Rojak is a widely available hawker food in Malaysia. It is a burst of sweet, spicy and tangy flavours mixed in with fresh pineapples, cucumber, jicama and tofu. The different ingredients give the dish the range of textures and sweetness. Fruit rojak is very different from Mamak rojak (pasembur), which comes with prawn fritters, vegetables, hard-boiled egg, and topped off with thick peanut sauce. Incidentally, the word ‘rojak’ is ‘mix’ in Malay, and is used frequently as an adjective, such as ‘ They are speaking rojak, mixing languages together’, which incidentally, is how Malaysians normally speak.
Rojak paste (sambal) is made from sweet soy sauce, prawn paste, belacan (fermented shrimp paste), sugar, lime and chillies. However, there is no seafood taste at all. Luckily, there is very good rojak sambal paste available (I purchased mine from E-PACS in East Tamaki), which makes this moreish dish very easy to prepare.