There are some dishes that transcend boundaries, because more than one group wishes to claim it as their own. Goans. Straights Portuguese (Malacca, Penang, S'pore). Macanese. Eccentrics.
Even a few people in San Francisco.
Maybe just one person there.
Ballichao, for instance. The name of the dish is based on Malay 'blachang', which is a common term for stinky shrimp sauce or fish paste, used in a lot of South East Asian cooking. Cooking with it gives the perfume you remember from that disgusting flop house near Mabini.
Ballichao is more of a condimental side than a main. As with rendang and empal, there should be more than that on the table. Perhaps Portuguese Chicken (葡國雞 'pou gwok gai', for instance, plus stirfry vegetables with oyster sauce, rice, sambal, and lalap. And "old fire soup" (老火湯).
Ballichao is also made with shrimp.
Such as here: Six Recipes.
It keeps for a day or two at room temperature.
For ages in the refrigerator.
PORK BALLICHAO
Ingredients for the enamel stew-pot:
One pound pork, cut into smallish cubes.
Four tablespoons wet shrimp paste.
Two onions, minced.
Half a dozen cloves of garlic, sliced.
Two TBS chili paste (sambal oelek).
Two to four Tbs oil.
Spice paste:
Two TBS chili paste.
Two TBS Louisiana hot sauce.
Four TBS tamarind water.
One head of garlic, separated into cloves, feet trimmed.
A piece of ginger, roughly three slices.
One TBS peppercorns.
One Tsp. ground cumin.
Half Tsp. turmeric.
Half Tsp. cinnamon.
Quarter Tsp. ground clove.
One cup of white vinegar.
Put the spice paste ingredients into the blender, reserving some of the vinegar to rinse out the remaining sludge after blending well.
Reserve it all.
Sautée the pork pieces till slightly browned at the edges, but not fully cooked. Decant and set aside.
Lightly gild the garlic, add onion, fry till the onion starts to brown. Now add the chili paste and the shrimp paste and close the kitchen door if you haven't done so already.
Cook until colour and smell change, add the garlic and spice sludge, cook for a few minutes till everything is incorporated, put in the pork chunks, stir, and simmer for half an hour on low, stirring occasionally. Add a pinch of sugar at the end. When it's nice and stiff, squeeze a lemon over it.
For me, one of the main points of appeal is that preparing something like this very nicely disguises the treacherous odeur of whatever I've been smoking in the kitchen, even a nice reeky Nicaraguan robusto. My apartment mate won't notice the tobacco over everything else, and will just think "oh, the old Toad has been doing 'cuisine' again". She dislikes the fragrance of tobacco.
Last week I did a ground meat rendang preparation.
Lots of coconut milk, lots of chili paste.
Coriander, turmeric, garlic.
Too much to eat at one sitting, but I've been having a bit frequently with other food. Like ballichao, it's great with rice.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Showing posts with label Indo food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Indo food. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 06, 2019
Tuesday, February 20, 2018
BUT I WOULD DO IT DIFFERENTLY
The boss is heading to the Netherlands for a week. No, I have not advised him or his wife on what to do, eat, see, or experience. He already knows about Hajenius (the world's best cigar store), and I'm fairly certain that neither books at Atheneum nor coffee served by apathetic waitstaff at the Cafe Luxembourg are anywhere on his bucket list.
He'll probably go to a museum or two, and walk around Amsterdam enjoying the quaintness. And have a drink in a cafe of an evening.
I am curious what his impressions of a country where I spent sixteen years (age two till eighteen) will be.
The food may startle him.
Fried objects of uncertain provenance. Semi-raw fish, heavily smoked fish. Cheese. Fries with peanut sauce. Frikandel with the works (mayo, ketchup, sambal, onions). Pastries. Indonesian food.
Some of the Indonesian food is rather spicy (like 'rendang', for instance, if properly made), some of it is richly sauced (kalio and korma), and a lot of it combines a textural excitement with medium spiciness and an undertone of savoury-sour-sweet. It reflects three plus centuries of the Dutch colonial enterprise on Java, and barely a century in Bali, on the Borneo coast, and slaughtering friends and allies in Sumatra.
There are consequently more influences from places like Semarang and Surabaya than anywhere else. Palm sugar, peanuts, fish paste, and tamarind, plus a wealth of sambals, of all different kinds.
Filtered through Dutch sensitivities.
Nothing says "party!" like shrimp chips. Because it tells you that someone has a deep-fryer. Which, in the Netherlands, makes them almost a god.
Peanut sauce can be used on absolutely everything.
When in doubt, add sambal.
And wash everything down with coffee or gin.
It's probably a jolly good thing that I have not advised them. Better that they discover peculiarities and interesting things there on their own, rather than feeling like they had to do something, secondhandedly re-living my trips, and thinking that I must have been a blinkered weirdo as a youngster.
It's the vacation of a life time.
Have fun.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
He'll probably go to a museum or two, and walk around Amsterdam enjoying the quaintness. And have a drink in a cafe of an evening.
I am curious what his impressions of a country where I spent sixteen years (age two till eighteen) will be.
The food may startle him.
Fried objects of uncertain provenance. Semi-raw fish, heavily smoked fish. Cheese. Fries with peanut sauce. Frikandel with the works (mayo, ketchup, sambal, onions). Pastries. Indonesian food.
Some of the Indonesian food is rather spicy (like 'rendang', for instance, if properly made), some of it is richly sauced (kalio and korma), and a lot of it combines a textural excitement with medium spiciness and an undertone of savoury-sour-sweet. It reflects three plus centuries of the Dutch colonial enterprise on Java, and barely a century in Bali, on the Borneo coast, and slaughtering friends and allies in Sumatra.
There are consequently more influences from places like Semarang and Surabaya than anywhere else. Palm sugar, peanuts, fish paste, and tamarind, plus a wealth of sambals, of all different kinds.
Filtered through Dutch sensitivities.
Nothing says "party!" like shrimp chips. Because it tells you that someone has a deep-fryer. Which, in the Netherlands, makes them almost a god.
Peanut sauce can be used on absolutely everything.
When in doubt, add sambal.
And wash everything down with coffee or gin.
It's probably a jolly good thing that I have not advised them. Better that they discover peculiarities and interesting things there on their own, rather than feeling like they had to do something, secondhandedly re-living my trips, and thinking that I must have been a blinkered weirdo as a youngster.
It's the vacation of a life time.
Have fun.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Saturday, July 08, 2017
HAVE SOME PEANUTS WITH THAT!
One of the pleasures of visiting Den Haag ('s Gravenhage) is getting away from all the pot-smoking hippies who flock to Amsterdam. Of course you could just venture out of the narrow corridor in the centre of Amsterdam where the confused foreigners are -- even if not permanently stoned many of them couldn't find their way out of a tin cup; most tourists are usually so confused by a foreign city that they wander around permanently lost and asking where McDonalds is and how to get to Union Square -- but let us assume that you actually wanted to go to another part of the country.
There is more there than just Amsterdam.
A lot of things to see and enjoy.
Not only museums.
There are also the Indonesian Restaurants.
Den Haag has a large number of them.
Some of the best in the world.
Unfortunately, Tempat Senang is closed, so that is out of the question, and they had gone down considerably in any case. But there are plenty of others to choose from, most of them between the centre of the city and the Statenkwartier neighborhood in the northwest.
Among my many favourite dishes are lalab (raw or blanched vegetables with sambal), gulai ayam (mild and soupy chicken curry, like the Chinese Malay eatery on Stockton street makes), sate kambing (grilled skewered lamb, often with a dark sauce instead of peanut sauce), and soto ayam (a chicken soup that could be a meal by itself). But of course one shouldn't neglect other things on the menu, or forget the sambals and sides.
Plan to spend one to two hours over dinner.
Avoid beer, it doesn't add anything.
Neither do beer drinkers.
[Mie bakso (麵肉酥), mie goreng, mie ayam, and kwetiao (粿條) are also tasty Indonesian dishes, but are of Chinese (Hokkian) origin, although long native. One will find them on some restaurant menus, but they are considered more snack-type, rather than fine dining. Respectively: meatball noodle soup, fried noodles, chicken soup noodles, and thick riceflour noodles cooked with other ingredients and a little ketjap manis. In Malaysia and Singapore, char kwei tiao (炒粿條) is the more common version of the latter dish, most often fried up with prawns, tamarind, taugé (豆芽), soy sauce, chilies, and fish paste.]
Indirect lighting, hot plates, chilies, tablecloths, comfort.
But really, it's all about the food. Don't forget that.
NINE RESTAURANTS
Keraton Damai, Groot Hertoginnelaan 57, Den Haag.
Didong, 2e Sweelinckstraat 115, Den Haag.
Seleraku, Laan van Meerdervoort 7E, Den Haag.
Soeboer, Brouwersgracht 29, Den Haag.
Istana, Wagenstraat 71-73, Den Haag.
Bogor, Van Swietenstraat 2, Den Haag.
Srikandi, Grote Marktstraat 15, Den Haag.
Ratu Raja, Prinsestraat 30, Den Haag.
Si Des, Rabbijn Maarsenplein 7, Den Haag.
There are many others, as well as 'Chineesch-Indisch' food, which isn't really Indo but more of a lump-it-all category popular in the hinterlands.
[Restaurant Garoeda, beloved of politicians like Gert-Jan Segers (Christian Union), Wouter Koolmees (D66), Carola Schouten (Christian Union) and Alexander Pechtold (D66), et mult altres, is closed temporarily.]
Indonesian restaurants never really caught on in San Francisco, and though cooking Indonesian dishes at home is not hard, sometimes it can get a bit involved. Besides, there are moments when you just want to eat out.
By the way: Nasi Goreng Speciaal and Lumpia are almost the national dishes of the Netherlands. Don't let that bias you.
PS. If you click on the label underneath this post ('Indo food') a whole bunch of essays will show up, this one first. There's some interesting stuff there.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
There is more there than just Amsterdam.
A lot of things to see and enjoy.
Not only museums.
There are also the Indonesian Restaurants.
Den Haag has a large number of them.
Some of the best in the world.
Unfortunately, Tempat Senang is closed, so that is out of the question, and they had gone down considerably in any case. But there are plenty of others to choose from, most of them between the centre of the city and the Statenkwartier neighborhood in the northwest.
Among my many favourite dishes are lalab (raw or blanched vegetables with sambal), gulai ayam (mild and soupy chicken curry, like the Chinese Malay eatery on Stockton street makes), sate kambing (grilled skewered lamb, often with a dark sauce instead of peanut sauce), and soto ayam (a chicken soup that could be a meal by itself). But of course one shouldn't neglect other things on the menu, or forget the sambals and sides.
Plan to spend one to two hours over dinner.
Avoid beer, it doesn't add anything.
Neither do beer drinkers.
[Mie bakso (麵肉酥), mie goreng, mie ayam, and kwetiao (粿條) are also tasty Indonesian dishes, but are of Chinese (Hokkian) origin, although long native. One will find them on some restaurant menus, but they are considered more snack-type, rather than fine dining. Respectively: meatball noodle soup, fried noodles, chicken soup noodles, and thick riceflour noodles cooked with other ingredients and a little ketjap manis. In Malaysia and Singapore, char kwei tiao (炒粿條) is the more common version of the latter dish, most often fried up with prawns, tamarind, taugé (豆芽), soy sauce, chilies, and fish paste.]
