PULI FRY -- FRAZZLED MEAT WITH TAMARIND

The following dish is Indonesian Dutch as well as Anglo Indian. They call it 'puli fry' and I've entirely forgotten what we call it. Dammit.


PULI FRY

Half pound meat or slightly more, small chunk cut.
One big onion, sliced.
Tablespoon chili paste.
Teaspoon ground coriander.
Two cloves garlic, mashed.
Equivalent amount ginger, ditto.
One cup tamarind water.

Mix the meat with the chili paste, coriander, garlic, and ginger. Fry the sliced onion golden in sufficient oil, add the meat, fry till fragrant. Pour in the tamarind water and cook till thick. Adding a pinch of ground nutmeg while frying the meat is my recommendation here. The chili paste I use is usually sambal oelek, of which there is always a big jar in the refrigerator.


There's a reprinted late nineteenth century Dutch cookbook of Indonesian food in one of my bookcases, which I cannot find (I just looked, this place is a mess), which has essentially the same recipe. I forgot what we call it. Dutch websites are NO help. Pamela C. might know the Malay name.

Old school. Once very popular.
Because it's so easy.

Like empal.
But wet.



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IRISH STEW, OR: MUST HAVE SAMBAL!

Over on the Anglo Indian food page, there is a long discussion about Irish Stew. Which is mutton chunks from the shoulder or neck, onions, root vegetables. Plus parsley. The meat is browned a bit, as are the chopped onions. Potatoes or other root vegetables are added about halfway through the slow-simmer with liquid phase, so that they won't fall apart during the long cooking. The parsley is added at the end.

Upscale heresies cooked in America may add more vegetables, plus beer or brown stock, as well as thyme, rosemary, and bay leaf.
And roux. Which is slightly pointless.

The key element is long slow cooking to tenderize the elderly sheep or packmule. Plus incorporating the pan-crusties into the broth. Salt and pepper may be used, and are in fact recommended.


As it turns out, most Anglo Indians know it because of their nanny, or a relative, boarding school, the nuns, and just generally their environment.


It should therefore come as no surprise that a group so diverse in origins and home-environments as the Anglo Indians will have so many strongly held and often thoroughly justified different opinions.


Because I am a Dutch American without a drop of Irish or Indian ancestry, living in San Francisco, California, and being culinarily influenced most by Dutch Indonesian food, Indian Restaurant food (having worked at a local Desi restaurant part-time for close to a decade and a half), and Chinatown Cantonese (socialization, environment, and chachantengs), naturally I too have many strongly held and often thoroughly justified different opinions.

About Irish Stew.

[FYI: waking up this morning involved a strong beaker of tea made with cardamom pods, some sweetened condensed milk added. No, not "chai". Masala naai-cha. Chai is weak slopkettle you get at Starbucks, along with that vanilla crap.]


Irish Stew, properly made, needs garlic, ginger, hari mirch (green chilies), a piece of cinnamon, coriander powder, dhannia ka patta (cilantro), and a jigger of Sriracha hotsauce, perhaps a dash of Wooster, pinches sugar, nutmeg, and fenugreek, and should be served soupy, so that crusty sourdough bread and/or a mound of rice are appropriate with it.
Fresh sambal on the side, as a condiment.
Plus homemade achar.


Sambal is the absolute sine qua non.


Something else which adds considerable flavour is being permanently pissed-off at one of the Irishmen you know. As one naturally is.
Because he's an idiot.




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INDO TASTES - MEMORY, FRAGRANCE, AND THINGS THAT BITE

A very good friend pointed me in the direction of an Anglo Indian recipe forum on social media, which has proven fascinating, not only because of the food posts, but also the flashes of personality, life style, and socio-cultural environment that glimmer through. I feel like I'm observing a remarkable culture, and it's evident that a number of other readers have similar perceptions.

Anglo Indians are people whose family make-up, history, and origins, sprung from India during the British period. Not necessarily the mixture of English and Indian. Some of them have surnames that point at Portuguese or Dutch ancestors, others are more strictly Indian, and some are English or English plus.
At present time, they live all around the globe.

I myself am not Anglo Indian. Actually of Dutch American ancestry (yes, some Anglo in the woodpile), we moved to Holland when I was an infant, and I came back to the States by myself when I was college age. My culinary data-sets at that point included beer, fried foods, Dutch Indies style cooking and condiments, and a smattering of other things, mostly rather French influenced, some English. No actual "Dutch American food", though I believe apple pie, donuts, and cookies, qualify as such.
No American food; my mother's meatloaf recipe (awful) and spaghetti (good) are in the final count, not really significant, except that I very rarely have meatloaf or spaghetti nowadays. That, plus 'chili beans', and Turkey, were the extent of my North American culinaria.

Pizza, fettuccine, hamburgers, Philly cheese steaks, cioppino, tuna salad.
The unmitigated horror of the chili cheese dog.
With onions and pickles.
Ketchup.


Sorry, not to sound snarky or anything, but if you put bacon, cheddar, and chopped pickled Jalapeños on top, almost anything tastes American.

Add a side of ranch dressing.



THE INDO LARDER

Netherlands Indies taste utilizes a number of things or concepts that aren't, strictly speaking, common in the American kitchen or restaurant. Many Dutch people have Indonesian connections in their family trees and family histories, both Prime Minster Mark Rutte and former Foreign Minister Koenders as examples have such links. But there isn't even a close overlap with family backgrounds and culinary tastes anymore, as many folks without a drop of Indies blood will have Indo Dutch ingredients and foods in their kitchen, while many people of Dutch Indo descent are somewhat unfamiliar with a number of these things entirely;  'yeah man, gotta ask my auntie 'bout all that stuff'.

As a rough set of basics, the larder often contains at least Atjar, Ketjap Manis, Sambal, Serundeng, Trassi or Blatjang, and a bag of shrimp chips (krupuk). Plus the makings of peanut sauce (sate saus, bumbu katjang), necessary curry spices, plus Chinese bottled sauces.

A nice red sambal goes with both fish and fried foods.
You should always have some on hand.


ALL THAT STUFF

ASAM
Sour. Asam djawa is tamarind, used as a cooking ingredient, sometimes mashed and cooked as a dip on the side. Asam gelugur is garcinia atroviridis, added as a souring agent, and often sold as dried slices (asam keping).

ATJAR
Pickles. Not dill chips or cornichons, but somewhat more like the Indian achaar, strong flavoured and meant to keep in a Tropic environment. Salt, vinegar, oil, spices. The most common version is atjar tjampur, mixed chopped vegetables jazzed up with salt, vinegar, oil.

BAWANG GORENG
Fried onion chips, used as a garnish on top of prepared dishes. Some people nowadays use crumbled potato chips instead.

BLATJANG
Fermented anchovies or shrimp, semi-liquid in form, and stinky-savoury. An ingredient in cooked dishes, also used with tomatoes or green mangoes as a table condiment.

DJERUK PURUT
Kaffir lime, most often used for the leaves -- daun djeruk purut -- the released oils of which add both fragrance and mouthfeel to dishes.
It is usually removed before serving.

DJINTAN
Usually Cumin seed (bidji djintan) or powder, although sometimes caraway and fennel are referred to as djintan also. Linguistic usages here are variable.

EBI
Dried shrimp, common to many South East Asian cuisines. You could soak them in garlic paste, lime juice, and hot sauce, then low-fry till crispy again.

GULA; GULA DJAWA, GULA AREN
Palm sugar, produced similarly to maple sugar. Crumbly, sometimes hard. Not essential, but often a beloved ingredient. Long resettled Indos will, in the absence of gula djawa ("Javanese sugar"), make do with golden sugar or coarse Chinese cake sugar (紅糖 and 冰片糖) instead.

HALIA (DJAHE)
Used fresh and dried. Self-explanatory.

KATJANG TANAH
Peanuts. Roasted and salted or spiced, as a snack or strewn on top. Or roasted and ground, cooked with onions, chilies, tamarind or lime, and spices, etcetera. When it has become a sauce, it is poured over barbecued items and salads, or, in the Netherlands, French Fries. The native Dutch versions are not very good.

KELAPA PARUT
Grated coconut. Soaked and squooze, it yields coconut milk for cooking. Carefully pan-toasted, it can be added to many dishes for a textural effect.

KELUWAK
Pangium edule nuts, which after considerable processing are a safe ingredient in black stews, often containing beef, chicken, even pork.

KEMIRI
Candlenuts. Toasted and ground up as a flavour addition, but also because they help keep sauces emulsified.

KETUMBAR
Coriander seed (bidji ketumbar) and leaf (daun ketumbar), frequently used in the same dish. The term is derived from a Dravidian language, and related to 'kotumir' as well as 'kachumber'.

KETJAP ASIN
Salty soy sauce, used in cooking. Especially Javan and Chinese.

KETJAP MANIS
Sweet soy sauce, available in every Dutch supermarket. Likewise used in cooking, but also drizzled over grilled foods, and absolutely one of the top inclusions in your cupboard.

KUNYIT
Turmeric.

LENGKUWAS
Galangal. Dwarf ginger.

