Sambal petai is one of those dishes people either love immediately or need one convincing bite to get hooked on. The beans smell funky, yes, but the flavour is earthy and strong in a way that makes the whole sambal hit differently. Calorie-wise, 400 calories for a plate is not outrageous for a lauk, especially when you are getting 22g of protein from the prawns. The problem is this dish almost always comes with rice, so you are easily at 650 to 700 calories by the time you sit down. Worth knowing before you go for a second scoop. Fair warning though: these numbers are a ballpark estimate because solid nutritional data for sambal petai is genuinely thin. Cooking methods and oil amounts vary a lot from one stall to the next.
What actually swings the calories is how heavy-handed the cook is with the oil. A stingy tablespoon versus a generous glug can be the difference between 300 and 450 calories on the same plate. The version with ikan bilis instead of prawns comes in around 360 calories, while swapping to beef pushes it to about 430 calories. If you want to keep it lighter, the petai and prawns are not your enemy at roughly 165 calories combined. It is the 205 calories sitting in that 25ml of sambal oil that you need to think about. At a good stall you cannot control the oil, bah, but at home you can cut it to 15ml and save around 80 calories without killing the dish.