Indirect lighting, hot plates, chilies, tablecloths, comfort.
But really, it's all about the food. Don't forget that.
NINE RESTAURANTS
Keraton Damai, Groot Hertoginnelaan 57, Den Haag.
Didong, 2e Sweelinckstraat 115, Den Haag.
Seleraku, Laan van Meerdervoort 7E, Den Haag.
Soeboer, Brouwersgracht 29, Den Haag.
Istana, Wagenstraat 71-73, Den Haag.
Bogor, Van Swietenstraat 2, Den Haag.
Srikandi, Grote Marktstraat 15, Den Haag.
Ratu Raja, Prinsestraat 30, Den Haag.
Si Des, Rabbijn Maarsenplein 7, Den Haag.
There are many others, as well as 'Chineesch-Indisch' food, which isn't really Indo but more of a lump-it-all category popular in the hinterlands.
[SOURCE: De Telegraaf - formatie (ANP)]
[Restaurant Garoeda, beloved of politicians like Gert-Jan Segers (Christian Union), Wouter Koolmees (D66), Carola Schouten (Christian Union) and Alexander Pechtold (D66), et mult altres, is closed temporarily.]
Indonesian restaurants never really caught on in San Francisco, and though cooking Indonesian dishes at home is not hard, sometimes it can get a bit involved. Besides, there are moments when you just want to eat out.
By the way: Nasi Goreng Speciaal and Lumpia are almost the national dishes of the Netherlands. Don't let that bias you.
PS. If you click on the label underneath this post ('Indo food') a whole bunch of essays will show up, this one first. There's some interesting stuff there.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Monday, April 03, 2017
DON'T DINE WITH HEFFALUMPS
Somebody asked me recently what the Dutch foods were that I missed the most. Well, herring, of course. Plus frikadel, kroket, boerenkool met worst, snert, and stuff like that. Oh, plus cheese, and eating from the wall. That last is an entire category of delicious and usually deepfried snacks.
American junkfood is kind of repellent.
Actually what I miss the most is Indonesian cooking.
My tastes are for the old-fashioned and familiar items, rather than the adventurously weird stuff.
Sate
Marinated meat, skewered and grilled, and served with either peanut sauce or sweet stroppy soy sauce. Either chicken or lamb can be used. The peanut sauce is not the bland Malay or Singaporean type.
Rendang
Meat inundated with coconut milk, with turmeric, ground coriander, lemon grass and galangal, garlic and ginger, all in rather subtle proportion, and mashed red chilies in excess. Simmered till the coconut milk has severely reduced, leaving a layer of coconut oil, in which the now waxy chunks of meat are seethed to seal them. It keeps well, one or two chunks are enough, and it can be extraordinarily spicy.
Soto Ayam
A lovely curry soup containing chicken, bean sprouts, snippered celery leaf, fried potato wedges, rice noodles, and fried shallot to garnish. Along with a piece or two of hard boiled egg. Other optional garnishes are sliced green chili, cilantro, fried peanuts, and prawn crackers.
Sambal Telur
Hard boiled eggs, peeled and quickly cooked up with a fried chili-onion sauce. A very old-fashioned taste. Very peranakan.
Babi Ketjap
Not really Indonesian, but more Chinese as well as Dutch; Muslims don't eat pork. The meat is simmered in a soy sauce liquid, with only a minor addition of actual Indonesian spices.
Sayur Lodeh
Vegetables cooked mushy in spiced coconut milk broth. Tofu can be added, chunks of fried tofu are particularly good.
Kalio Ayam
Very similar basic prep as rendang, but with chicken. The dish is not cooked anywhere near as long, and is served wet in its sauce.
Babi Panggang
Roast pig. Mostly Chinese Indonesian, though Christian tribesmen and Hindus have their own versions. But in the Netherlands it is a Hong Kong variation, a hunk of pork crispy-fried on the outside, soft tender juicy fatty meat within. Sliced thick, with a somewhat spicy tomato-based sauce.
Available at "Chinees-Indische" restaurants. But not Indo at all.
Properly done it can be delicious.
And depraved.
Guleh Ayam
Chicken in a mild coconut curry sauce. The Chinese-Malay version is very nice indeed.
Rujak
Fruit and blanched vegetable salad with a sweet, slightly sour-salty chili dressing, crumbled fried peanuts to garnish.
Abon Abon
Spiced meat which has been cooked for a while, taken out and separated into meat fibres, then fry-toasted till crispy.
Sambal Goreng Katjang Pandjang
Long beans (katjang pandjang) stirfried with spices and lots of chilipaste. But many other vegetables are made into sambal goreng -- it is also very nice with egg plant wedges -- and there are also meat versions.
Sambal Goreng Hati (liver with chilies) is excellent.
Lalap
Semi-raw vegetables dipped in chili paste which contains trasi or petis.
Asinan
Brined vegetables dressed with a very piquant peanut sauce, served as a small salad.
Singgang
Seafood tamarind soup, sometimes with a chunk of meat added. Always with a chili or two in the broth, usually some vegetables too.
Bami Goreng
Fried noodles. Let us not dwell upon the North American versions. They're awful. What is it with you people?
I'll travel across several time zones for decent fried noodles
And it is probably raining there as we speak.
[Fairly common flavouring ingredients for much Indo-Dutch food: ground coriander & turmeric, galangal & lemon grass, toasted Coconut, coconut milk, sweet soy sauce, tamarind, fish sauce, shrimp paste, garlic & ginger, crispy fried shallot, chilipaste, fresh chilies, and candlenuts. Plus lime wedges, serundeng, atjar, chopped scallion, and cilantro.]
When I claim that I miss these most, this is actually an untruth; I can and do cook all of this, and the Dutch-Indo influence competes with Chinese ideas in my home cooking. But Indonesian food is best when shared.
So that each person can have a taste of this and that.
Which is what I miss.
Remarkably, neither Javans nor Dutch people are particularly social eaters.
In that respect they're very much like North American wasps.
The Dutch become gregarious around Indo food.
Mighty surprising, that.
The ideal way to conclude a meal that includes dishes such as these is with a shot of old-style Genever, a fine cigar from Oud Kampen, De Olifant, De Heren Ruysdael, or Hajenius, and a small cup of very strong coffee with the natural crema from pressing it on top.
Substitutes, of course, are Irish or Scotch whisky, a Nicaraguan Robusto or a short perfecto rolled in the Dominican Republic, and an espresso, but this is a moot issue, as public smoking will get you lynched by a crowd of angry Berkeleyite heffalumps.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
American junkfood is kind of repellent.
Actually what I miss the most is Indonesian cooking.
My tastes are for the old-fashioned and familiar items, rather than the adventurously weird stuff.
Sate
Marinated meat, skewered and grilled, and served with either peanut sauce or sweet stroppy soy sauce. Either chicken or lamb can be used. The peanut sauce is not the bland Malay or Singaporean type.
Rendang
Meat inundated with coconut milk, with turmeric, ground coriander, lemon grass and galangal, garlic and ginger, all in rather subtle proportion, and mashed red chilies in excess. Simmered till the coconut milk has severely reduced, leaving a layer of coconut oil, in which the now waxy chunks of meat are seethed to seal them. It keeps well, one or two chunks are enough, and it can be extraordinarily spicy.
Soto Ayam
A lovely curry soup containing chicken, bean sprouts, snippered celery leaf, fried potato wedges, rice noodles, and fried shallot to garnish. Along with a piece or two of hard boiled egg. Other optional garnishes are sliced green chili, cilantro, fried peanuts, and prawn crackers.
Sambal Telur
Hard boiled eggs, peeled and quickly cooked up with a fried chili-onion sauce. A very old-fashioned taste. Very peranakan.
Babi Ketjap
Not really Indonesian, but more Chinese as well as Dutch; Muslims don't eat pork. The meat is simmered in a soy sauce liquid, with only a minor addition of actual Indonesian spices.
Sayur Lodeh
Vegetables cooked mushy in spiced coconut milk broth. Tofu can be added, chunks of fried tofu are particularly good.
Kalio Ayam
Very similar basic prep as rendang, but with chicken. The dish is not cooked anywhere near as long, and is served wet in its sauce.
Babi Panggang
Roast pig. Mostly Chinese Indonesian, though Christian tribesmen and Hindus have their own versions. But in the Netherlands it is a Hong Kong variation, a hunk of pork crispy-fried on the outside, soft tender juicy fatty meat within. Sliced thick, with a somewhat spicy tomato-based sauce.
Available at "Chinees-Indische" restaurants. But not Indo at all.
Properly done it can be delicious.
And depraved.
Guleh Ayam
Chicken in a mild coconut curry sauce. The Chinese-Malay version is very nice indeed.
Rujak
Fruit and blanched vegetable salad with a sweet, slightly sour-salty chili dressing, crumbled fried peanuts to garnish.
Abon Abon
Spiced meat which has been cooked for a while, taken out and separated into meat fibres, then fry-toasted till crispy.
Sambal Goreng Katjang Pandjang
Long beans (katjang pandjang) stirfried with spices and lots of chilipaste. But many other vegetables are made into sambal goreng -- it is also very nice with egg plant wedges -- and there are also meat versions.
Sambal Goreng Hati (liver with chilies) is excellent.
Lalap
Semi-raw vegetables dipped in chili paste which contains trasi or petis.
Asinan
Brined vegetables dressed with a very piquant peanut sauce, served as a small salad.
Singgang
Seafood tamarind soup, sometimes with a chunk of meat added. Always with a chili or two in the broth, usually some vegetables too.
Bami Goreng
Fried noodles. Let us not dwell upon the North American versions. They're awful. What is it with you people?
I'll travel across several time zones for decent fried noodles
And it is probably raining there as we speak.
[Fairly common flavouring ingredients for much Indo-Dutch food: ground coriander & turmeric, galangal & lemon grass, toasted Coconut, coconut milk, sweet soy sauce, tamarind, fish sauce, shrimp paste, garlic & ginger, crispy fried shallot, chilipaste, fresh chilies, and candlenuts. Plus lime wedges, serundeng, atjar, chopped scallion, and cilantro.]
When I claim that I miss these most, this is actually an untruth; I can and do cook all of this, and the Dutch-Indo influence competes with Chinese ideas in my home cooking. But Indonesian food is best when shared.
So that each person can have a taste of this and that.
Which is what I miss.
Remarkably, neither Javans nor Dutch people are particularly social eaters.
In that respect they're very much like North American wasps.
The Dutch become gregarious around Indo food.
Mighty surprising, that.
The ideal way to conclude a meal that includes dishes such as these is with a shot of old-style Genever, a fine cigar from Oud Kampen, De Olifant, De Heren Ruysdael, or Hajenius, and a small cup of very strong coffee with the natural crema from pressing it on top.
Substitutes, of course, are Irish or Scotch whisky, a Nicaraguan Robusto or a short perfecto rolled in the Dominican Republic, and an espresso, but this is a moot issue, as public smoking will get you lynched by a crowd of angry Berkeleyite heffalumps.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Friday, October 07, 2016
FRAGRANCE AND SOFT MURMURING
What San Francisco needs is an Indonesian restaurant that gears itself toward one key demographic: middle-aged Dutchmen. So, none of that fake Indonesian food which is popular among the late night crowd in the Netherlands, or the bland somewhat Chinese-taste stuff cooked by ex-Jakartans that is available locally, but something relatively authentic and relatively spicy. With enough of a selection that intelligent choices can be made for a rijsttafel.