LIMAU, LIMAU HIJAU
Lime types. A squeeze of juice is often added to fried or grilled food. Philippine calamansi is known as 'limau kasturi' or in some areas 'kalamunting'. The common Indonesian term for limes and other citrus fruits is 'djeruk'.

PANDAN
Fragrant screwpine. Daun pandan is often used as an extract in sweets, pastries, pudding.

PETIS
Stroppy Javanese fermented krill. But also confusingly used for Thai and Vietnamese fish sauces used condimentally.

SAMBAL
Probably the defining ingredient; chili paste, "plus". Plus onions, oil, and kemiri, fried into sambal badjak. Plus stinky fish paste and perhaps lime juice; sambal trassi. Plus fried onions; sambal bawang goreng. Plus tomato and garlic, cooked but still wet; sambal tomat. Plus a main ingredient and fried and sauced together; sambal goreng, a spicy side, of which there are innumerable kinds.

SANTAN
Coconut milk used for cooking. Often with stock and water added.

SERAI
Lemon grass; a major flavouring  ingredient, which is often removed after simmering.

SERUNDENG
Toasted flavoured rasped coconut and peanuts, or almonds or other nuts, or seaweed  substituted for one of the ingredients. The most common version is approximately one third peanuts two thirds rasped coconut, with a little palm sugar, ground coriander, and fish paste, dash tamarind water, slowly pan-toasted till brown and dry. Added on top of curry and rice it's wonderful, and the perfect taste of home. Make extra. It keeps.

TEMU KUNTJI
Finger root, Chinese keys. A relative of ginger used a lot in Javanese cooking, but also medicinally, which means that when American hippies finally discover it the price will go up along with all kinds of attestations about a mystic mysterious magic super ingredient.

TJABAI
Chilies. Essential. Among other things, no sambal without these.

TRASSI
Stinky purple brown fish or shrimp paste, pressed into a brick. Great as an ingredient, but if you cook a lot with this, your kitchen may smell like a South East Asian slum. You could just wrap the entire brick in aluminum foil and grill it at low temperature in the oven, then let it cool and coarsely grind it. Trassi bakar.



PLEASE HAVE SOMETHING TO EAT

Now then, a few nice Indonesian Restaurants: Have some peanuts with that!

Plus a selection of Indonesian dishes, and some eateries in Amsterdam: Do you want rice with that?

As for recipes, oh heck, they're all over this blog. Not all of them by any means are Indo, but sambal, fish sauce, and lime juice go with almost anything here. Even boeuf Bourguignonne. And Frites.


That sambal goes well with Chinese food or Chinatown chachanteng dishes, is, naturally, vanzelfsprekend.



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WHAT ARE YOU EATING RIGHT NOW?

From ground-level, the immensity of Rotterdam harbour is hard to fathom.
It takes a birds' eye view before you realize that this is human endeavor on a mythic scale, extending out more than twenty miles and encompassing engineering achievements that have altered the landscape beyond recognition.
In short, it's big.

While I still lived in the Netherlands I took a few day-trips by train there, on a whim. I had been reading Kipling, Maugham, and several Dutch East-Indies authors, and felt an urge to see where the ships sailed from.

Rotterdam is actually itself an impressive city. The heart was ripped out during the war by a massive German bombardment, and when peace returned it was rebuilt as the most modern city in Europe.
An achievement of which to be justifiably proud.


I realized once I was there that harbours and industrial vistas, while infinitely charming, must take a backseat to the human dimension.
I vaguely recall having only bread, cheese, and coffee, while there.
After considerable searching and effort.


Good Indonesian food can better be had in Den Haag.

The Hotel Des Indes is just after the bend, where the Lange Voorhout turns into Frederik Street. It is walking distance from the American Embassy on the Korte Voorhout, and altogether not too far from the Central Station.
It's pretty much the most splendid hotel in the country.
Worth visiting, especially once you realize that before it was made into travellers' lodgements, it was a private palace.

Interesting little fact: while German officers partied in the hotel itself, Jews hid in the pigeon coops on the roof.
Another interesting fact: The hotel employed a professional gigolo to dance with women during the twenties.

It's a pilgrimage.

Yes, it's worth eating there, at least once. But the best food in Den Haag is not at luxury hotels or fancy continental restaurants, but at the Indonesian eateries that used to cater to the generations of returnees, exiled into the cold and boggy northern wastelands after a lifetime in the tropics. People who settled in Den Haag because it was one of the few places they still remembered, and where they knew people.
The last of those came in the late fifties, when Soekarno got all huffy about the few Dutch remaining in his newly independent paradise.
There aren't too many of those folks left now.
But the restaurants are still there.


PASAR MALAM BESAR

Every year there's a fair in summer in Den Haag celebrating the culture of Dutch Indonesians ('Indos'). This includes people of all racial derivations, from so white they glow in the dark to descendants of the Ghanaians who served in the colonial constabulary, but mostly of various shades of light olive, because many Indies families had some local genetic stock.

Naturally the main attraction is food. The question "have you eaten yet?" is often the very first thing a visitor hears in an Indies household, and the idea that guests must be made happy with something tasty is ingrained.
One just cannot be hospitable with coffee alone.

Dutch Indonesian food is not the same as Jakarta Indonesian; it is better. Yes, there are some incredibly bizarre Indies-inspired dishes in the Netherlands -- much like the English will vindaloo their Spam and the Heinz baked Beans, damned weirdoes -- but real Indonesian food has access to a greater variety of ingredients, more spices, and an inventiveness not bound by geographical limitations or cultural orthodoxy.
The results are, often, stellar.


Today this event is known as the Tong Tong Fair; the name was changed a few years ago to commemorate Dutch East Indies journalist, author, and activist Jan Boon, who was instrumental in keeping the exiled Indies Dutch aware of and proud of their heritage.
Tong Tong was the name of a magazine that he founded.
The term refers to villagers' wooden alarm gongs.


The fair is close to the Train Station, on the Malieveld.
It is one of the best reasons to visit Den Haag.
Arrive hungry, plan to eat.


May I suggest, as something not too foreign, splitting some bami goreng, saté, gulai kambing, soto ayam, and tall glasses of dawet?
Plus a plate of nasi kuning, of course.
It isn't a meal without nasi.


Salamat makan, ya.



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FEELING PLEASANTLY ANTIQUE

One of the last times I saw my friends Henri and Suzanne before I left Valkenswaard for Berkeley was in neither place.
The centre of Valkenswaard ('Grote Markt') did not have the really ancient trees and the genuine Indonesian Restaurant occupying a dominant location as a few other towns, and had started modernizing, meaning that there were more bars than any other form of business.
It was not nearly as appealing for a long quite lunch as some other places.

We took the train somewhere else. Not far, but it would have been a two or three hour bicycle trip, and it threatened to rain. Besides, the owner of the restaurant we intended to visit was kin, in a way. Henry and Suzanne had not been born in the old country -- their parents had been forced out in the fifties -- but they and the restaurant man spoke the same language. Not standard Malay, which later became Bahasa Indonesia, but something a little wilder, more eastern. Yes, standard Malay also, because many of the transplantees and their families in the Kempen knew that language. But in the sixties and seventies odd linguistic strata were still evident.

[Transplantees: people who had left Indonesia when that country became independent. Many were Dutch legally if not entirely by descent, others did not have much or any Dutch blood at all. Most were too educated and too associated with the old regime to still be much welcome in the islands of their birth; the nationalists had since the Japanese occupation tried to erase as much of the Netherlandish overlay as possible. During the fifties and the sixties the local societal webbing and woofing got a lot worse. The term for such people in Holland nowadays is Indos, but up until the seventies, calling someone an Indo was considered depreciating. Some did not consider themselves 'Indo' in any way at all. Two of my classmates in high school, for instance, spoke barely a word of 'Indonesian' (Malay), but dreamed in the Hakka tongue of the mining settlements in Borneo. They were very white in that regard.]

Henri was back from college for a week, Suzanne would be at Leiden University after summer, and I was going to return to the United States in August. My exile was ending, and I both dreaded and welcomed the prospect of becoming more of what I was.

So it seemed perfectly appropriate to leave Valkenswaard for the day, and have a long lunch in a restaurant where another world was remembered.
At least one table leg elsewhere, so to speak.

Remarkable for a town far in the south, almost isolated from the modern world, Valkenswaard had much that subconsciously reminded one of Indonesia. After the war a number of people had arrived there, and while local society remained somewhat closed, it did welcome them. The cigar factories still used leaf from Djember and Bondowoso, the coffee everyone drank from dawn till midnight tasted still of the lost empire, and a number of the local people had served in the Preanger during the troubles. Poverty had sent local sons all over Europe and the East, many families had an uncle or cousin who used odd locutions, probably every household had something that recalled the Orient.

Valkenswaard even had some musicians that played Indo Rock.
Boisterous, melodic. Reminiscent of krontjong.

Other villages in the Kempen were similar. Cigar factories. Veterans. Mercantile people. And transplantees.


The "elsewhere" we visited that day had once had a cigar factory too, and a graduate of the Technische Hogeschool Bandoeng (Institut Teknologi Bandung - Technical University of Bandung) had opened a restaurant serving Dutch-Indonesian food there. He was a classmate of Henri and Suzanne's uncle, both men had worked with thousands of others on a railway in Sumatra.

