Vegan soto ayam with sambal kecap

For the broth ingredients, you don't have to take off any off the peels!
Cut the onions into quarters. Slice the garlic bulbs in half. Slice the ginger into slices. Cut the lemongrass in half or in 3 pieces, depending on how big the stalks are.
Add a bit of oil to a large pot over medium high heat and add in the vegetables. Sear for a few minutes until you get some charring on the onions. Then cover it with the water or vegetable broth. My pot has these lines where you can see how many liters are in it. I filled it up until 4,5 liters.
Now add in the bunch of celery leaves. Bring the broth to a boil. Once boiling, turn the heat down to a low heat and simmer for a few hours while you prepare the rest of the recipe.

Peel and roughly chop 10 cloves of garlic and put these in a food processor.
Take the Madame Jeanette/Suriname peppers and cut off the stalks. Roughly chop these as well and add them to the processor. If you don't take heat well, use one or 2 of the peppers and take out the seeds. I usually make mine with 3 or 4 of the peppers and I keep the seeds in unless I make it for someone else. Don't forget to wash your hands after cutting the peppers!!
Add a tiny splash of sweet soy sauce to the processor and blitz until there are no more big chunks of garlic and pepper.

Add the sweet soy sauce, the regular soy sauce, the garlic/pepper mixture, and the brown sugar to a small saucepan and put it on a medium-low heat. Slowly bring it to a boil while stirring constantly. It boils over in a matter of seconds and will spill all over your stove. If it does start to boil over, simply take it off the heat immediately and stir with your spoon. Then put it back on the heat.
Simmer the sambal for a few minutes until it has a syrupy consistency. Then take it off the heat and let it cool down completely before putting it in a sterilised jar.

Cook the rice according to the package instructions, I use a rice cooker for this.
For the vegan chick'un pieces, take them out of the package and shred them using your hands or 2 forks. Sauté them in a dry pan (without oil) on medium-high heat until they're golden brown. Set them aside for later.
Wash the bean sprouts in cold water, drain them, and set them aside for later.
Chop some more celery leaves and set aside.
For the so-oen, I can find it in the local Asian supermarkets and recently in the bigger supermarkets as well. If you can't simply use crispy onions and those crispy potato fry crisps. There's also fried vermicelli, maybe you can find that. If you can't, just omit it or make it yourself (it's very easy). Click here for a video on how to do this.

After a few hours of simmering, your broth should be reduced to 3,5 liters. Take another pot and put a collander on top. Strain out all the vegetables into the new pot. If your pot has those lines it should be at 3 liters. But it's okay if it's more or less. If you used vegetable broth, your soup is done. Just keep it warm until you're ready to serve so you can go to the next step.
If you used water, add in vegetable stock cubes for the amount of broth you have in your pot. If your pot doesn't have those lines, just add in a cube at a time and taste until you think you'll have enough!
Bring to one last boil to completely dissolve the stock cubes. Keep the broth warm until you're ready to serve.

Take the serving bowls and let people put the toppings in their own bowls. Add a bit of everything to your bowl. Then Fill the bowls with broth. Small warning about the sambal, it is spicy! Especially if you kept in the seeds and added in more than 1 pepper. I said this to my friends as well and they did not believe me at first. In the video you see me add quite a bit of the sambal. I am used to it and grew up eating this (and I add in way more off camera). Add in a bit at a time and taste.

Note: The nutritional value is for 1 portion without the so-oen as I couldn't find any nutritional values for it.