Decor, too. Walls mostly a warm ochre-cream, with Raw Sienna and a dark mahogany-umber detailing. Bamboo slat or matchstick blinds. Fine porcelain, good cutlery, the occasional fern or potted plant, and absolutely none of that painted or carved wood kitsch that every Asian restaurant seems to have all over. Decent non-glaring lighting, neither forensics laboratory bright nor old-troll dark and moody.
The one key dish it MUST have is a damned fine soto ayam. Which is rich chicken soup yellowed with turmeric, with fresh chicken meat, slices of fried potato INSTEAD of lontong, cilantro, Chinese parsley, and fried shallots plus krupuk or emping as garnish.
The broth should be flavoured with fried shallots, coriander, and ginger.
Plus kemiri nuts, lemon grass, galangal, and dried shrimp.
Noodles optional, for a version of Mie Soto.
Nasi goreng (fried rice) or bami goreng (fried noodles) are also kind of essential, but they really aren't that necessary. Excellent saté, preferable both chicken and lamb, plus petjil, and two or three home-made sambal.
Rice, cucumber chunks, chilled squiggle drinks.
Good strong coffee, either iced or hot.
Korma, kalio, gulai, rawon.
And NO music!
The last Indonesian restaurant at which I ate had karaoke videos. Really, popular music is mostly pig-bollocks in every culture, and sappy emotional ballads in Indonesian are probably the ultimate nightmare.
Either that or meaningful gamelan music.
One other thing: most "ethnic" menus abound in clumsy spelling errors. Gentlemen, this does NOT add to the charm of your place, but rather severely detracts from it.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Decor, too. Walls mostly a warm ochre-cream, with Raw Sienna and a dark mahogany-umber detailing. Bamboo slat or matchstick blinds. Fine porcelain, good cutlery, the occasional fern or potted plant, and absolutely none of that painted or carved wood kitsch that every Asian restaurant seems to have all over. Decent non-glaring lighting, neither forensics laboratory bright nor old-troll dark and moody.
The one key dish it MUST have is a damned fine soto ayam. Which is rich chicken soup yellowed with turmeric, with fresh chicken meat, slices of fried potato INSTEAD of lontong, cilantro, Chinese parsley, and fried shallots plus krupuk or emping as garnish.
The broth should be flavoured with fried shallots, coriander, and ginger.
Plus kemiri nuts, lemon grass, galangal, and dried shrimp.
Noodles optional, for a version of Mie Soto.
Nasi goreng (fried rice) or bami goreng (fried noodles) are also kind of essential, but they really aren't that necessary. Excellent saté, preferable both chicken and lamb, plus petjil, and two or three home-made sambal.
Rice, cucumber chunks, chilled squiggle drinks.
Good strong coffee, either iced or hot.
Korma, kalio, gulai, rawon.
And NO music!
The last Indonesian restaurant at which I ate had karaoke videos. Really, popular music is mostly pig-bollocks in every culture, and sappy emotional ballads in Indonesian are probably the ultimate nightmare.
Either that or meaningful gamelan music.
One other thing: most "ethnic" menus abound in clumsy spelling errors. Gentlemen, this does NOT add to the charm of your place, but rather severely detracts from it.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Saturday, June 11, 2016
DO YOU WANT RICE WITH THAT?
The tourist season is upon us. San Francisco is presently awash with people speaking foreign languages -- French, Italian, German, and something which pretends to be English but sounds unpleasantly New Yawk or Missipee -- and a large number of them deliberately get on the wrong bus, despite wise words advising them not to do so.
Some of them are breeding couples sporting fine plumage, others represent small tribal units inconveniently blocking sidewalks.
Many are lost.
A few are appalled.
Really, they should have gone elsewhere. Someplace warm.
England or Holland would have been fine.
For a lovely combination of Old-World stuffiness, nice sunny weather, and exotic food, Amsterdam would have been a truly excellent choice. Especially in summer, when there are fewer Dutch around.
And where else will you hear perfect English spoken with a charming mixed accent of Netherlandish, Indonesian, and Chinese pronunciation?
RIJST TAFEL: AN ARRAY OF INDONESIAN FOOD
Yes, it's a colonialistic hangover, but in all honesty without the culinary influence of their former empire in the Far East, the Dutch kitchen would be quite as boring as Danish or Norwegian food. Happily, the Dutch are still as tempted by excess as they were during the late middle-ages.
The rijst tafel (rice table: a meal centered on rice with accompaniments) is, in fact, more traditionally Netherlandish than Indonesian, even if the featured cuisine is not. The great banquets of the past are now usually toned down to fit modern dinner party numbers and norms.
Crotchety social deviants such as myself will often end it with coffee and a cigar, which are both quintessentially Dutch, but the modern American or Englishman might not be so inclined, what with basically being an alcoholic non-smoking yutz.
RIJST TAFEL DISHES
A small sample of what you might find.
ATJAR KETIMUN: chunked cucumber and slivered carrot in a tangy dressing.
ATJAR TJAMPUR: turmeric-hued mixed pickles (including chilies).
AYAM BESENGEK: stewed chicken in a thick yellow coconut curry sauce.
AYAM GORENG: fried chicken.
AYAM PANGGANG: grilled chicken in a rubicund spicy sauce.
AYAM PEDAS: hot chili chicken.
BABAT GORENG ASAM PEDAS: chili and tamarind marinated tripe fried crispy.
BABI KETJAP: pork belly long-cooked in soy sauce.
EMPEK EMPEK: boiled fishcakes from Palembang with a spicy savoury sweet dip.
EMPING: belindjo nut crisps.
GADO GADO: a salad of blanched vegetables with some shrimp chips (krupuk) and often half a hardboiled egg, dressed with a mild peanut sauce.
GULAI SAYUR: curried greens.
GULAI KAMBING: spicy thick lamb curry from Sumatra.
IKAN ASAM: tamarind fish.
IKAN BALI: fish in a spicy sauce, Balinese style.
KLEPON: sweet rice paste balls with palm sugar filing, rolled in grated coconut.
KRUPUK: shrimp chips.
OPOR AYAM: chicken poached in a coconut gravy with lemon grass and djeruk purut.
PETJAK LELE: fried catfish with a spicy sambal.
PERKEDEL: potato mash fritters.
PINDANG IKAN: grilled fish with a spicy tamarind sauce.
PISANG GORENG: banana fritter.
RAWON: beef stew darkened and flavoured with kluwak (pangeum edule).
RENDANG: meat simmered in very spicy coconut milk till the sauce is almost dry.
RUDJAK: raw vegetables with a very hot dip.
SAMBAL BADJAK: a condiment of mashed chilies fried with onion and spices till thick and semi-dark.
SAMBAL DABU DABU: chopped tomatoes, onions, and chilies, with lime juice. Menadonese.
SAMBAL GORENG BUNTJIS: chili-sauced stirfried greenbeans.
SAMBAL GORENG TEMPEH: fried soybean compound often served with a sweet and spicy dark sauce.
SAMBAL GORENG TRASI: chili and fishpaste condiment fried dark, almost black.
SAMBAL GORENG UDANG: prawns stirfried with chili paste.
SAMBAL KETJAP: chopped chilies and tomatoes with soy sauce and lime juice.
SAMBAL TELUR: hardboiled eggs in a mild chili curry.
SAMBAL TERONG: thick chili and eggplant relish.
SAMBAL TJOLO TJOLO: a salsa of peppers, onions, and tomato, from Ambon. Good with grilled fish.
SAMBAL TOMAT: chilies and tomatoes; again, a condiment.
SAMBAL UDANG KERING: fried dry shrimp and chilipaste.
SAMBAL ULEK: mashed red chili paste, used condimentally.
SATE AYAM: small skewers of grilled chicken, spicy peanut sauce.
SATE KAMBING: small skewers of grilled lamb, sweet soy sauce.
SATE LILIT: minced fish grilled on a lemon grass stalk, served with a spicy sauce.
SAYUR LODEH: soft-cooked vegetables in a spicy coconut cream.
SEMUR AYAM: chicken stewed in soy sauce.
SEMUR LAPIS: sliced beef in dark soy gravy.
SERUNDENG: crispy toasted coconut, peanut, and spices. Sprinkled over almost anything for a crunchy coconutty effect.
SINGGANG AYAM: soupy chicken cooked with coconut milk, tamarind, and lemon grass.
SOTO AYAM: a lovely chicken coconut soup flavoured with yellow curry, crispy fried shallots added on top.
SOTO MADURA: beef chunks in a mild coconut soup.
TAUHU GORENG: deepfried tofu served with sliced cucumber and a hot sour spicy peanut sauce.
TELOR BESENGEK: hard boiled eggs in a yellow coconut curry.
RIJST TAFEL RESTAURANTS
Short list of favourites (Amsterdam).
KARTIKA
Overtoom 68.
PURI MAS
Lange Leidse Dwars Straat 37-41.
SAMA SEBO
One of the oldest and deservedly best known places.
Pieter Cornelisz Hooft Straat 27.
SAMPURNA
An ancient classic, with extremely high standards.
Singel 498.
TEMPO DOELOE
Busy, bustling, and some truly splendid food.
Utrechtse Straat 75.
TUJUH MARET
Good, fun.
Utrechtse Straat 73.
Reviews of all of these can be found online, as well as directions.
The natives of Den Haag will often claim that their Indonesian food is better, but Den Haag is much too close to the lower depth that is Rotterdam for comfort, and impossibly stuffy besides. Amsterdam stuffiness is about the limit one can bear.
Remember to end the evening with a stroll, accompanied by a cigar.
Twilight in Amsterdam is glorious.
APPENDIX: ALCHEMY
Much of the marvelous quality of Dutch-Indo cooking derives from the flavourings commonly used. Up until the eighties, these were usually found under their mellifluous Indonesian appellations rather than any Dutch nomenclature, but nowadays they are available at supermarkets in the spice department, labelled with perfectly pedestrian Germanic handles.
If shopping at the toko, however, it is better to know by what names they are really called.
Adas, adas pedas: fennel seeds. Adas manis: anise seeds. Akar manis: licorice root; mostly used medicinally. Asam, air asam: tamarind, tamarind water. Asam gelugur: dried garcinia fruit, used as a souring agent. Bawang hidjau: scallions. Bawang merah, Rambang: shallots.
Bawang putih: garlic. Bidji ketumbar: coriander seed.
Bidji sawi: mustard seed. Bunga lawang: star anise. Note that the term 'lawang' in the Subcontinent means clove, to which it is but a distant relative. Daun ketumbar: cilantro, coriander leaf.
Daun salam: Indonesian laurel (Eugenia polyantha, now called Syzygium polyanthum), almost essential for the authentic taste of many dishes. Often combined with lemon grass and galangal. Djahe: ginger root. Djeruk nipis (limau kasturi): kalamunten; kalamansi lime, squeezed over food or into drinks. Aromatic and very sour. Djeruk purut: kaffir lime.
Djintan, bidji djintan: cumin, cumin seed. Also often used for caraway.
Gula Melaka, Gula Djawa: palm sugar.
Kayu manis, kulit kayu manis: cinnamon. Kelapa: coconut. Kenari: pili nuts, used for pastries and brickle in the Moluccas.
Kemiri: candlenut (Aleurites moluccana), used to thicken sauces.