After the war, they returned to their city looking out over the water north of 'returning plank', and discovered that it had changed. More Muslims, more Malays, more Madurese; along with destroyed oil installations and bridges. As engineers, they were perfectly suited to help rebuild it. But the world was a much different place by then.
When Henri's father finally came back from Semarang, all of them decided to leave.
Things were no longer the same.

['Returning Plank': Balik Papan. Semarang: where a P.O.W. camp had been.]

That afternoon there were eight of us at the restaurant named after a famous shopping street in Bandung.
Henri, Suzanne, and myself. The owner, his wife, a waiter, and two people in the kitchen in addition to the wife. She spoke to them in Cantonese, to her husband in Indonesian, and to us in Dutch.

Four people who had lived through the war. Three who had only heard about it secondhand. Two that had been in camps.
But, given that particular time and place, and that all of us had roots elsewhere, the war still seemed a significant factor, more than thirty years after it ended.

Our speech, naturally, was "mixed".

As was the food.

A lovely white-cooked chicken dish -- not the Chinese chicken with ginger shreds and green onion, but a pale and slightly sweet compound of breasts and livers in coconut milk -- a dark almost black beefy offering, and a golden bamboo shoot and dried fish gulai, which was actually a version of ebere without the pork.
Plus crunchy vegetables to dip in hot sauce, and a clear soup with tamarind and lemon grass.

Coffee and tobacco afterwards.

Douwe Egberts coffee with condensed milk. Pungent bolknak cigars from Hofnar.
Peter Stuyvesant cigarettes (or were they Caballero?), and pipe-tobacco from a black and white tin.


"How are your parents?"
[Ei, Apak Amao mo, ma-ano dema? Sarwa bate sametek?]

"Oh, they're fine. They send their regards."
[O, dema bate bate sahadja, mag-ngirim salam pa' kuwang, ya.]

"How's your uncle's gout?"
[Bagemano sakit-yikit nya pamongmo?]


Odd, that after much rich food, gout should come up.
Somehow it just didn't seem right. Natural, yes, but not right.
I also remember wondering at the expression 'sakit-yikit'. It struck me that it was a term I had never heard before, ere I understood that it was merely a borrowing from Dutch.
Jicht (ph: 'yikht').

[This was years before I got to feel gout firsthand; like the war, it was something I only knew from hearing.]

Gout is probably a lot more common in Indonesian circles now than it was several decades ago, as eating habits have changed. What were once foods limited to festivals are now so widely available that middle-class children may at times resemble beach balls, much like in Holland and America at present. And pudginess is considered a virtue.
But before prosperity made us fat, our diets were much healthier.

In Indonesia, the women of Sunda and North-East Borneo were always considered beautiful, with clear glowing skin and bright expressive faces, because they ate so many vegetables.
Crisp greens dipped in fresh chilipaste, vegetable curries coloured with turmeric, ginger and green herbs in soups and stews.
Not very much meat.
Fresh fish.

In the Netherlands at that time, the repatriated veterans and colonial administrators wanted the rich coconut curries, fried dishes, and roasted meats they remembered from their insular East Indies environment, the exiled Indos longed for the water spinach (蕹菜 eng tsae, kangkong), longbeans (豆角 tau kok, 菜豆 tsae tau, atawa katjang manjang), amaranthus leaf (莧菜 hin tsae, daon bayem), fresh chilies (辣椒 loat tseo, tjabe hijo), and basil (九層塔 kau tsang tak, daon tulasi) of home.

Over all this, the fragrances of chilipaste (sambal), dried fish (ika karing, daeng) and shrimp-dew (patis), lime juice (tjeap limo), tamarind (asem djawa, atawa buwa tjaramanggi, tan wae kampal), coconut (kalapa, niyog; but more often the milk - santen - and the raspings - katjurokan kalapa).
Lemongrass (sere), ginger (djae, haleya), galangal (umbe langkuwas, langkwang), cilantro (ijo katumbar), Chinese keyes (kantjor, tamo kuntji, atawa umbe wangi).


Most Indonesian restaurants in North Brabant were actually Chinese, with a menu that offered food that neither the staff nor the kitchen really even understood. A few represented Javanese tastes -- often run by little old aunties and uncles from somewhere near Bogor or Surabaya -- and one or two catered to the ex Ambon military.
All of them had sate, and semur, gule and kare, lumpia, saoto, gado gado, besengek, ayam taliwang, and babi panggang, babi taotjo, babi ketjap, babi tomat.
That's skewers of small grilled meat chunks with peanut sauce, soy and onion braised meat, yellow soup curry and hot brown dry curry, small eggrolls, soup with meat and potato or rice-stick noodle, blanched vegetables with peanut sauce, spicy Javanese chicken stew, fiery Menadonese chicken, roast pork, beanpaste pork, soy pork, and pork with tomatoes and chili.

Pork is not really an Indonesian favourite, at least not in Java and Sumatra, where most of the people live and almost everyone is Muslim.
But Hindus, Christians, Chinese, and Tribals all love it.
As do restaurant owners and Dutch people.

For the best truly authentic food, you went to Den Haag or Amsterdam.

Or places run by retired exiles: the uncles and the aunties.

There were few such in the hinterlands.


But you probably cooked at home, even if all you wanted was bami goreng and gule ayam, or simply ketoprak, rendang, and a bit of rice.

My tastes have expanded since I left Valkenswaard, but I still cook at home. Especially if I want to remember. Things like Suzanne's ready wit, or Henri's smile -- her faint hint of girlish perfume (Joy, by Jean Patou), his subtle odour of cigars -- and above all the light of Northern Europe, strong coffee and amber tea, old camphor wood cabinets, as well as the whisper of sandalwood (keeps away bugs), and diluted lime juice or green tea used to soften the hair of the ladies in Indo households.
These elements are all revived when I have Indonesian dishes.
Which I cook myself. Because no one else does these.

[How do I know what perfume Suzanne wore? Simple. I asked. It was available at a store on the Grote Berg in Eindhoven, as well as a place on the Rechte Straat near the 18 September Plein.
I bought her some for her birthday that last year. Of course I remember.]


MANOK MAPUOG
Coconut milk white chicken

One chicken cut into 6 or 8 pieces.
One onion, minced.
Six kemiri (candlenuts), lightly toasted.
Six cloves garlic, slivered.
A slice or two ginger.
One TBS. ground coriander.
Half Tsp. each: ground cumin, white pepper.
Small piece of cinnamon.
Two stalks lemon grass; bruised, folded, tied.
Whole green chilies.
Three cups coconut milk.
Three cups clear stock.
Pinches of salt and sugar.

Fry onion limp-translucent, add the garlic, ginger, and powdered spices. Gild very lightly. Now add everything except the chicken and whole chilies and simmer for an hour.
After this add the chicken and cook on low heat for about forty five minutes, then add the whole chilies and leave on the flame fifteen minutes more.

Remove the chicken to a dish, take out the whole chilies and piece of cinnamon, and reduce the liquid to a velvety consistency. Pour it over the chicken, and garnish with a few fresh basil leaves.


GULE KAMBING
Curry lamb

One and a half pounds lamb, cut into chunks.
One onion, chopped.
Thumb-length ginger, minced.
Two or three cloves garlic, ditto.
Half TBS. ground coriander.
Half Tsp. each: paprika, turmeric, dry ginger.
Quarter Tsp. each: cayenne, ground pepper, mace.
A stalk of lemon grass.
A stick of cinnamon.
A bay leaf.
Three cups coconut milk.
One and a half cups water.
Quarter cup broken cashews.
Squeeze of lime juice.
Jigger of Louisiana hot sauce.

Grind powdered spices with the cashews to a paste, add the onion, garlic, and ginger, and mix - mash - grind till smooth.
Fry the spice paste till the oil separates, add the meat and stir to coat. Braise a bit, and keep stirring, to prevent burning at the bottom of the pan. Loosen the crusty bits as needed.
Add the remaining flavourings and about a third of the liquids (except the lime juice and hot sauce), cook into the oil comes out, then add the rest. Simmer for about half an hour to forty five minutes.
Stir occasionally to prevent scorching.
Squeeze the lime and jigger the hot sauce over before serving.


MANOK KUNIT
Yellow curry chicken

Half a chicken, in four pieces.
One onion, minced.
One or two cloves garlic, minced.
A little ginger, ditto.
Three kemiri (candlenuts); lightly toasted, ground smooth.
One TBS. sambal ulek.
One Tsp. tamarind paste.
One Tsp. each: ground coriander, turmeric, dry ginger.
Half Tsp. each: sugar, shrimp paste.
Generous pinch ground cumin.
A stalk of lemon grass.
One cup coconut milk.
Dash of amber fish sauce.

Gild the onion, garlic, and ginger. Add the kemiri, sambal, shrimp paste, and spices, stirfry till fragrant. Then add the chicken, lemon grass, and coconut milk. Cook till the chicken is tender and the oil starts coming out, about forty minutes. Add the sugar and fish sauce, and cook a few minutes more.


