March 8, 2009
Eater's Digest
By Chris Tan
This week, LifeStyle looks at Indonesian cookbooks and their potential to spice up your life.
THE INDONESIAN KITCHEN: RECIPES & STORIES
By Sri Owen
2009/Interlink Books/ Hardcover/288 pages/ $56.55/Select Books
The first author to bring her native foodways to British foodies' attention in the late 1970s, Sri Owen is a true doyenne of Indonesian food.
This magnum opus travels the cuisine's breadth as it charts the author's childhood in Western Sumatra, teen years in Yogyakarta, travels in Italy and Europe, and married life in Wimbledon, London, where she once ran an Indonesian deli and where she still lives.
Serious foodies will want this book for the instructions on homemade tempeh, the chapters on sate and selamatan (celebrations), the Indonesian-inspired ice cream - the kaffir lime is gorgeous, but add a pinch of salt - and seldom- seen recipes such as gudeg yogya (chicken braised with green jackfruit) and padang offal satay.
A rarity from Irian Jaya, ina avau au, was scrumptious. The sausage of minced pork, sago pearls and grated coconut is baked and then pan-fried. The sago soaks up the meat juices, giving the sausage a unique, nubbly moistness. Tamarind-braised lamb looked like a regular stew but unfolded waves of meaty-spicy-sour flavour in the mouth, remarkable for a throw-everything-in-the-pot- and-boil recipe.
One quibble I have long had with Owen's recipes concerns spicing levels that occasionally verge on the homeopathic.
Sometimes it works, as in the ayam goreng jawa, allowing the flavours of good chicken and caramelised coconut to shine. But the gado-gado peanut sauce was depressingly bland to my palate. And half a teaspoon of chilli powder to season eight to 12 jumbo shrimp? Four tablespoons of chopped herbs in nasi ulam serving six to eight? One can only wonder if this reflects the fuller flavours of Indonesian, or Wimbledonian, produce.
THE BALI COOKBOOK
By Lonny Gerungan
2008/Page One Publishing/Paperback/192 pages/$37.34/Books Kinokuniya
Holland-based Balinese chef Lonny Gerungan has composed a fascinating, luscious ode to his homeland.
Apart from classic dishes such as babi kecap, steamed minced chicken parcels and vegetable urap, it includes less familiar items such as deep-fried eels, minced duck satay, steamed fresh tuna in banana leaves and green papaya curry. Gerungan makes it a point to share stories and asides that frame these foods with social and spiritual significance.
Complex and rousing spice pastes form the foundation of most dishes. Tipat cantok, Balinese gado-gado, draws delicious patterns on its vegetable canvas with a sharp, sweet and hot peanut sauce, fried shallots and kecap manis - lovely and perfect for waking a jaded palate if you have got the blahs.
I also tried sampi mesitsit, a dry, spicy beef floss that turned out to be equally at home on rice or bread, and sate empol celeng, a finger-licking minced pork satay with a marvellous brown crust from a touch of palm sugar and thick coconut milk.
An exuberant, uncompromising book that promises rewards if you cook your way through it slowly, this does, however, have an Achilles heel - a scanty glossary lacking photographs to help you identify unusual ingredients. How do leprous limes differ from kaffir limes, or cassamunar ginger from regular ginger?
Some main ingredients such as 'snails' and 'seaweed' are very vaguely defined - unhelpful, given how many kinds there are of each. Another confusion is the use of rice flour in several dumpling desserts, including klepon (onde onde), where surely glutinous rice flour is meant.
A WORLD OF RECIPES: INDONESIA
By Sue Townsend and Caroline Young
2003/Heinemann Library/Hardcover/48 pages/$6.31/MPH
I must say, Sumatran-style lamb chops are certainly a far cry from the Ladybird book sausage rolls I was making at age 10.
Bravo to authors and publishers who realise that curiosity about food starts at a young age, and ought to be nurtured. Heinemann's series of global cookbooks for young readers includes nuggets of cultural information as well as simplified recipes, laid out in an easy-to-follow manner.
Spiciness has been muted a little for children's palates. There are a few disasters - a fruit salad with non-matching photograph and text - but the dishes are otherwise mostly respectful.
The gado-gado looks better than many food court renditions I have had, and the aforementioned lamb chops were pretty good, braised in a mild lemak gravy.
A tofu omelette was tasty enough, though a measly 50g of tofu to four eggs surely short-changed the star ingredient.
Parents should explain to their kids that though they may want to 'throw away the chilli seeds' because they 'can make your eyes and skin very sore', they might come to love the sweet pain of the same when they grow up.
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