Ketjap asin: dark soy sauce. Ketjap manis: sweet soy sauce.
Kluwak: pangium edule seeds, which are first boiled, then fermented for six or seven weeks till dark and greasy, which renders them safe. In a fresh state they contain hydrogen cyanide (prussic acid) and are highly poisonous. They are ground smooth after soaking in boiling water, and added to certain stews and sambals. Kunyit, kunir: turmeric, which if the powdered form is used should be less than half the quantity of ground coriander. Lada, Meritja, Sahang: black pepper.
Laos, lengkuas: galangal. Lombok: formerly called 'Spaansche peper', this is similar to Thai peppers as well as Mirasol, Cayenne, and Tabasco.
Pala, buah pala: nutmeg. Petis: not the clear amber fishsauce which Filippinos and Thais use, but rather a thick stroppy goo which is also made from seafood ferments, much used in Javanese cuisine.
Santan: coconut milk, expressed from the meat. Selasi, Tulasi (Tulsi); daun selasi, daun tulsi: basil leaf. Serai, sereh: lemon grass.
Temu kuntji: finger root, Chinese keys (Boesenbergia rotunda), which has a bitter almost medicinal taste; it is used in small quantities.
Tjabe rawit: birdseye chili. Tjengkeh: cloves. Trasi: fermented shrimp paste, an odoriferous flavouring that combines well with pork.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Some of them are breeding couples sporting fine plumage, others represent small tribal units inconveniently blocking sidewalks.
Many are lost.
A few are appalled.
Really, they should have gone elsewhere. Someplace warm.
England or Holland would have been fine.
For a lovely combination of Old-World stuffiness, nice sunny weather, and exotic food, Amsterdam would have been a truly excellent choice. Especially in summer, when there are fewer Dutch around.
And where else will you hear perfect English spoken with a charming mixed accent of Netherlandish, Indonesian, and Chinese pronunciation?
RIJST TAFEL: AN ARRAY OF INDONESIAN FOOD
Yes, it's a colonialistic hangover, but in all honesty without the culinary influence of their former empire in the Far East, the Dutch kitchen would be quite as boring as Danish or Norwegian food. Happily, the Dutch are still as tempted by excess as they were during the late middle-ages.
The rijst tafel (rice table: a meal centered on rice with accompaniments) is, in fact, more traditionally Netherlandish than Indonesian, even if the featured cuisine is not. The great banquets of the past are now usually toned down to fit modern dinner party numbers and norms.
Crotchety social deviants such as myself will often end it with coffee and a cigar, which are both quintessentially Dutch, but the modern American or Englishman might not be so inclined, what with basically being an alcoholic non-smoking yutz.
RIJST TAFEL DISHES
A small sample of what you might find.
ATJAR KETIMUN: chunked cucumber and slivered carrot in a tangy dressing.
ATJAR TJAMPUR: turmeric-hued mixed pickles (including chilies).
AYAM BESENGEK: stewed chicken in a thick yellow coconut curry sauce.
AYAM GORENG: fried chicken.
AYAM PANGGANG: grilled chicken in a rubicund spicy sauce.
AYAM PEDAS: hot chili chicken.
BABAT GORENG ASAM PEDAS: chili and tamarind marinated tripe fried crispy.
BABI KETJAP: pork belly long-cooked in soy sauce.
EMPEK EMPEK: boiled fishcakes from Palembang with a spicy savoury sweet dip.
EMPING: belindjo nut crisps.
GADO GADO: a salad of blanched vegetables with some shrimp chips (krupuk) and often half a hardboiled egg, dressed with a mild peanut sauce.
GULAI SAYUR: curried greens.
GULAI KAMBING: spicy thick lamb curry from Sumatra.
IKAN ASAM: tamarind fish.
IKAN BALI: fish in a spicy sauce, Balinese style.
KLEPON: sweet rice paste balls with palm sugar filing, rolled in grated coconut.
KRUPUK: shrimp chips.
OPOR AYAM: chicken poached in a coconut gravy with lemon grass and djeruk purut.
PETJAK LELE: fried catfish with a spicy sambal.
PERKEDEL: potato mash fritters.
PINDANG IKAN: grilled fish with a spicy tamarind sauce.
PISANG GORENG: banana fritter.
RAWON: beef stew darkened and flavoured with kluwak (pangeum edule).
RENDANG: meat simmered in very spicy coconut milk till the sauce is almost dry.
RUDJAK: raw vegetables with a very hot dip.
SAMBAL BADJAK: a condiment of mashed chilies fried with onion and spices till thick and semi-dark.
SAMBAL DABU DABU: chopped tomatoes, onions, and chilies, with lime juice. Menadonese.
SAMBAL GORENG BUNTJIS: chili-sauced stirfried greenbeans.
SAMBAL GORENG TEMPEH: fried soybean compound often served with a sweet and spicy dark sauce.
SAMBAL GORENG TRASI: chili and fishpaste condiment fried dark, almost black.
SAMBAL GORENG UDANG: prawns stirfried with chili paste.
SAMBAL KETJAP: chopped chilies and tomatoes with soy sauce and lime juice.
SAMBAL TELUR: hardboiled eggs in a mild chili curry.
SAMBAL TERONG: thick chili and eggplant relish.
SAMBAL TJOLO TJOLO: a salsa of peppers, onions, and tomato, from Ambon. Good with grilled fish.
SAMBAL TOMAT: chilies and tomatoes; again, a condiment.
SAMBAL UDANG KERING: fried dry shrimp and chilipaste.
SAMBAL ULEK: mashed red chili paste, used condimentally.
SATE AYAM: small skewers of grilled chicken, spicy peanut sauce.
SATE KAMBING: small skewers of grilled lamb, sweet soy sauce.
SATE LILIT: minced fish grilled on a lemon grass stalk, served with a spicy sauce.
SAYUR LODEH: soft-cooked vegetables in a spicy coconut cream.
SEMUR AYAM: chicken stewed in soy sauce.
SEMUR LAPIS: sliced beef in dark soy gravy.
SERUNDENG: crispy toasted coconut, peanut, and spices. Sprinkled over almost anything for a crunchy coconutty effect.
SINGGANG AYAM: soupy chicken cooked with coconut milk, tamarind, and lemon grass.
SOTO AYAM: a lovely chicken coconut soup flavoured with yellow curry, crispy fried shallots added on top.
SOTO MADURA: beef chunks in a mild coconut soup.
TAUHU GORENG: deepfried tofu served with sliced cucumber and a hot sour spicy peanut sauce.
TELOR BESENGEK: hard boiled eggs in a yellow coconut curry.
RIJST TAFEL RESTAURANTS
Short list of favourites (Amsterdam).
KARTIKA
Overtoom 68.
PURI MAS
Lange Leidse Dwars Straat 37-41.
SAMA SEBO
One of the oldest and deservedly best known places.
Pieter Cornelisz Hooft Straat 27.
SAMPURNA
An ancient classic, with extremely high standards.
Singel 498.
TEMPO DOELOE
Busy, bustling, and some truly splendid food.
Utrechtse Straat 75.
TUJUH MARET
Good, fun.
Utrechtse Straat 73.
Reviews of all of these can be found online, as well as directions.
The natives of Den Haag will often claim that their Indonesian food is better, but Den Haag is much too close to the lower depth that is Rotterdam for comfort, and impossibly stuffy besides. Amsterdam stuffiness is about the limit one can bear.
Remember to end the evening with a stroll, accompanied by a cigar.
Twilight in Amsterdam is glorious.
APPENDIX: ALCHEMY
Much of the marvelous quality of Dutch-Indo cooking derives from the flavourings commonly used. Up until the eighties, these were usually found under their mellifluous Indonesian appellations rather than any Dutch nomenclature, but nowadays they are available at supermarkets in the spice department, labelled with perfectly pedestrian Germanic handles.
If shopping at the toko, however, it is better to know by what names they are really called.
Adas, adas pedas: fennel seeds. Adas manis: anise seeds. Akar manis: licorice root; mostly used medicinally. Asam, air asam: tamarind, tamarind water. Asam gelugur: dried garcinia fruit, used as a souring agent. Bawang hidjau: scallions. Bawang merah, Rambang: shallots.
Bawang putih: garlic. Bidji ketumbar: coriander seed.
Bidji sawi: mustard seed. Bunga lawang: star anise. Note that the term 'lawang' in the Subcontinent means clove, to which it is but a distant relative. Daun ketumbar: cilantro, coriander leaf.
Daun salam: Indonesian laurel (Eugenia polyantha, now called Syzygium polyanthum), almost essential for the authentic taste of many dishes. Often combined with lemon grass and galangal. Djahe: ginger root. Djeruk nipis (limau kasturi): kalamunten; kalamansi lime, squeezed over food or into drinks. Aromatic and very sour. Djeruk purut: kaffir lime.
Djintan, bidji djintan: cumin, cumin seed. Also often used for caraway.
Gula Melaka, Gula Djawa: palm sugar.
Kayu manis, kulit kayu manis: cinnamon. Kelapa: coconut. Kenari: pili nuts, used for pastries and brickle in the Moluccas.
Kemiri: candlenut (Aleurites moluccana), used to thicken sauces.
Ketjap asin: dark soy sauce. Ketjap manis: sweet soy sauce.
Kluwak: pangium edule seeds, which are first boiled, then fermented for six or seven weeks till dark and greasy, which renders them safe. In a fresh state they contain hydrogen cyanide (prussic acid) and are highly poisonous. They are ground smooth after soaking in boiling water, and added to certain stews and sambals. Kunyit, kunir: turmeric, which if the powdered form is used should be less than half the quantity of ground coriander. Lada, Meritja, Sahang: black pepper.
Laos, lengkuas: galangal. Lombok: formerly called 'Spaansche peper', this is similar to Thai peppers as well as Mirasol, Cayenne, and Tabasco.
Pala, buah pala: nutmeg. Petis: not the clear amber fishsauce which Filippinos and Thais use, but rather a thick stroppy goo which is also made from seafood ferments, much used in Javanese cuisine.
Santan: coconut milk, expressed from the meat. Selasi, Tulasi (Tulsi); daun selasi, daun tulsi: basil leaf. Serai, sereh: lemon grass.
Temu kuntji: finger root, Chinese keys (Boesenbergia rotunda), which has a bitter almost medicinal taste; it is used in small quantities.
Tjabe rawit: birdseye chili. Tjengkeh: cloves. Trasi: fermented shrimp paste, an odoriferous flavouring that combines well with pork.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
FRIED ROUND CASUAL FOOD: PEMPEK, PEMPEK TJUKO
The best rice noodles for your fish balls are, per common agreement, the thinner kind; these provide a better textural contrast.
The fish balls, naturally, should be freshly made, not those horrid things vacuum-sealed and of uncertain provenance in the freezer of your local market.
EMPEK EMPEK (PEMPEK)
A pound of fresh fish, preferably mackerel; boned and minced. One egg yolk. Four to six tablespoons cold water, one teaspoon sugar, one teaspoon salt. One or two tablespoons of good oil.
Mix well.
Then add tapioca flour. Generally speaking, one to two times as much by volume as the mackerel paste. Do NOT overwork the dough! Form into small balls twixt grape and longan size, and drop into boiling water. When they float, take them out and let them drain dry.