EBERE
Meat and bamboo shoots in rich sauce

Pound and a half of chunked goat.
Cup and a half of julienned bamboo shoots.
One carrot, also julienned.
A small onion, minced.
Some minced garlic and chili.
One or two TBS. sambal ulek.
One Tsp. ground coriander.
Half Tsp. each turmeric, dry ginger, ground cumin.
Cup and a half coconut milk.
Cup of stock or water.
Dash soy sauce.
Squeeze of lime juice.

Frazzle the onion garlic and ginger with a little of the coconut milk until the oil comes out and the mixture gilds. Add the powdered spices, sambal, and goat, plus a splash more coconut milk. When the oil comes out again, add the remaining coconut milk and the water. Simmer for an hour. Then add the bamboo shoot, carrot, soy sauce, and the squeeze of lime juice, cook half an hour more.


BABUI MAKETJAP
Soy-sauce pork

One pound pork loin, chunked.
One or two stalks scallion, cut into small lengths.
A thumb-length ginger, coarse slivered.
One Tsp. sambal ulek
One or two star anise.
Quarter cup soy sauce.
Two TBS. sugar.
Half cup water.
Jigger sherry.

Salt and pepper the pork lightly. Stirfry the scallion and ginger in oil till fragrant, add the meat and sauté to colour. Add everything else and simmer for half and hour or so. The sauce should be velvety, but not treacly.


PATJOKAN LIMO
Lemon pickle-relish

One cup white vinegar.
Half cup water.
Quarter cup sugar.
Two TBS. salt.
Half Tsp. turmeric.
Pinch paprika (for colour).
Three large lemons.
Three small green chilies.

Blanch lemons and chilies. Remove seeds, and chop.
Mix everything in a large jar.
Age a week, shake regularly.
Use a little for a startling condimental addition.


RUDJAK
Sour and hot dressed salad.

Two TBS. each: lime juice, tamarind liquid, amber fish sauce, smooth peanut butter.
One TBS. each: brown sugar, Louisiana hot sauce, sambal ulek.
Hot water as needed for diluting, and a few drops of oil for smoothness.
Whisk together till smooth.

Serve as a dip, or use as dressing, for raw and blanched vegetables and sour fruits, with shrimp chips, fried tofu squares (tauhu pong), and slices of hard-boiled egg.


SARUNDENG BAWANG
Crispy coconut and onion garnish

One cup grated coconut.
One finely slivered shallot.
Two TBS. lime juice
One TBS. amber fish sauce.
One Tsp. sugar.
A few drops Louisiana hotsauce.
Pinches ground coriander and turmeric.

Mix it all together well. Let stand an hour or two. Spread thinly on an oiled baking tray, and toast it for two hours at slightly below 300 degrees Fahrenheit. If necessary, decant it to a skillet and toast it golden brown afterwards by hand. Keeps for a few weeks.
Use it to add textural excitement on top of curries.

[A version of serundeng with cashews is here: sarundeng kadjo. It can also be made with rehydrated laver (seaweed), at which point you have something that you will eat huge handfuls of in front of the teevee late at night.]


Note that lemon grass can be found in many Asian markets, sambal ulek is plain red chili paste as manufactured by Huy Fong Foods in Irwindale -- as well as other companies, and you can also substitute similar products -- and good amber fish sauce comes from Thailand or Vietnam. Avoid the Filipino versions; they're chemically unstable.
Kemiri nuts (Aleurites moluccana) are often used in Indonesian cuisine. They add a saveur of their own, and help unify emulsive sauces. But you can substitute many other nuts for a similar effect, entirely excepting kluwak (Pangium edule ), which has its own unique function within the Indies kitchen.


Customarily, freshly chopped cucumbers, a clear soup, simple and cooked sambals, and rice are part of the meal. Cucumbers lessen the effect of hot weather as well as gastric distress from too much sambal. Often some blanched or quick stir-fried vegetables will also be served.
Amounts of sambal ulek are suggestions.
Feel free to increase.


AFTER WORD

I remember that afternoon fondly. Suzanne was more sparkling than ever, and her brother Henri seemed pleased and proud that his sister was such a nice young lady. Over the next several hours he had three cigars, I smoked my pipe constantly, and Suzanne manfully put up with our smelly habit.

The uncle and his wife happily listened in on the juveniles, sometimes adding a comment. Perhaps it somehow reminded them of somewhere else, a different time and place. Youth, cleverly mixed languages, witty conversation, and spicy food.
Was it perhaps an echo of a city far away, and the people who had once lived there?
Outside it was raining. Not the hard downpours of winter, but a steady drubbing amid the green green leaves of the tall trees surrounding the square, muffling the sounds of traffic and whatever else.
Lights were on; you need lamps in Holland when it rains to drive away the gloom. And brightness adds cheer.

Later, when the rain lessened, we walked back to the station.
Henri and I let Suzanne use the only umbrella, resisting her demands that we all stay under it. The wetness was minor, and real men do not mind a little moisture.

Despite the long exposure to tobacco smoke, I could still notice the faintest hint of her perfume. How delightful, how feminine.


I wonder what would have happened if I had gone back in the eighties.
At that time it did not seem like such a good idea, and since then I have gotten acclimatized so thoroughly that leaving the Bay Area never even crosses my mind.
But I rather miss the weather, as well as the smells.
And above all, some of the people I knew.
Their fragrance remains strong.




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KINGDOM OF SHADOWS

There are several Indonesian shadow-puppets in the television room. Late at night they sometimes speak. Heroic Ardjuna, his wise brother Yudistira, the dwarf Semar, and others.
Ardjuna, the paragon of chivalry, sometimes looks at me in a way that seems to suggest that I could do better.
His older brother maintains that things are as they are, deal with it.
And Semar takes it all in stride, averring that we're all insane.

Semar must be Canadian. That would explain his dry sense of humour.

The one three dimensional character is a wayang golek doll I brought back from Amsterdam. Painted wood, noble features, thoughtful yet controlled expression.
Though the tale cycle he represents is far younger than the Mahabharatic world of the five Pandawa brothers, he is the oldest of the dolls. Even Semar, battered and world-weary, was born from the artisan's labours more recently. The flat dolls probably date no later than the fifties, but the refined minister of an Islamic kingdom originated many years before the war. There is a gentleness to his carved face that suggests that he has seen much, lamented the collapse of society in the great upheavals of the twentieth century, and survived tumult and discord.
Java in the twenties and thirties, the Japanese invasion, the long ocean voyage to the Netherlands when the Dutch left the Indies forever......
And, more recently, emigration to the United States.
Of all of them, he is the least displaced.
Wherever he is, he belongs.

The two krisses on the high shelf have been much calmer since he arrived over a decade ago.
Peaceful. No longer tumultuous.

Despite the dreamed conversations that take place, it is often quiet.
When the shadow puppets speak, they do so seemingly by silence.
And krisses, of course, have no words. Only emotions.
One could not expect otherwise from wavy steel.

All of these entities assuredly like the snow-pear incense I burn.
Partly to chase away the occasional mosquito.
Partly to hide my smoking at night.
They do not mind the reason.
The world is aromatic.



Sandjaya spoke to king Dritarastra, saying: "long ago, when we all lived in Ngastinapura, before those five and Draupadi departed......"

The story is lengthy, and involves whole histories that must be detailed, so that the final battle on the field of Kuru, though forever in the background, need not be mentioned.
Not yet.

There were five brothers, who went and lived in the forest.
In each era they live again.  They still live.


At some point, probably this year, I will carve Gatotkatja with the pale green-blue visage and ferocious facial hair, the gallant son of Bima and Hidimbi. To my mind he is the most complex of the characters in the Indonesian telling of the tale. For reasons which the Sanskritist will understand, he has to be more three dimensional than other puppets.
Most especially his head.

It's all in the head.



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A FRAGRANCE IN THE MIND

There was a time when Henri smoked cigars, obviously without his parents knowing. Many young men in Valkenswaard and nearby villages experimented with cigars – this was, after all, where the factories that made these beloved products thrived – and most parents firmly believed that their children were angels, pure and innocent.
Somehow the idea that youthful smoking was a sin had taken root, despite the generations of tobacco leaf strippers, bunchers, and rollers that inhabited the Kempen region, and the multitude of cigar factories in the various Southern towns – De Huifkar, Karel 1, Willem II, Hofnar, et autres.

At that time I already smoked a pipe openly. I had been buying my own tobacco since I was fourteen, and few people thought it particularly unusual that I smoked. Other people’s children ALWAYS smoked.
Henri’s parents knew, and regarded it benignly.
So charmingly eccentric! A pipe!
Thank G_d it’s not a stogey, or one of those horrid shag cigarettes.

Henri used me as his cover. Whenever we met outside for a smoke in the glade of ancient trees several blocks away, he would light up as my smoke wafted around him, perfuming his clothes and disguising his indulgence. He smoked the ‘halve’ coronas made by Hofnar, as well as some other brands. Seldom Willem II cigars, as he disapproved of their ties to organized sports.
It seemed sneaky to him for a tobacco company to feign an interest in the mental and physical health of the community, when obviously what they were more keenly invested in was their image and the well-being of their continuing enterprise.
The only sport, he maintained, that had any possible connection with cigars, was horse racing.

