kernels off. If you have five extra minutes and a hot pan or a live flame, actually charring those kernels changes the flavor register meaningfully. Worth doing. Almond butter as a peanut-allergy substitution is noted and plausible — almond butter has less sweetness and earthiness than peanut, so lean into the lime and curry paste harder if you go that route. The lime wedge served alongside is not garnish; it's structural. Squeeze it. This is a 40-minute salad that eats like a complete meal and scales without effort. The dressing recipe makes enough to encourage doubling — it keeps in the fridge for several days and improves overnight as the curry paste settles in.