To use, deep fry golden. Serve with cold rice noodles and fried shrimp. Add chopped cucumber and some cilantro. Kwak some fresh chilipaste ('sambal ulek') onto the plate, add a dash or two of ketjap manis ('sweet soy sauce') and dark vinegar (鎮江香醋 'jan gong heung chou'; aromatic ChinKiang vinegar), squeeze some lime juice over.
Pempek can also be made larger, and pan-fried after boiling, served with lots of ground chili sauce and a little thick coconut cream. Or vermicelli, chilies, and sliced hard boiled egg, in a tangy tamarind-curry gravy.
Even accompanied by thick wedges of cooked potato.
Along with the inevitable kwak of sambal.
Everything goes with sambal.
The addition of good black vinegar and something to sweeten it up a little (ketjap manis or plain sugar) is traditional, because it works.
Optional but never-the-less strongly suggested toppings: ground-up dry shrimp, crumbled peanuts, fried shallots.
Don't forget the squeeze of fresh lime juice.
If you can find them, use key limes.
They're like kalamansi.
Fragrant.
NOTE: the term 'tjuko' is a Sumatran name for a condimental sauce made with chili paste, vinegar, garlic, and sugar. Boil one cup of palm sugar in one cup water. Throw in some whole skinned garlic cloves, let's say half a dozen or more, and an equal number of large dried shrimp (the most beautiful kind). Add one cup of vinegar (any kind will work), and four to eight tablespoons of sambal ulek. Stir to combine, let it cool.
If it is too strong for your taste, feel free to dilute; it should not overpower the food too much.
Kuwah tjuko: Often the noodles are served in a dilution of this mixture, or a spicy broth of similar construction made with tamarind and tomato in lieu of vinegar.
Empek-empek, in all possible variations, is associated with Palembang, where aside from pempek-tjuko it is most frequently eaten in a coconut curry soup with egg noodles and dry shrimp powder.
Plus sour, sweet, and sambal.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
The fish balls, naturally, should be freshly made, not those horrid things vacuum-sealed and of uncertain provenance in the freezer of your local market.
EMPEK EMPEK (PEMPEK)
A pound of fresh fish, preferably mackerel; boned and minced. One egg yolk. Four to six tablespoons cold water, one teaspoon sugar, one teaspoon salt. One or two tablespoons of good oil.
Mix well.
Then add tapioca flour. Generally speaking, one to two times as much by volume as the mackerel paste. Do NOT overwork the dough! Form into small balls twixt grape and longan size, and drop into boiling water. When they float, take them out and let them drain dry.
To use, deep fry golden. Serve with cold rice noodles and fried shrimp. Add chopped cucumber and some cilantro. Kwak some fresh chilipaste ('sambal ulek') onto the plate, add a dash or two of ketjap manis ('sweet soy sauce') and dark vinegar (鎮江香醋 'jan gong heung chou'; aromatic ChinKiang vinegar), squeeze some lime juice over.
Pempek can also be made larger, and pan-fried after boiling, served with lots of ground chili sauce and a little thick coconut cream. Or vermicelli, chilies, and sliced hard boiled egg, in a tangy tamarind-curry gravy.
Even accompanied by thick wedges of cooked potato.
Along with the inevitable kwak of sambal.
Everything goes with sambal.
The addition of good black vinegar and something to sweeten it up a little (ketjap manis or plain sugar) is traditional, because it works.
Optional but never-the-less strongly suggested toppings: ground-up dry shrimp, crumbled peanuts, fried shallots.
Don't forget the squeeze of fresh lime juice.
If you can find them, use key limes.
They're like kalamansi.
Fragrant.
NOTE: the term 'tjuko' is a Sumatran name for a condimental sauce made with chili paste, vinegar, garlic, and sugar. Boil one cup of palm sugar in one cup water. Throw in some whole skinned garlic cloves, let's say half a dozen or more, and an equal number of large dried shrimp (the most beautiful kind). Add one cup of vinegar (any kind will work), and four to eight tablespoons of sambal ulek. Stir to combine, let it cool.
If it is too strong for your taste, feel free to dilute; it should not overpower the food too much.
Kuwah tjuko: Often the noodles are served in a dilution of this mixture, or a spicy broth of similar construction made with tamarind and tomato in lieu of vinegar.
Empek-empek, in all possible variations, is associated with Palembang, where aside from pempek-tjuko it is most frequently eaten in a coconut curry soup with egg noodles and dry shrimp powder.
Plus sour, sweet, and sambal.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Wednesday, November 06, 2013
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.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
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.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Thursday, July 12, 2012
DO YOU REALLY WANT FRIES WITH THAT?
One of the quintessential tastes of Holland may strike you as peculiar: peanut sauce. You’ve probably had it in Thai restaurants and assumed that it was invented by the Siamese.
Clever folks, those Thailanders.
In actual fact, it belongs to neither the Thais nor the Dutch.
Though it has become an inseparable part of their cuisines.
[Assuming, of course, that the Dutch possess a cuisine. The jury is still out on that. The Thais do have such a thing.]
SOS KATJANG
Peanut sauce was developed in Indonesia several centuries ago, shortly after the introduction of goobers and chilies to the Indies. The locals there use it on any number of dishes, the most well-known of which is satay ('saté' - grilled skewered meat).
It is also used on grilled chicken, on a multitude of salads, as a dip for snack-crunchies, and as an ingredient in more complex creations.
The Dutch employ it in the same way, but in keeping with their heretical nature have also innovated uses that are somewhat unusual.
Like FRIET OORLOG ("French Fries At War"). In which crispy strips of deep-fried spud are accompanied with peanut sauce ('pinda saus') on one side, mayonnaise on the other. With or without other condiments.
Often this is part of a wholesome and nutritious dinner that includes a frikandel-speciaal (with mayonnaise, curry-ketchup, and onions) OR a kroket, even a hefty dollop of stoof vlees saus (stew-meat gravy).
And you thought the French Canadians were nasty, with 'poutine'.
Dot dot dot
Okay, now that you're stomach is no longer churning, I encourage you to try Dutch junk food when next you visit the Netherlands. It's much better than you think. And mayo on your fries is no stranger than potato salad.
The 'frikandel' is a skinless meat sausage which is deep fried, the 'kroket' is béchamel mixed with meat and flavourings, chilled, dipped and breaded, and plunged into hot oil.
The stoof vlees saus is best avoided.
Dot dot dot
Personally, I would eschew the peanut sauce combos.
The Dutch chipper's version of "bumbu katjang" is usually rather appalling.
PEANUT SAUCE - VERSION ONE
One cup peanut butter.
Four TBS brown sugar.
Three TBS lemon or lime juice.
Two TBS soy sauce.
Half TBS chilipaste.
Two or three cloves garlic, minced.
Dash fish sauce.
A few drops of Chinese sesame oil.
Whisk all ingredients together with enough water to make it soupy (about two cups), and cook while stirring till it has achieved the consistency you like.
Let it cool a little before use, as it retains heat much better than you think.
PEANUT SAUCE - VERSION TWO
One small onion, minced.
Three cups coconut milk.
Two cups water.
One cup peanut butter.
Four TBS olive oil.
Two TBS each: sugar, fish sauce, lime juice.
Half TBS each: shrimp paste, chili paste, soy sauce.
Two Tsp ground coriander.
One Tsp each: paprika, turmeric, dry ginger.
Three to five cloves garlic, minced.
Small piece fresh ginger, minced.
Dash or jigger of Tabasco.
Gently fry the onion brown, then put in the shrimp paste, garlic, ginger, chilipaste, and dry spices. When good and fragrant, add the coconut milk and fish sauce, and cook till the oil comes out. Mix in the peanut butter, and while stirring, pour in the water. Cook for a few minutes more, and adjust pourability with water. Because you are using low heat, the whole process can take the better part of an hour.
Either version keeps for quite a while in the freezer - double or triple the quantities, cook till thick and let it cool down completely, then roll it as a sausage in plastic wrap, so that you can cut off the quantity you wish to use later.
You can use it in Pinda Brafoe (chicken and peanut soup served with tongtong fu bana), over crisped vegetables, on top of cooked string beans or asparagus, alongside grilled meat, as a dip, or even as a component of noodle dishes.
And also on your French Fries.
Unless you're allergic.
Try it with chunk-cut poached chicken (白切雞) over cold rice stick noodles and lettuce.
If you're Canadian, have it on your poutine.
NOTES
Mayonnaise: what was blessedly provided for the wandering Dutch during their forty year journey across the estuarine swamp.
Oh wait, I'm thinking of a different narrative.
Sorry.
Frikandel: a tarted-up cousin of the meat ball consisting of double-ground meat mixed with powdered rusk, spices (primarily pepper and nutmeg), binders, herbs, and salt. It is rolled into a sausage form, dipped in fine-ground rusk crumbs, beaten egg white, rusk crumbs again, rested, then deep-fried. The meat used in a commercial frikandel is a blend of fatty pork, beef, and chicken
Kroket: the Dutch spelling of croquette. Delay a minute or two before biting into this, as it can burn right through the roof of your mouth and render you grunting for several days.
It is very delicious, better than fried cheese.
Poutine: fries covered with brown gravy and topped with fresh cheese curds. This was invented in Quebec. Not precisely haute cuisine, but definitely darn good, the stuff that warm memories are made of.
Best eaten at a truck stop.
Tongtong: dumplings or stiff wedge-cut cooked glop for sopping up the juices. Similar to matzoh balls. Surinamers use plantains as dumpling material, which is also common in Ghana and Dahomey. Tongtong fu bana (plantain dumplings) in pinda brafu (peanut soup) is a wonderful party dish sure to elicit cries of delighted recognition from not only your Surinamese guests, but also any West-Africans present. Just remember to use a good rich chicken broth as the base of the soup. A few fresh whole chilies floated in the soup during the last twenty minutes of cooking will add a resinous perfume but no heat - you may remove them carefully before serving.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Clever folks, those Thailanders.
In actual fact, it belongs to neither the Thais nor the Dutch.
Though it has become an inseparable part of their cuisines.
[Assuming, of course, that the Dutch possess a cuisine. The jury is still out on that. The Thais do have such a thing.]
SOS KATJANG
Peanut sauce was developed in Indonesia several centuries ago, shortly after the introduction of goobers and chilies to the Indies. The locals there use it on any number of dishes, the most well-known of which is satay ('saté' - grilled skewered meat).
It is also used on grilled chicken, on a multitude of salads, as a dip for snack-crunchies, and as an ingredient in more complex creations.
The Dutch employ it in the same way, but in keeping with their heretical nature have also innovated uses that are somewhat unusual.
Like FRIET OORLOG ("French Fries At War"). In which crispy strips of deep-fried spud are accompanied with peanut sauce ('pinda saus') on one side, mayonnaise on the other. With or without other condiments.
Often this is part of a wholesome and nutritious dinner that includes a frikandel-speciaal (with mayonnaise, curry-ketchup, and onions) OR a kroket, even a hefty dollop of stoof vlees saus (stew-meat gravy).
And you thought the French Canadians were nasty, with 'poutine'.
Dot dot dot
Okay, now that you're stomach is no longer churning, I encourage you to try Dutch junk food when next you visit the Netherlands. It's much better than you think. And mayo on your fries is no stranger than potato salad.
The 'frikandel' is a skinless meat sausage which is deep fried, the 'kroket' is béchamel mixed with meat and flavourings, chilled, dipped and breaded, and plunged into hot oil.