After several months, his sister Suzanne was in on the secret, which pleased me immensely. She was delightful company, and the three of us would park our bikes against one of the trees and sit on the bench. Two of us smoking, the third as a vivacious sparkling presence witnessing our depravity. All three of us would end up smelling woodsy from the Latakia in my blend, mixed with something 'else'.
It was a wonderful way to spend the twilight.
In summer the mist would drift in among the trees, and the glow from nearby streetlights would paint the glade a warm warm gold.


One evening we didn’t make it to our private place. His parents had some people over, and Henri and Suzanne could not leave.
I smoked a pipe in the quiet by myself, then went over to their house. Their mom had let it be known that I was welcome to drop by for coffee after dinner. We sat out on the veranda under the stars, and Henri’s father offered cigars to his old friend, indicating that I should have one also if I felt so inclined. I demurred, and filled my pipe.
The three of us smoked, with Henri among us and Suzanne just off to the side. Henri looked somewhat down, clearly wanting to smoke too. Suzanne suggested cheerfully to her father “maybe you should give Henri a cigaartje, he would look SO elegant smoking!”
The answer was no, Henri shouldn’t acquire the habit until he went away to college. Then tobacco might prove useful, especially if he was studying late at night. All university students smoked.

Old-style parents in the Netherlands in that day often disapproved of their children smoking. Not so much because the habit itself, as the horrifying idea that their children would neglect propriety by lighting up around them. Smoking, in some way, was a marker of the hierarchical distinctions that a family needed to maintain.
The older generation smoked.
The younger generation didn’t.
At least not around their parents.

I let my pipe go out, in deference to Henri’s plight. I was somewhat disquieted at having inadvertently been party to his father re-emphasizing the generational differences of status and privilege.

The next evening we met at the usual spot. Henri did not refer to yesterday’s events, and seemed unconcerned – he had his own cigars with him, and happily drooled faint whisps of smoke into the evening air. Afterwards, as we parted, he mentioned that after I had left, his father and the old friend had had one more cigar each, “just to keep the mosquitoes away”.
Both he and Suzanne had reeked of smoke when they went back indoors.
It had been quite lovely.

That autumn he went away to college, and occupied rooms in Utrecht with other students from Valkenswaard. Together they drank lots of strong coffee, and smoked the cigars manufactured by Hofnar every single evening. Once every three of four weeks he would come home for the weekend if he could, but most of the time I had no one to smoke with in the glade of trees, and I stopped going there, especially after the weather turned cold.

Months later, after winter had passed and the weather had warmed up again, I was bicycling towards the Wilhelmina Park when Suzanne on her own bike came next to me. I was very happy to see her, and without even thinking we rode toward the glade of trees. It was not yet even close to evening time; mid-afternoon, and pleasantly warm. We parked our bikes against a tree and sat on the bench.
I lit up, and we chatted for over an hour. I had another pipe-full to make the moment last, and whisps of smoke lazily drifted past and over her. I couldn't help noticing that she was, well... , "curvier" than last year.
When it was time to go, we both mounted our bikes, and rode back, still talking.
As we parted, she mentioned that Henri would come home for the summer. She looked forward to the three of us meeting every evening for a smoke in the glade again.


“Does your father now know that Henri smokes?”

“Yes. But he doesn’t do it around the old man.”

“Then how... ?”

“You’ve never sniffed his shirts, huh?”

“Oh.”

“They no longer smell of your tobacco, but reek of Java and Sumatra.”

She also said that she very much preferred the fragrance of Latakia.
It just smelled so much more “civilized”.
And her mom agreed.
Very nice!

...

Much has changed since then. None of us live in Valkenswaard anymore.
I left over thirty years ago, it has been a dozen years since I last went back.
The cigar factories are all gone, the rollers have retired.
It smells different now.


WOODSY, AND SOMETHING ELSE

In another few minutes I shall leave the office and go around the corner to the cigar bar to smoke a pipe or two.
Definitely a full Latakia mixture, perfuming the sparse Saturday evening crowd.
Henri and Suzanne will NOT be there, alas. Probably no vivacious sparkling presence at all.
But the same gold gold glow from the grove of ancient trees will be all around.
And a familiar dreaminess will rekindle.



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RATTRAY'S HAL O' THE WYND

Miss Lodewyks was a small, almost frail looking girl, with a kind face and hair that captured the glow of sunlight. There always seemed a note of amusement in her eyes whenever I came around, and she was anxious that I should have a cup of coffee with milk and a cookie. She wanted to spend some time with me. And we would pleasantly talk a bit first.

But this post is not about her, even though she was my own age, and a very nice person indeed, far nicer than I was at that age.
This post is about her father, mynheer Lodewyks, whom I had really come to see.
Every week we would spend an hour with my French textbooks from high school, before taking two hours to wade through the volumes on his bookshelves. Rama and Sita came back to life for a small while, Yudisthira journeyed northward through the wasteland with his faithful dog Karma, Gatotkaca blustered his way through a horde of sub-trolls...... a railway got built to Pakan Bahru, the Alifuro came down from the hills to harvest heads, a farmer traded his precious karbau for some beras......
Once or twice he mentioned the camps, but those memories did not glow.
Much revolved around language, phrasing, spicy shared vocabularies.

Shortly before the 'lesson' ended, his daughter would come in with a tray on which there was some more coffee, and a plate of cookies.

I really did not need the cookies...... but another cup of coffee, and a smile from her, was quite the perfect cap to the afternoon.

After she left the room, the old man would reach over on his desk and grab a pipe, fill it, and touch a match to the tobacco. For the last half hour we would take it easy, discussing what a word may have meant several centuries ago, what its descendants might mean now.
Not only English adopted wandering orphans from other languages, so did Dutch. Though in Dutch they may have acquired a garb that belies their foreign roots entirely.

Most Dutch, for instance, might not recognize 'fruit' as a borrowing, to say nothing of 'koffie', 'tabak', 'sigaar', or even 'pisang', 'pasanggrahan', and 'pinda' (Malay for banana, a lodgement along the Great Post Road, and a West-African word for peanut respectively).

I almost never smoked my own pipe in his study, because I liked the gentle reek of his tobacco, and did not wish to dilute the fragrance or spoil the mood.
A mildly sweet grassy incense, that marvelously complemented the afternoon sunlight streaming in on a summer day, or the dark wet twilights of a Dutch winter.

This post, then, is actually neither about his daughter or him, but about his tobacco.
He filled his pipe from a cannister of product unavailable locally.
Qua texture and appearance it strongly recalled the standard Dutch cavendish products I was familiar with: Sail, Amphora, Van Rossem.
But there the similarity ended.


HAL O' THE WYND
A pure Virginian tobacco of "a most unusual share of strength"
Blended for CHARLES RATTRAY (of) Perth, Scotland

It's a quality Red Virginia Flake, rubbed out for ease of packing.
Made in Germany, distributed in the U.S. by Arango Cigar Co.


My first bowl of it, when mr. Lodewyks offered me some, did not please me. Unlike the Dutch pressed Cavendishes it so seemed to resemble, it needed more skill to keep lit and bit me ferociously.
Truth be told, my smoking habits when I was fifteen years old were not attuned to the subtle approach. Stuff it in, fire it up, and suck.
There's no way I could possibly enjoy it then.
Most unsuitable for a growing boy.
But I would not say so.

Mighty fine tobacco, sir. Thank you!

In actual fact, it was only in appearance that it resembled the Dutch Cavendishes - like them it was ready rubbed. But there it ended.
Dutch Cavendishes are composed of Burley, Maryland, Indonesian, some Virginias, and God only knows what else, plus added sweetening, aroma, and incendiary aids to keep it lit.
Rattray's Hal O' The Wynd is pure, a very high quality fish indeed.
Blessed with a far more civilized room-note than any Dutch weed.

This is a lively maiden among the leaves, very lovable company.

There's something about the fragrance of a fine Virginia which stirs the mind and conduces reverie.


I shall now holler various evocative terms at you, attempting to stimulate your affection for this tobacco of which I have had several bowls recently:
Yeasty, malty, slightly sweet, heavy, bright, faint caramel, springtime, leathery, medium brown, zesty, hay, robust, consistent, peaty, dried fruit, tweed, herbs, straw, earthy, old barn wood. Dark coffee, tawny port!

You must smoke it slowly, like an adult. Not fast, like a child.

Dried out a bit and not jammed in but springy-packed, it is most rewarding.

Good stuff. Very good stuff. I have several tins of it, but none that are open.
The stuff I'm smoking now came from one of the tins for sampling at the local tobacconist.
You see, like a typical cheapskate Dutchman, I saw opportunity. They allow customers to take a bit of the tobaccos in a little plastic bag to get a better impression of the product - at today's prices, that's a profound kindness - and seeing as they had popped a one hundred gramme container of Hal O' The Wynd, there was plenty to spare.
I took a generous sample while one of them was working, then came in the other day when someone else was working to get another sample. A very generous sample.
And I told both gentlemen exactly what I was doing, too - "I'm afraid I'm going to be awfully greedy now, it isn't a pretty sight, taking huge whomping handfulls, best you look away ".
Paid for my actual purchases, left happy.


This is not just a tobacco for opportunistic Dutchmen and elderly linguisticians.
It will also appeal to intelligent young ladies studying for their history exams, craftsmen, musicians, confirmed bachelors, and self-assured women who wish to spend a quiet evening reading.
Anyone with a contemplative streak, in other words.


In retrospect, I should probably also have associated more with mr. Lodewyks' nice daughter.
It would have built character and made me a better person.

TOBACCO INDEX


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AJOEN AJOEN

In this post we learn that you should not marry a girl from Pesapen because she has too many screws loose, pretensions, and 'attitude', or a young lady from Semarang because she's in debt up to her eyebrows and will likely bankrupt you, or even a dame from Krembangan - that type has too many lice.

I have no idea how many lice are just enough.


AYUN AYUN

[SOURCE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0VJeQ-4550]

Ajoen-ajoen
[In Dutch orthography, because it dates from the Dutch period. The 'j' in Dutch is like the 'y' in English when placed at the beginning of a syllable. The combination 'oe' is pronounced like 'oo' or 'ew' in English, or 'ou' in French. Double o ('oo') sounds like 'oh', as does a single 'o' preceding a single consonant.]

Djangan mandi Kali Pesapen,
Kali Pesapen banjak lintahnya;
Djangan kawin noni Pesapen,
Noni Persapen banjak tingkahnya.

Refrein:
Ajoen ajoen ajoen in die hoge klapperboom,
ajoen ajoen Masmira,
Djangan main gila.
Ajoen ajoen ajoen in die hoge klapperboom,
Ajoen ajoen Masmira,
Djangan main gila.


Djangan mandi Kali Semarang,
Kali Semarang banjak oedangnya;
Djangan kawin noni Semarang,
Noni Semarang banjak oetangnya.

Refrein.

Djangan mandi Kali Krembangan,
Kali Krembangan banjak batoenya;
Djangan kawin noni Krembangan,
Noni Krembangan banyak koetoenya.

Refrein.



Indorock instrumental version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TH4Vzkbu_w&feature=related


And whatever you do, avoid bathing in the rivers of those places too - leeches, crawdaddies, and boulders!

Plus, probably, the local women.

Other than that, you're fine.



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PUNCAK

It's odd that the restaurant should be named after a mountain resort where Dutch civil servants went to escape the heat and eat their own food. Especially when it's one of the few places in that country where 'poffertjes' are known.

Poffertjes are perhaps the quintessential Dutch fair food. Tiny puff-batter pancakes cooked in a special pan with indentations, buttery hot and dusted with powdered sugar. Quite unsuited to the tropics. Other Dutch delicacies commonly available at hotels and restaurants there are pannekoeken (crepes) and kroketten. As well as Dutch cakes and confections.
The frikadel, which did not become well-known till the sixties, is of course unknown.
To say nothing of the bamibal or the nasischijf.

The restaurant in Amsterdam, however, serves none of those things.
But the food is very good indeed.


RESTAURANT POENTJAK PAS
Nassau Kade 366
Amsterdam
Telephone: 020-6180906

Unlike the steep slopes near the peaks of Gunung Gede and Pangrango in western Java, in the Bogor Regency, Puncak Pass restaurant in Amsterdam is in one of the flattest areas you will know. Holland does not have mountains, and the great city on the Amstel river is, essentially, a glorious mud flat. The restaurant is barely two blocks away from the Overtoom, relatively near the Van Gogh Museum and the Vondel Park.
The food, of course, is Indonesian.

In the days when the Dutch were still in Java, they sometimes times felt homesick for cool weather and Dutch food. Those who returned to Holland after the war still had the air of the Indies in their nostrils, and were homesick instead for distant emerald islands and the familiar tastes of their younger years.
The Puncak ('peak') pass area was a place additionally that many veterans were familiar with, because of heightened nationalist activity in Western Java during the Indonesian independence struggle. Western Java (Sunda) had been the heartland of the Dutch colonial world, where the empire maintained longer than anywhere else. Consequently it was also the area that many would miss the most when they departed - some of them had family histories in Sunda dating back several generations.

What you will eat at the Poentjak Pas Restaurant is some of the best Indonesian food in the Netherlands.
The proprietress, if she is still alive - it has been over ten years since I was last there - is a gracious elderly lady, whose Indonesian speech still has the antique flavour of the pre-war period.
I remember her as a warm hostess, both intensely interested in her guests as well as diplomatically discrete. The food, every single time, was stellar.


Sundanese food is not as sweet as dishes in Central Java, and has a lighter touch with strong flavours, relying instead on freshness and fragrance. With a vast array of vegetable dishes, or vegetable and meat or fish combinations, plus salads of raw and blanched ingredients, and tangy relishes, it is reputed to be good for the skin, accounting for the lovely complexions of the women in Western Java.


My uncle Jan may dream of the old days on the Puncak Pass in Indonesia.
I remember evenings at the Poentjak Pas in Amsterdam.
My memories are no less golden.
A very warm place.


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KIYOTSKEI, KEREI, NAOREI

There are two names which, to Dutch survivors of the Japanese occupation of the Indies, are bywords for cruelty and perversion: Ambarawa and Tjideng. The first is a minor town in Central Java, I believe, and the second was a neighborhood in Batavia. Both were where the Japanese interned women and children.

The men were sent to work on the railway at Pakan Bahru in Sumatra, or shipped to Burma and Japan.

Initially, teenage boys were also interned in the "Women's Camps", but as the war went on, more and more of them were pulled out and used as slave-labour by the Japanese, until by the end of the war there weren't even any boys older than nine or ten in the camps.

At Ambarawa, the Japs at one point forced a number of prisoners to become comfort women - the youngest was only fourteen years old.

At Tjideng, in Batavia, the camp area kept getting shrunk, and the number of internees, despite a high mortality rate, kept growing, as the Japanese packed more and more people into the kamp. When the Japanese finally surrendered there were up to twenty women per room - by the end of the war Tjideng contained over ten thousand prisoners.

Both in Ambarawa and Tjideng there were the usual diseases that accompany crowded unsanitary conditions and starvation, plus physical abuse and sadism from the guards. A huge number of internees did not survive the war.
Nothing unusual there.


But Tjideng had one additional horror. A camp commandant who was a wherewolf.


Captain Kenichi Sonei, who considered himself a civilized and cultured man, was a maniac during full moons, and outdid himself in cruelty and perversion on those nights. Under normal circumstances an exceptionally brutal and sadistic man who delighted in the humiliation and torture of his victims, at full moon he went entirely overboard. Everybody describes him as being an absolute madman at that time.

After the war Captain Sonei was tried for war-crimes and executed by firing squad. The number of people who could testify to his bestial nature was so overwhelming that nothing could save him. Even his own men admitted being frightened of him, describing him as a psychopath and a monster.


Many of the Dutch who were interned by the Japanese still particularly loathe everything having to do with Japan. And quite a few of the women, because of Captain Sonei, have mixed feelings about moonlight.

It is probably a good thing that the Netherlands is so often cloudy and overcast.

=======================================

I cannot remember any full moons while growing up..... although I'm sure they are not unknown there. It must simply be a gap in my memory.
I was trying to remember last night what full moon nights were like in Valkenswaard, but I cannot picture it in my mind. The different types of streetlights, no problem - clear images, detailed even to the nature of shadows and their boundaries from those lights. But no moon.

A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME..... DEEP-FRIED CRAP?!?!

This is a post about whaddyacallsits, you know, umm, names. Yes that's it, names.


When I lived in the Netherlands, my nickname in school was 'Bamie Bal'. This was a result of having a name which the other kids in school had never heard before, and which they found odd, foreign, and unnatural to pronounce.
An Aramaic name out of scripture is indeed odd, foreign, and unnatural, I guess.

[Unlike such names as Peter, Paul, Mathew, Mark, Luke, John..... Mary, Magdalene, Daniel, David, Efraim, Josef ..... Yep, those are all real natural and native. Yes.]


A bamie bal is a fried noodle dumpling. Bamie (bak-mi) is meat (bak) and noodles (mi) cooked with chives, chilies, and a touch of sweet soy sauce. It is a tasty Hokkien Chinese dish much popular in Indonesia. Unlike names from Aramaic, the term 'bamie' is standard Dutch. Go figger. The Bamie Bal takes the meat-noodle concept, clumps it into a ball, breads it and deep-fries it, and serves it crispy-crunchy-crusty filled with greasy goodness. It is available in several variations from every frituur, and inedible in every iteration.

[I might as well also mention that my nickname in SF China Town for many years was 'Dow Sa Ping' - the name of a flaky flat bun filled with sweet bean paste. Far less greasy than Dutch fast-food, though. So a considerable improvement. America been veddy veddy good to me.]


I was quite lucky. One of my classmates was Lettie (Leticia). Which naturally first became Letje (little Letty - the je/sje/tje postfix is a diminutive), and then became 'sletje' (little slut). Her school years in Valkenswaard may have been less than pleasant. Just a guess.
When she was accepted at university she left and never looked back.