The stoof vlees saus is best avoided.
Dot dot dot
Personally, I would eschew the peanut sauce combos.
The Dutch chipper's version of "bumbu katjang" is usually rather appalling.
PEANUT SAUCE - VERSION ONE
One cup peanut butter.
Four TBS brown sugar.
Three TBS lemon or lime juice.
Two TBS soy sauce.
Half TBS chilipaste.
Two or three cloves garlic, minced.
Dash fish sauce.
A few drops of Chinese sesame oil.
Whisk all ingredients together with enough water to make it soupy (about two cups), and cook while stirring till it has achieved the consistency you like.
Let it cool a little before use, as it retains heat much better than you think.
PEANUT SAUCE - VERSION TWO
One small onion, minced.
Three cups coconut milk.
Two cups water.
One cup peanut butter.
Four TBS olive oil.
Two TBS each: sugar, fish sauce, lime juice.
Half TBS each: shrimp paste, chili paste, soy sauce.
Two Tsp ground coriander.
One Tsp each: paprika, turmeric, dry ginger.
Three to five cloves garlic, minced.
Small piece fresh ginger, minced.
Dash or jigger of Tabasco.
Gently fry the onion brown, then put in the shrimp paste, garlic, ginger, chilipaste, and dry spices. When good and fragrant, add the coconut milk and fish sauce, and cook till the oil comes out. Mix in the peanut butter, and while stirring, pour in the water. Cook for a few minutes more, and adjust pourability with water. Because you are using low heat, the whole process can take the better part of an hour.
Either version keeps for quite a while in the freezer - double or triple the quantities, cook till thick and let it cool down completely, then roll it as a sausage in plastic wrap, so that you can cut off the quantity you wish to use later.
You can use it in Pinda Brafoe (chicken and peanut soup served with tongtong fu bana), over crisped vegetables, on top of cooked string beans or asparagus, alongside grilled meat, as a dip, or even as a component of noodle dishes.
And also on your French Fries.
Unless you're allergic.
Try it with chunk-cut poached chicken (白切雞) over cold rice stick noodles and lettuce.
If you're Canadian, have it on your poutine.
NOTES
Mayonnaise: what was blessedly provided for the wandering Dutch during their forty year journey across the estuarine swamp.
Oh wait, I'm thinking of a different narrative.
Sorry.
Frikandel: a tarted-up cousin of the meat ball consisting of double-ground meat mixed with powdered rusk, spices (primarily pepper and nutmeg), binders, herbs, and salt. It is rolled into a sausage form, dipped in fine-ground rusk crumbs, beaten egg white, rusk crumbs again, rested, then deep-fried. The meat used in a commercial frikandel is a blend of fatty pork, beef, and chicken
Kroket: the Dutch spelling of croquette. Delay a minute or two before biting into this, as it can burn right through the roof of your mouth and render you grunting for several days.
It is very delicious, better than fried cheese.
Poutine: fries covered with brown gravy and topped with fresh cheese curds. This was invented in Quebec. Not precisely haute cuisine, but definitely darn good, the stuff that warm memories are made of.
Best eaten at a truck stop.
Tongtong: dumplings or stiff wedge-cut cooked glop for sopping up the juices. Similar to matzoh balls. Surinamers use plantains as dumpling material, which is also common in Ghana and Dahomey. Tongtong fu bana (plantain dumplings) in pinda brafu (peanut soup) is a wonderful party dish sure to elicit cries of delighted recognition from not only your Surinamese guests, but also any West-Africans present. Just remember to use a good rich chicken broth as the base of the soup. A few fresh whole chilies floated in the soup during the last twenty minutes of cooking will add a resinous perfume but no heat - you may remove them carefully before serving.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Sunday, March 18, 2012
DE-CONTEXTUALIZED DINING
Bamboo grows widely in South-East Asia in the wetter parts, and dense stands segment off parts of the landscape. At night they creak as the temperature settles, and seem to sway even without wind. Tall erect stalks will bend under the weight of their own leaves, especially when it has rained recently.
We associate bamboo with three kinds of food: cooked bamboo shoot, delicious in a coconut milk broth with turmeric, chilies, and lemongrass; packets of glutinous rice and fatty meat steamed for hours, which are suitable for taking on a journey because the bamboo leaves in which the food is contained inhibit bacterial flourishing; and fermented hill-rice with meat chunks stuffed inside a segment of green bamboo with coconut milk, fish-paste, and mild spices, then leaned up against a fire to cook and swell within, finally popping the leaf plug at the top.
That last food item needs to be split open to enjoy, as the plumped-up filling is wedged in tight, forming a close conjunction with the hissing warm inner surface.
There will be a mild scent of char and a subtle vegetal perfume to the food thus prepared.
So much will have been made that guests can take home surplus from the party for family members who could not travel to the feast. In fact, they'll be encouraged to do so. It travels well, due to the aforementioned anti-bacterial effect.
That idea of 'enoughness', exemplified by there being a surfeit which can be shared with distant friends who are thus also involved in the meal, permeates the food-culture of large parts of the Malayo-Polynesian part of South-East Asia.
This is especially so with rice and coconut milk preparations.
There is plenty so that we can all share.
And everyone should have some.
Food is ritual, food is friendship, food is social interaction.
Food is emphatically NOT a pre-fab hamburger or a deep-fried breast-meat extrudiment served in a waxed-paper sleeve.
I'm not entirely sure what those things are.
Food in modern society serves primarily as fuel. People often don't have the chance to eat together, and are too rushed to sit down for a well-considered meal. Something is missing.
Other than hot-sauce, of course.
[A shared food culture is more than just certain substances in common - coconut milk and lemon grass, fish paste, glutinous rice, hot sauce, and braised or steamed dishes - it is also about similar ideas about sharing, social eating, proper conduct and interaction while eating, and where and when it is appropriate to eat. We are not animals, dinner is more than just a fresh carcass at the water hole.]
Rice and coconuts exemplify a cultural paradigm no less important than bamboo and its multitude of uses; without either, the societies that stretch from Martavan to the Spratleys would be impossible to imagine. Much more so than betelnut, pigs, and swift longboats, in excess even of common tongues and shared symbolisms.
There are ideas associated with these materials that resonate even beyond their geography.
Well, fish paste too - stinky wonderful stuff - but rice and coconute sustain.
COOKED RICE (NASIP) AND COCONUT MILK (SANTEN)
Some items are staples in a shared kitchen, that's just the way they have to be. Rice, naturally, and coconut milk, along with dried seafoods for briny salty flavours, fish or shrimp pastes, spices, cooking sherry, dried products.....
I no longer cook rice at home. But I have recently augmented my supply of hot sauces and sambal, shrimp paste, dried fish, and noodles. These all come in efficient quantities far smaller than the customary fifty pound bags of rice previously bought. And they keep well.
I doubt that I could actually enjoy rice at home anymore. Or the numerous dishes with coconut milk that I used to make.
Too much has changed.
I still enjoy rice, when I eat elsewhere. Rice is essential.
But I haven't eaten coconut milk food in a long time.
Restaurant portions are too much for one.
Randang or Gule, vegs, soup, fish.
Balance versus excess.
Complexity.
Primarily, I guess, I miss having someone else to cook for and share meals with.
Eating by oneself is kind of like scrounging around for opportune carrion.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
We associate bamboo with three kinds of food: cooked bamboo shoot, delicious in a coconut milk broth with turmeric, chilies, and lemongrass; packets of glutinous rice and fatty meat steamed for hours, which are suitable for taking on a journey because the bamboo leaves in which the food is contained inhibit bacterial flourishing; and fermented hill-rice with meat chunks stuffed inside a segment of green bamboo with coconut milk, fish-paste, and mild spices, then leaned up against a fire to cook and swell within, finally popping the leaf plug at the top.
That last food item needs to be split open to enjoy, as the plumped-up filling is wedged in tight, forming a close conjunction with the hissing warm inner surface.
There will be a mild scent of char and a subtle vegetal perfume to the food thus prepared.
So much will have been made that guests can take home surplus from the party for family members who could not travel to the feast. In fact, they'll be encouraged to do so. It travels well, due to the aforementioned anti-bacterial effect.
That idea of 'enoughness', exemplified by there being a surfeit which can be shared with distant friends who are thus also involved in the meal, permeates the food-culture of large parts of the Malayo-Polynesian part of South-East Asia.
This is especially so with rice and coconut milk preparations.
There is plenty so that we can all share.
And everyone should have some.
Food is ritual, food is friendship, food is social interaction.
Food is emphatically NOT a pre-fab hamburger or a deep-fried breast-meat extrudiment served in a waxed-paper sleeve.
I'm not entirely sure what those things are.
Food in modern society serves primarily as fuel. People often don't have the chance to eat together, and are too rushed to sit down for a well-considered meal. Something is missing.
Other than hot-sauce, of course.
[A shared food culture is more than just certain substances in common - coconut milk and lemon grass, fish paste, glutinous rice, hot sauce, and braised or steamed dishes - it is also about similar ideas about sharing, social eating, proper conduct and interaction while eating, and where and when it is appropriate to eat. We are not animals, dinner is more than just a fresh carcass at the water hole.]
Rice and coconuts exemplify a cultural paradigm no less important than bamboo and its multitude of uses; without either, the societies that stretch from Martavan to the Spratleys would be impossible to imagine. Much more so than betelnut, pigs, and swift longboats, in excess even of common tongues and shared symbolisms.
There are ideas associated with these materials that resonate even beyond their geography.
Well, fish paste too - stinky wonderful stuff - but rice and coconute sustain.
COOKED RICE (NASIP) AND COCONUT MILK (SANTEN)
Some items are staples in a shared kitchen, that's just the way they have to be. Rice, naturally, and coconut milk, along with dried seafoods for briny salty flavours, fish or shrimp pastes, spices, cooking sherry, dried products.....
I no longer cook rice at home. But I have recently augmented my supply of hot sauces and sambal, shrimp paste, dried fish, and noodles. These all come in efficient quantities far smaller than the customary fifty pound bags of rice previously bought. And they keep well.
I doubt that I could actually enjoy rice at home anymore. Or the numerous dishes with coconut milk that I used to make.
Too much has changed.
I still enjoy rice, when I eat elsewhere. Rice is essential.
But I haven't eaten coconut milk food in a long time.
Restaurant portions are too much for one.
Randang or Gule, vegs, soup, fish.
Balance versus excess.
Complexity.
Primarily, I guess, I miss having someone else to cook for and share meals with.
Eating by oneself is kind of like scrounging around for opportune carrion.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Friday, October 07, 2011
EATING THE WORLD
At many local Chinese restaurants there are a number of dishes that white people will not like.
This is a pity, actually, because it rather limits with whom I can eat a Chinese restaurant.
But not such a very great pity.
Just chalk it up to limited Caucasian food preferences.
Often restaurants will only have the too un-white things on the Chinese menu, or on pink sheets pasted on the wall that list the daily specials. There is no point in telling white folks about these dishes, as, after asking all kinds of questions - which the waiter or waitress would answer to the very best of his or her ability - the Caucasian will say something exhasperating like "gor blimey, guvnah, that's sodding disgusting, I'll just 'ave the sweet and sour pork over rice, thankee".
Or something more explosively grunt-like than that.
Once, at a very highly regarded restaurant, three customerse all ordered exactly the same dish - sweet and sour pork.