I shan't even mention that everybody who lived on the tail-end of Kerkweg (formerly known as Stink Pad - stinky path) inevitably became Stinkwyf (stinking bitch), Stink hoer (stinking whore), Stink varken (stinking pig), Stink lul (stinking penis), or Stink gat (stinking arsehole). Except for Stalen Jesus (steel Jayzus) and his wife - who had no name.

From this it should be apparent that names are not inviolate, and in the Netherlands at least, nicknames are frequently unpleasant.

[Attention! This is an understatement. It is meant both diplomatically and ironically.]



Two of my friends, in consequence, dared not go by the names that they were called at home.

Truus was called Toet (pronounced 'toot) at home - it can be short for either 'patoet' (patoot - right, proper, fitting) or 'kentoet' (k'ntoot - fart). Both terms are Indonesian.
Had her classmates known of the second meaning, you can imagine how thoroughly abrasive they would have been.

Koei-Eng went by the name Katerina (Katja for short). Her real name was lovely..... In Chinese. In Chinese it means Cassia Fragrance/Perfume (桂 香).
In Dutch, unfortunately, it means bovine creepiness.

[I do not remember her as being a disconcerting cow, but rather as a very nice bright girl who lived in Eindhoven, the oldest of two sisters in a brood of five kids (her little sister was Cassia Perfume/Fragrance - 桂 芬). The dad was a severely Dutch gentleman of Chinese extraction, who had been an engineer in the Indies, a graduate of the Technische Hooge School in Bandoeng, which is now the Institut Teknologi Bandung.]


Not all kids have nicknames - there is not much malformation that can be done on Kees, Koos, Gerrit, Guus, Jan, Peer, etcetera.

Lucky bastards.

I have always been a little resentful of Appie, Bas, Baps, Bertje, Bop, Himpie, Jonk, Pim, and Triks for having normal names. Not that I wanted to change mine. Rather, I wanted them to suffer the nicks a bit too. Or a lot.

LABELS: INDO & TEMPO DOELOE

I have added two new labels to the blog:
INDO and TAMARAO & TEMPO DULO.


An explanation of what these terms mean is perhaps necessary.


INDO refers to expatriates of either Indonesian or Dutch ancestry whose past is connected to the former Dutch East-Indies, and by extension their descendants - usually people now living in the Netherlands or the English-speaking world, who identify themselves as Dutch. Politically they are (were) indeed Dutch. But their home-culture, language, and social norms are partly influenced by something other. Often among themselves they speak Dutch or English with a number of Indonesian words mixed in, sometimes also words from some of the Southern Chinese languages that were common in commercial centres of the Indies, and sometimes terms peculiar to the colonial environment which their parents or grandparents experienced. Many of them also speak at least some Indonesian or Malay, or other Indies regional languages such as Sundanese, Djowo, Ambon-Malay, etcetera.

In the Netherlands, Indos range from glow-in-the-dark Caucasian to golden Indonesian and Chinese types. All are Dutch. But yet, not.
Their foods are more exciting, their social life is more vibrant, and their sense of humour is more playful than that of the 'Dutch' Dutch.


TAMARAO & TEMPO DULO; Tempo doeloe ("time before", pronounced 'tempoh doo-loo') means the olden days, the gilded past. In Dutch the term almost always refers to the East-Indies when the Dutch were still there, which is a more limited definition than the term really has. Obviously, for Indos it must mean that time, that place. That is what they remember. But their children and grandchildren never saw pre-war Indonesia. For them Tempo Doeloe is a distant and half-imaginary golden age, the stuff that old people talk about.

I use it here to label not only posts that in some way refer to the Indonesia my friends' parents knew, but also to the pleasant company of Indos in the Netherlands when I lived there (1962 - 1978), and especially to the Indos I knew in Valkenswaard - my own tempo doeloe.

Tamarao refers to a language once spoken in Eastern Indonesia, up near the sea-lanes that connect to Mindanao and Sangihe. It may still be spoken there. It was a private language for some of us, and as such a good way to reformulate the world. As many private languages are.

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Some other significant labels in this blog are DUTCH, FOOD, RECIPES, and STUFFED ARMADILLO. These are all self-explanatory. Have fun clicking.

YOUTHFUL FRAGRANCE

One month ago I created a new tobacco blend.
[Mentioned here:
http://atthebackofthehill.blogspot.com/2007/11/it-smells-like-victory.html]
It is the most dangerous thing I have ever done.

The blend is closer to the tobacco which I smoked for the last few years that I lived in Valkenswaard than anything else. I have not smoked anything precisely like it in over a quarter of a century. The memories associated with the smell and the taste are therefore pristine and compartmentalized, and in consequence things I had nearly forgotten about have resurfaced. In startling intensity. Specific aromas can do that.


For instance, I again have on my tongue the taste of the Trappist beer we drank at an establishment out in the countryside (I want to think at the Venberghsche Molen, but I am not entirely sure about that) when Professor Charleson was last in town (1977). I gibbered about Rudyard Kipling while we walked back. I may have said something intelligent, but I doubt it. My father and Prof Charleson did not challenge any of my statements, though.

I also remember the progression from reading Pieter DeVries' "Comfort Me With Apples" to discovering the Shir HaShirim (The Song of Songs, Which is Solomon's) from whence the title of DeVries' book is taken.

The Song of Songs is almost certainly not suitable for a teenage male, especially at a time of hormonal "angst". It was a revelation of astounding proportions for a fifteen year old boy.


"Achot lanu ketana veshadayim ein la ma-na'ase la'achoteinu bayom sheidubar ba?"
['We have a little sister and she hath no breasts, what shall we do for our sister in the day when she shall be spoken for?']


Aaaaaaargggghhh!!!!!!


The ecstacy inducing descriptions of the young female protagonist in the Song of Songs in some parts reminded me of Kitti H., and in other parts seemed to describe both Suzanne and Muni. Heck, the entire Song of Songs suggested pretty much every young lady in my circle - I did mention that it was a time of hormonal "angst", did I not?

Many of the memories that have flooded back in the four weeks since I compounded the blend are remarkable in the level of detail. Compound memories of people, places, times, and textures.

Suzanne's mother made wonderful kwee kwee (Indonesian "cakes" - puddings and pastries, some savoury, some sweet) and nasi tjampor (mixed rice - cooked rice with savoury additions). When Muni helped her, the lumpiya (tiny imperial rolls) were exquisite - Muni had such deft fingers.

Suzanne and Henri's grandmother came down from 'sHertogenbosch for a party one day in summer, and we ate lumpiya, kwee kwee, saté (small skewers of spicy grilled meat), manok maengguri (coconut chicken stew), mie manok (chicken noodles) and saoto pangsit (rich soup with wontons) at night in the garden, twenty or thirty of us. Various sayog-sayog (vegetable dishes) for crunch, and sweet cool drinks.

I believe I spent the entire evening discovering how peripheral vision is perfect for teenage-girl watching...... They were absolutely lovely then, crisp white blouses, skirts cinched tight around their small small waists, neat little shoes. Very ladylike. Kitti, Muni, and Suzanne were, in my eyes, about as graceful and winsome as young ladies could possibly be.
Pristinely innocent, yet deliciously delicious.

I sat in the back, so that my pipe would not bother anyone. The girls were between me and the light. As were all the other non-smokers, but I wasn't watching them.......

TOBACCO INDEX


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NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
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MAS-BUGAO

If you do not understand the title of this post, be patient. It will become clear.


INDOS

A number of the more linguistically diverse people in the town where I lived when I was in the Netherlands had their roots in Indonesia, when it was still the Dutch East-Indies. Growing up I was often more comfortable with former Indonesians than the actual native speakers of English - there was so much about England or America with which I was entirely unfamiliar that I often felt handicapped among people who had experienced the places first hand, like my parents and their friends and relatives, or my father's colleagues and their families. And while the Dutch who could speak English still had all their reference points in Dutch, the Indos were more open and more flexible about otherness and elsewhereness, and their company was more vibrant (their food was much more exiting, too).
That they were there, at that time, was a blessing. It is one of the things that I miss most, intensely.

[Indos: Indies Dutch, now primarily living in the Netherlands and California, but there are also many in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and elsewhere. Most of them had been 'repatriated' to the Netherlands after the Indies became independent. Which was a new experience for them - many of them had never been to the ancestral sod, and for a number it was 'ancestral' only in a very vague sense, due to their having members of the family tree who were not Dutch, or the clan having been several generations in the East. When all your life you have lived in the tropics, the climate of Holland can be beastly. Especially if in cramped quarters, with little heat in winter. It was quite a shock. After giving life in Northern Europe the old college try, thousands eventually emigrated to the United States.]



HENRI, SUZANNE, MUNI

During my high-school years I would occasionally drop by a family that had come from the Indies. Ostensibly to talk to my friend Henri, but a large part of the pleasure of his company was actually his younger sister Suzanne, a sparkling girl with dark eyes, thick chestnut hair down past her shoulders, and skin of a pale pale hue, paler than langsep.
She was wonderful to look at.