No, not one serving of sweet and sour pork, plus two other dishes, to share.
THREE individual servings.
Just that.
The cooks all peered around the door of the kitchen to look at these people who were so fond of sweet and sour pork that they had ordered THREE whole servings of it.
What on earth possessed them, especially when there were so many good things they could also have asked for?
Sweet and sour pork!
Sweet and sour pork, by the way, is the most clichéed dish in a Chinese restaurant. Especially the version known here in the States.
Among things which many people won't eat (because the food is unfamiliar or frightening): 粥, 腐竹, 蠔豉, 皮蛋, 蝦米, 乾瑤柱, 臘肉, 鹹蝦醬 .......
Many vegetables are also too "foreign". Particularly bitter melon (苦瓜).
Most restaurants outside of a Chinese neighborhood will just not bother with many beloved dishes. You can't even find places that do such simple things as 蒸水蛋 or 咸魚肉餅 in the suburbs.
Even 白切雞 is difficult to find outside of the city. It's "too raw" for many people's taste.
When I came back to the United States from Holland years ago I didn't know what many ingredients were in English, I only knew them in Dutch.
At that time most Asian ingredients in Holland were called specifically by their Indonesian names, which were the only terms by which the Dutch knew them.
Sambal (chili paste), ketoembar (coriander seed), djintan (cumin), koenjit (turmeric), trassie (hard stinky fish paste), djeroek peroet (kaffir lime leaf), sereh (lemon grass), lengkoeas (galangal), goela djawa (palm sugar), temu koentji (finger root, Chinese keys), atjar koening (turmeric-hued pickled vegetables), ketjap manis (sweet soy sauce), kroepoek (shrimp chips), ebi (dried shrimp), boeah keras and kloewak (candlenuts and pangium nuts), etcetera.
[Shan't even mention stampot, zure zult, bloed pens, stroop, ontbijtkoek, blote billekes int gras, groene haring, gerookte paling, boerenkool met worst, hagelslag, muisjes, Limburgsche vlaaien, snert, frikandel, kroket... ]
I was frantic. There was nothing good to eat, and I couldn't find things I desperately wanted in the supermarkets. Then I discovered Chinatown. Where there were Dutch and Indonesian ingredients all over the place!
Rice-stick noodles from Den Haag. Chili sauce with shrimp paste from a factory somewhere in Zuid-Holland province. Lovely Dutch-style cookies from a company in Shanghai. Dark Dutch chocolates from Singapore. Dried fish called by a Dutch name, packaged by a Chinese company in Penang. Pickled vegetables from Chekiang made specifically for Dutch-speakers.
Plus thousands of bottles of condiments and dried spices with labels in Dutch, Indonesian, French, and Chinese.
There was even a food store where the owners spoke Dutch - they were Hakka from Suriname, a former Dutch colony.
Americans have learned a bit more about food in the last thirty years. But many people still shy away from stuff they haven't ever eaten before.
Rather like it's heresy, witchcraft, and communism rolled into one.
Good Jayzus-fearing wasps don't truck with such muck.
Their loss. More for the rest of us.
Always be ready to try new things.
Seriously.
背脊向天，都可以食.
I've eaten American food many times in the last several years. Some of it is actually quite good.
Only very little has actually been inedible, much is ... delicious.
Gustatory experimentation can be quite rewarding.
Consider this a firm recommendation.
Leastways, encouragement.
Now go and eat.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
This is a pity, actually, because it rather limits with whom I can eat a Chinese restaurant.
But not such a very great pity.
Just chalk it up to limited Caucasian food preferences.
Often restaurants will only have the too un-white things on the Chinese menu, or on pink sheets pasted on the wall that list the daily specials. There is no point in telling white folks about these dishes, as, after asking all kinds of questions - which the waiter or waitress would answer to the very best of his or her ability - the Caucasian will say something exhasperating like "gor blimey, guvnah, that's sodding disgusting, I'll just 'ave the sweet and sour pork over rice, thankee".
Or something more explosively grunt-like than that.
Once, at a very highly regarded restaurant, three customerse all ordered exactly the same dish - sweet and sour pork.
No, not one serving of sweet and sour pork, plus two other dishes, to share.
THREE individual servings.
Just that.
The cooks all peered around the door of the kitchen to look at these people who were so fond of sweet and sour pork that they had ordered THREE whole servings of it.
What on earth possessed them, especially when there were so many good things they could also have asked for?
Sweet and sour pork!
Sweet and sour pork, by the way, is the most clichéed dish in a Chinese restaurant. Especially the version known here in the States.
Among things which many people won't eat (because the food is unfamiliar or frightening): 粥, 腐竹, 蠔豉, 皮蛋, 蝦米, 乾瑤柱, 臘肉, 鹹蝦醬 .......
Many vegetables are also too "foreign". Particularly bitter melon (苦瓜).
Most restaurants outside of a Chinese neighborhood will just not bother with many beloved dishes. You can't even find places that do such simple things as 蒸水蛋 or 咸魚肉餅 in the suburbs.
Even 白切雞 is difficult to find outside of the city. It's "too raw" for many people's taste.
When I came back to the United States from Holland years ago I didn't know what many ingredients were in English, I only knew them in Dutch.
At that time most Asian ingredients in Holland were called specifically by their Indonesian names, which were the only terms by which the Dutch knew them.
Sambal (chili paste), ketoembar (coriander seed), djintan (cumin), koenjit (turmeric), trassie (hard stinky fish paste), djeroek peroet (kaffir lime leaf), sereh (lemon grass), lengkoeas (galangal), goela djawa (palm sugar), temu koentji (finger root, Chinese keys), atjar koening (turmeric-hued pickled vegetables), ketjap manis (sweet soy sauce), kroepoek (shrimp chips), ebi (dried shrimp), boeah keras and kloewak (candlenuts and pangium nuts), etcetera.
[Shan't even mention stampot, zure zult, bloed pens, stroop, ontbijtkoek, blote billekes int gras, groene haring, gerookte paling, boerenkool met worst, hagelslag, muisjes, Limburgsche vlaaien, snert, frikandel, kroket... ]
I was frantic. There was nothing good to eat, and I couldn't find things I desperately wanted in the supermarkets. Then I discovered Chinatown. Where there were Dutch and Indonesian ingredients all over the place!
Rice-stick noodles from Den Haag. Chili sauce with shrimp paste from a factory somewhere in Zuid-Holland province. Lovely Dutch-style cookies from a company in Shanghai. Dark Dutch chocolates from Singapore. Dried fish called by a Dutch name, packaged by a Chinese company in Penang. Pickled vegetables from Chekiang made specifically for Dutch-speakers.
Plus thousands of bottles of condiments and dried spices with labels in Dutch, Indonesian, French, and Chinese.
There was even a food store where the owners spoke Dutch - they were Hakka from Suriname, a former Dutch colony.
Americans have learned a bit more about food in the last thirty years. But many people still shy away from stuff they haven't ever eaten before.
Rather like it's heresy, witchcraft, and communism rolled into one.
Good Jayzus-fearing wasps don't truck with such muck.
Their loss. More for the rest of us.
Always be ready to try new things.
Seriously.
背脊向天，都可以食.
I've eaten American food many times in the last several years. Some of it is actually quite good.
Only very little has actually been inedible, much is ... delicious.
Gustatory experimentation can be quite rewarding.
Consider this a firm recommendation.
Leastways, encouragement.
Now go and eat.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Monday, October 03, 2011
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.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
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.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Monday, November 22, 2010
OUCH, HOT, HOT, HOT! EGG ROLLS, RICE SHEET NOODLES, CHAR KWEE TEOW!
The first time I ever had what Americans insist on calling egg-rolls was before I even hit the double digits.
My auntie Ietje had made them, and I saw the entire process.
Unfortunately I didn’t take careful notes, so I can’t give you the recipe.
Sorry.
What I do remember is that they were small and tasty.
Which I subsequently discovered made them quite a bit different than the abortion sold in 'Chineesch-Indische' restaurants in the Netherlands.
The Dutch Chinese-Indonesian restaurant eggroll is slightly smaller than a burrito, filled with lots of bean sprouts and a small amount of pre-cooked meat scrap. The skin is some kind of soggy compound which bubbles up, and due to the construction of the roll a chopstick has to be shoved through the beast after removing it from the deep fryer to drain the excess grease.
As you can probably guess, it is quite one of the nastiest comestibles on the face of the planet.
The Netherlandish natives love the thing.
What it was modeled upon, it does not resemble in the slightest.
LUMPIA
The Indonesian-Chinese eggroll or spring roll is no more than three or four inches long, and hardly one inch to an inch-and-a-half thick. The filling consists of slivered vegetables - carrot, yard long bean, water chestnuts, black mushrooms, celery, etcetera - augmented with a little meat or seafood, and maybe some minced fresh herbs. What really sets it apart, however, is the skin.
[Lumpia (潤餅) is the common term in most Indonesian and Philippino languages for this item, as well as in Dutch (spelled 'loempia'), derived from the Hokkien pronunciation of the words, and meaning a "smooth" or "generously filled" 'wafer' or dough skin. It is similar to popia (薄餅), which is the name that the non-fried version goes by. In most other Chinese dialects the second word (餅) does not mean wafer or dough skin, and the term 'Chun Kuen' (春捲 spring roll) is used instead.]
The best lumpia skins are made by sweeping a ball of dough quickly over a hot surface with one hand, peeling the skin thus left behind with the other hand and stacking it. It's a sensuous, sinuous process. Shploop with the right hand as the left pulls the damp cloth from the pile already made, pull the dough ball away while the left hand swoops in to peel the new skin off and stack it.
Very spare motions, very regular and rhythmical, very elegant.
If your auntie has arthritis, you can peel the lumpia skin off the hot surface for her.
Go on, be helpful - that's what nice young people are supposed to do.
She'll giggle every time you burn your fingers.
A dough ball yields over two hundred skins.
It is a mark of defeat to use a batter instead of a dough ball - the skins will not have nearly as nice a texture. And commercially bought skins, while adequate, are not really proper, nor as tasty.
OUCH! HOT! HOT! HOT!
So instead, let us talk about Cheung Fan (腸粉). Which is rather similar, intellectually speaking.
Though in actual practice, there is no resemblance whatsoever.
Cheung fan are soft fresh sheets of rice flour dough steamed with a little filling - shrimp, beef, pork, or whatever - then folded over, drizzled with a little soy sauce and sesame oil, minced scallion to garnish. Cut into segments of folded roll and dipped in a little hot sauce or tiem jeung (甜醬) it is heavenly. Very kind on the stomach, the breakfast of champions. Eppes tasty.
The resemblance to spring roll is in the manufacture. There is heat, and there may be scorched fingers.
Oh, and it likewise requires an accurate eye. Let judgment be your guide.
[Don't worry, it will come to you - but if you are uncertain, perhaps best to do the first batch experimentally and quietly deep-six the results, so that you can flabbergast your housemates later with nicely made cheung fan. Let subterfuge be your other guide.]
In commercial establishments, a sheet of cloth is tightly stretched over a rectangular steamer and wetted. A rice flour batter is ladled over quickly, smeared flat, filling is strewn over one side, and within mere moments the cloth is lifted with the skin adhering and another put in place and wetted. Meanwhile a deft hand with a spatula separates the already steamed skin, dexterously jiggling it into a loosely folded wedge or roll. It is sliced across into segments, garnished, and promptly served.
At home it is not made so efficiently, because you do not have a large rectangular vat of fiercely boiling water with a perforated metal plate on top.
You have, perhaps, a really big steamer.
So what you can do is use pie pans instead of taught wetted cloth, either lightly oiled or with a little Pam sprayed on. The steaming time is a little longer, because your cheung fan will be thicker. And instead of nice sharp-edged rectangular rolls, yours will be a little thicker around the middle.
If no pie pans, salad plates will also do - the result will be cute little cheung fan, quite suitable as a mid-day snack.
CHEUNG FAN BATTER
One cup plain rice flour.
Quarter cup tapioca flour.
Two TBS cornstarch.
Two TBS oil.
Half a teaspoon salt.
Cold water.
Sift dry ingredients together. Slowly stir in some water, add the oil, and keep adding more water while stirring till you have a batter that looks like heavy cream - approximately 1¾ to 2¼ cups water in all.
Let it stand an hour, re-stir. It is now ready for use.
Grease a pie pan, ladle in enough batter to thinly cover bottom, and place in the steamer. After about a minute to a minute and a half, add the filling along one side. Steam for another four to six minutes, depending on how thick your layers are. Remove the pie pan from the steamer, and prepare a second pan while the first one cools.
As soon as you have added a filling to the second cheung fan, separate the first one from its pan with a flexible spatula, rolling as you go. Proceed in this manner till all the batter is used up. There should be about eight or nine cheung fan stacked on the plate when you're done. Drizzle a little sesame oil over for fragrance, slash into segments to show the filling, and garnish with minced scallion.
CHEUNG FAN FILLING - SUGGESTIONS
Dried mushroom and codfish silk jerky re-humidified and minced, with an equal amount of lap cheung, also minced, and slight quantity of ginger. Maybe re-humidified dry shrimp, or whole peeled fresh shrimp. Perhaps chopped ham. Or thinly slivered beef.
The key thing is that the filling be slightly savoury, slightly sweet, nicely fresh tasting, and not too much - you are eating a noodle, not a meat pie. So only a tablespoon or two per noodle sheet.
TIEM JEUNG (甜醬)
Four TBS Hoisin Sauce (海鮮醬 HoisinJeung).
Two TBS Soy Sauce.
One TBS sugar.
One Tsp. Chili sauce.
One Tsp. Vinegar.
4 - 6 TBS water.
Simmer while stirring till thick. Serve with cheung fan, lumpia, or popia.
Please note that the cheung fan batter given above can be modified, after due experimentation, as you see fit. Either the amount of tapioca flour can be reduced, replaced with a quantity of glutinous rice flour, or it may be increased slightly. It depends on the mouthfeel that you wish to achieve. So please, do experiment like topsy!
An all plain rice flour batter yields a noodle that isn't very interesting, it has to have some tackiness to it. I'm still experimenting too, in case you were wondering.
The oil, however, is essential, so do not omit it, though you may reduce or increase the quantity. It sweats out slightly during steaming, thus making it easier to lift the cheung fan off the cooking surface.
The same batter can be used for Teochew-style char kwee teow ('fried cake noodle': 炒粿條). Just steam the sheets without any fillings, peel them off the surface, and cut them into broad strips. After cooling they may be used for stir-fried rice noodles with clams, shrimp, and oysters, and bean sprouts. Remember to use pork fat for that real flavour. Add minced scallion (or chives) and thin omelette cut into strips, plus some sweet soy sauce and chili paste, then imagine that you're eating by the side of a busy street in Georgetown.
There are some "cheerful" working men in stained tee shirts next to you with cigarettes and beer. The aroma of wood smoke and gasoline drifts over from elsewhere in the cool air of evening. Some place distant a tire is burning.
Yes, this is precisely how you imagined the day ending. Bon appétit!
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
My auntie Ietje had made them, and I saw the entire process.
Unfortunately I didn’t take careful notes, so I can’t give you the recipe.
Sorry.
What I do remember is that they were small and tasty.
Which I subsequently discovered made them quite a bit different than the abortion sold in 'Chineesch-Indische' restaurants in the Netherlands.
The Dutch Chinese-Indonesian restaurant eggroll is slightly smaller than a burrito, filled with lots of bean sprouts and a small amount of pre-cooked meat scrap. The skin is some kind of soggy compound which bubbles up, and due to the construction of the roll a chopstick has to be shoved through the beast after removing it from the deep fryer to drain the excess grease.
As you can probably guess, it is quite one of the nastiest comestibles on the face of the planet.
The Netherlandish natives love the thing.
What it was modeled upon, it does not resemble in the slightest.
LUMPIA
The Indonesian-Chinese eggroll or spring roll is no more than three or four inches long, and hardly one inch to an inch-and-a-half thick. The filling consists of slivered vegetables - carrot, yard long bean, water chestnuts, black mushrooms, celery, etcetera - augmented with a little meat or seafood, and maybe some minced fresh herbs. What really sets it apart, however, is the skin.
[Lumpia (潤餅) is the common term in most Indonesian and Philippino languages for this item, as well as in Dutch (spelled 'loempia'), derived from the Hokkien pronunciation of the words, and meaning a "smooth" or "generously filled" 'wafer' or dough skin. It is similar to popia (薄餅), which is the name that the non-fried version goes by. In most other Chinese dialects the second word (餅) does not mean wafer or dough skin, and the term 'Chun Kuen' (春捲 spring roll) is used instead.]
The best lumpia skins are made by sweeping a ball of dough quickly over a hot surface with one hand, peeling the skin thus left behind with the other hand and stacking it. It's a sensuous, sinuous process. Shploop with the right hand as the left pulls the damp cloth from the pile already made, pull the dough ball away while the left hand swoops in to peel the new skin off and stack it.
Very spare motions, very regular and rhythmical, very elegant.
If your auntie has arthritis, you can peel the lumpia skin off the hot surface for her.
Go on, be helpful - that's what nice young people are supposed to do.
She'll giggle every time you burn your fingers.
A dough ball yields over two hundred skins.
It is a mark of defeat to use a batter instead of a dough ball - the skins will not have nearly as nice a texture. And commercially bought skins, while adequate, are not really proper, nor as tasty.
OUCH! HOT! HOT! HOT!
So instead, let us talk about Cheung Fan (腸粉). Which is rather similar, intellectually speaking.
Though in actual practice, there is no resemblance whatsoever.
Cheung fan are soft fresh sheets of rice flour dough steamed with a little filling - shrimp, beef, pork, or whatever - then folded over, drizzled with a little soy sauce and sesame oil, minced scallion to garnish. Cut into segments of folded roll and dipped in a little hot sauce or tiem jeung (甜醬) it is heavenly. Very kind on the stomach, the breakfast of champions. Eppes tasty.
The resemblance to spring roll is in the manufacture. There is heat, and there may be scorched fingers.
Oh, and it likewise requires an accurate eye. Let judgment be your guide.
[Don't worry, it will come to you - but if you are uncertain, perhaps best to do the first batch experimentally and quietly deep-six the results, so that you can flabbergast your housemates later with nicely made cheung fan. Let subterfuge be your other guide.]
In commercial establishments, a sheet of cloth is tightly stretched over a rectangular steamer and wetted. A rice flour batter is ladled over quickly, smeared flat, filling is strewn over one side, and within mere moments the cloth is lifted with the skin adhering and another put in place and wetted. Meanwhile a deft hand with a spatula separates the already steamed skin, dexterously jiggling it into a loosely folded wedge or roll. It is sliced across into segments, garnished, and promptly served.
At home it is not made so efficiently, because you do not have a large rectangular vat of fiercely boiling water with a perforated metal plate on top.
You have, perhaps, a really big steamer.
So what you can do is use pie pans instead of taught wetted cloth, either lightly oiled or with a little Pam sprayed on. The steaming time is a little longer, because your cheung fan will be thicker. And instead of nice sharp-edged rectangular rolls, yours will be a little thicker around the middle.
If no pie pans, salad plates will also do - the result will be cute little cheung fan, quite suitable as a mid-day snack.
CHEUNG FAN BATTER
One cup plain rice flour.
Quarter cup tapioca flour.
Two TBS cornstarch.
Two TBS oil.
Half a teaspoon salt.
Cold water.
Sift dry ingredients together. Slowly stir in some water, add the oil, and keep adding more water while stirring till you have a batter that looks like heavy cream - approximately 1¾ to 2¼ cups water in all.
Let it stand an hour, re-stir. It is now ready for use.
Grease a pie pan, ladle in enough batter to thinly cover bottom, and place in the steamer. After about a minute to a minute and a half, add the filling along one side. Steam for another four to six minutes, depending on how thick your layers are. Remove the pie pan from the steamer, and prepare a second pan while the first one cools.
As soon as you have added a filling to the second cheung fan, separate the first one from its pan with a flexible spatula, rolling as you go. Proceed in this manner till all the batter is used up. There should be about eight or nine cheung fan stacked on the plate when you're done. Drizzle a little sesame oil over for fragrance, slash into segments to show the filling, and garnish with minced scallion.
CHEUNG FAN FILLING - SUGGESTIONS
Dried mushroom and codfish silk jerky re-humidified and minced, with an equal amount of lap cheung, also minced, and slight quantity of ginger. Maybe re-humidified dry shrimp, or whole peeled fresh shrimp. Perhaps chopped ham. Or thinly slivered beef.
The key thing is that the filling be slightly savoury, slightly sweet, nicely fresh tasting, and not too much - you are eating a noodle, not a meat pie. So only a tablespoon or two per noodle sheet.
TIEM JEUNG (甜醬)
Four TBS Hoisin Sauce (海鮮醬 HoisinJeung).
Two TBS Soy Sauce.
One TBS sugar.
One Tsp. Chili sauce.
One Tsp. Vinegar.
4 - 6 TBS water.
Simmer while stirring till thick. Serve with cheung fan, lumpia, or popia.
Please note that the cheung fan batter given above can be modified, after due experimentation, as you see fit. Either the amount of tapioca flour can be reduced, replaced with a quantity of glutinous rice flour, or it may be increased slightly. It depends on the mouthfeel that you wish to achieve. So please, do experiment like topsy!
An all plain rice flour batter yields a noodle that isn't very interesting, it has to have some tackiness to it. I'm still experimenting too, in case you were wondering.
The oil, however, is essential, so do not omit it, though you may reduce or increase the quantity. It sweats out slightly during steaming, thus making it easier to lift the cheung fan off the cooking surface.
The same batter can be used for Teochew-style char kwee teow ('fried cake noodle': 炒粿條). Just steam the sheets without any fillings, peel them off the surface, and cut them into broad strips. After cooling they may be used for stir-fried rice noodles with clams, shrimp, and oysters, and bean sprouts. Remember to use pork fat for that real flavour. Add minced scallion (or chives) and thin omelette cut into strips, plus some sweet soy sauce and chili paste, then imagine that you're eating by the side of a busy street in Georgetown.
There are some "cheerful" working men in stained tee shirts next to you with cigarettes and beer. The aroma of wood smoke and gasoline drifts over from elsewhere in the cool air of evening. Some place distant a tire is burning.
Yes, this is precisely how you imagined the day ending. Bon appétit!
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
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BUT THEIR PIZZA IS EXCELLENT
Yesterday evening when I got home I found comments that can be charitably described as insane, antisocial, manic behavior on my Facebook pag...