Suzanne's constant companion was Muni, who was much picked-on at the high-school, and of whom Suzanne and her family were very fond and warmly protective. People often thought Suzanne and Muni were sisters, though Muni clearly had no Indies blood - pale brown hair, white skin, lips the colour of strawberry ice-cream. She was a small bright girl who seldom spoke, and blushed a lot. The only way to get her to talk was to ask her to explain something - if you asked her a yes or no answer, that was precisely what you got - a yes or no answer.

"Nice weather, isn't it?" And after a slight delay she would respond in a tiny voice, "y-yes, sir". "Did you bicycle over here from the high-school?" Pause..... "nuh, nuh, n-no, sir".
"You mean you WALKED all the way over?" Pause..... "yuh, yuh, y-yes, sir".
"For heavensakes, why?" Long pause..... "my tuh, tuh, t-tires were slashed again, sir".
Then she would blush and look down.


Muni and Suzanne would do their homework together at the dining room table every afternoon, where Henri and I would sometimes join them. Trying to involve Muni in the conversation would inevitably make her stumble over words and look down, unless we asked her to explain a passage in a textbook. She knew the material by heart, being actually quite brilliant, and very much a constant reader. Even Henri, who was three years ahead of her in school, would ask her for help.

She blushed horribly when Henri asked her questions - and she was extremely pretty during those moments.
Henri would often keep her talking as much as possible... probably precisely because of that blushing.

When she went home around dinner time Henri would see her off down the street, to keep the local boys from harassing her. Henri was about five foot ten or eleven (taller than me), Muni was probably not even five feet tall at that time, and just the right height that one would notice that her hair smelled faintly like chocolate. Given the height difference between them, seeing Henri and Muni walking side by side was funny - they looked incredibly sweet together. Cute, even.


One day when Henri had not returned home in time, Suzanne asked me to walk Muni to her house - "Ayo Ambang, kun jij Amei niet even tot thuis meelopen, de straten zijn haar niet veilig, djadangdang, ei" ('hey brother, can't you escort sis home, the streets are not safe for her, the local yobbos dontcha know').

Of course, no problem, it's on my way.

I tried to talk to Muni as we walked, but she simply looked down silently. When I pointed out how beautiful the autumn leaves were, she coloured but said nothing. Only when we were at her door did she look up at me and say "toch mooi, mas bugao ite" ('yes beautiful, gold-gold indeed').
Her face went crimson, she turned, and was gone.

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CRIMSON, FIERY, AND GOLDEN GLEAMING

I recalled that incident while rereading an old letter from one of the other Indos. In 1982, Kitti H. reminded me of autumn in Valkenswaard.

"Muntong taon, daon-daon sa luyang-laying tumpo ka paya, warna djadi idjo ka ura tan ambera, ate sayang pa are lalo tan bustan mati. Merotama itui, djale djale ri len tan gang na kuta-mi, lite puok sehi garit-djiri nente langit, denger kwikwi na bugong djae ka suwatan. Kasantian muni ite".
['At the end of the year the leaves gracefully flutter down, the colours go from green to crimson and fire-hue; there is a sense of sadness for bygone days and moribund gardens. But it is utterly enjoyable to stroll through the streets and alley-ways of our town, seeing trees like finger-scratches against the sky, hearing cries of birds heading south. Pure peacefulness, indeed.']

When I sleep I sometimes return to Valkenswaard in autumn, when the leaves are ura, ambera, tan mas-bugao.

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LINGUISTIC NOTES:

In addition to Dutch, most Indos and many ex-colonials spoke either a version of Indonesian, or a petjoh - a region-specific creole with much slang and many Dutch or Chinese borrowings, based on Indonesian regional languages or dialects. Others, especially those who were not residents of Java or Sumatra, spoke diverse Indonesian languages, often variants of Malay. This was largely a matter of environment, and in some cases went back generations. For some it was also a matter of ancestry. Even today, in the home and socially, non-Dutch words and phrases crop up, despite there being so few people still alive who experienced the pre-war East-Indies firsthand. Some things just sound better that way, and among those of the same background it expresses things more appropriately than is possible in unadulterated Dutch.

[The non-Dutch terms above are not standard Indonesian or Malay, but are sometimes very close. Standard Indonesian terms are the most common imports into daily speech among Indos. Before the war, Henri and Suzanne's parents, like a number of other Indos in the general area, had grown-up on the east-coast of Borneo, where the Dutch were pumping oil. Many different languages are spoken in Borneo.]


For the benefit of diqduqgeeks and the truly curious, the non-Dutch terms are explained below in the order in which they cropped up.

Langsep = Langsat (lansium domesticum); fruit resembling the longan (dimocarpus longan), having a pale yellow or ivory skin. Kuwit langsep (kulit langsat - langsat skin) is the most desirable skin-hue for young ladies, being neither as unhealthily white as a totok (purebred Dutchman), nor as dark as the lang tana (orang tani - man of the land). Girls with kuwit langsep can be absolutely stunning, especially if they have nice hair.
Muni = pure, unsullied; jewel, bijou. Derived from Sanskrit 'murni'.
Ayo = Hey, oh, errrm (interjection).
Ambang = Older brother (Indonesian: Abang), also term for a male friend who is of the same generation as oneself but older. In most Indonesian languages, as in many other Asian languages, terms of reference for relatives are hierarchical and indicate relative age ranking. In Suzanne and Henri's family, the relevant terms were ambang (older brother), aka' (kakak: older sister), adi' (adik: younger brother), amei (younger sister), and aling (little one; the youngest of the litter). Because of our age difference, Suzanne addressed me as ambang, which was also how I addressed Henri. Muni, because she was younger, was amei to both of us, but addressed Suzanne as aka', the younger brother as adik, and the youngest child as aling.
Djadangdang = Both a singular and plural for the type of boy that hangs out on the street and causes trouble. In the Netherlands they are nowadays called hangjongeren (hang youth), but the problem was not so acute back in the seventies. I cannot remember a special term for them in Dutch being used in those days. Djadangdang appropriately describes hoods, gangsters, thugs.
Mas-bugao = Gold-gold. Mas or umas is the material, bugao is the appearance and the quality. Mas-bugao means very golden, extremely golden.
Ite = Stress-participle. It unifies a preceding clause and adds emphasis. It is probably best translated as 'indeed'.
Muntong = the end in progressions of time. Muntong taon is the latter part of the year.
Taon = Year, years.
Daon = leaf, leaves. Daon-daon = the leaves, the multitude of leaves. Reduplication changes something from a specific or singular to a general concept or plural.
Sa = At. Sometimes in or on. Marked by a condition. Often used as a prefix of verbs or conditions.
Luyang-laying = Drifting, moving gently, rocking. Swaying, as a woman will sometimes walk.
Tumpo = Falling, falling upon.
Ka = To, toward.
Paya = Ground, wet earth.
Warna = Colour, hue.
Djadi = Become, transform.
Idjo = Green.
Ura = Red, carmine.
Tan = And.
Ambera = The colour of licking flames or polished copper.
Ate = Liver. In the Indonesian languages, the liver is often the seat of emotions and thought.
Sayang = A state of heightened emotion. Usually slight sadness, sometimes intense empathy.
Pa = For, towards.
Are = Sun. Day, days.
Lalo = Passed, transpired, gone by.
Bustan = Garden. In some regionalects a market garden is more likely meant, but here the meaning is urban gardens. Gardens and orchards out in the countryside are kabon.
Mati = Dead. Ceased. Expired. Over.
Merotama = Mero means fragrant like ripe fruit, hence good and enjoyable. The postfix 'tama' is used for emphasis. Merotama: exceedingly pleasant or enjoyable, delightfull.
Itui = That. Ini is this, iyan is that over there.
Djale = To meander, to go out.
Ri = In. At. But 'inside' is dalem.
Len = Street, road. Standard Indonesian: djalan. Singular and plural. But unlike Indonesian 'jalan', it is not a verb in addition to being a noun.
Gang = Passage way, alley between buildings. Narrow urban street.
Na = Of.
Kuta-mi = Our town. Kuta: town, city. Mi: possesive first person plural postfix, derived from 'kami', first person plural excluding person spoken to. The postfix is often used in familiar instances to indicate 'our', including the person spoken to. Kita is first person plural inclusive, and while 'ta' is the correct plural inclusive postfix, its usage is mostly limited to formal speech and important constructs - tuwanta (our lord), uripta (our lives), dagatta (our life's blood - commerce), etcetera. In the construction kampong-mi, on the other hand, the mi postfix really is exclusive - the person spoken to is probably not of 'our hamlet'.
Lite = To see.
Puok = Tree, tree trunks.
Sehi = Like, as if. Resembling.
Garit-djiri = Finger-scratches. Garit: scratch. Djiri: digit.
Nente = Against. Opposed to.
Langit = Sky.
Denger = To listen.
Kwi-kwi = Onomatopoetic for the twittering of birds. Bats when waking and bugs at nightfall do not kwi-kwi, they kri-kri. I thought you should know.
Bugong = Bird, both singular and plural.
Djae = Going.
Suwatan = The South.
Kasantian = Peacefulness, the sense of calm enjoyment.