The food post

Basko (meatball soup)

Sate ayam (chicken sate)

So, I figure we’ve been here long enough to say something about the food. Not that we’re remotely close to being experts on Indonesian fine cuisine, if there is such a thing, but we can give you our 2 cents.

Interestingly, both mine and Amy’s view of Indonesian food is coming primarily from the perspective of lunch. You see, we both eat a “western” breakfast (i.e., not rice), and we cook our own food at home for dinner (while that sounds like a strange comment, one must realize that many expats here have a maid that prepares food for them), so that leaves lunch at the office (me) and school (Amy). My golden rule with Kiki, our receptionist, is for her to get me whatever she’s getting for herself. Hence, it’s a pretty good cross-section of Indonesian cuisine, from the “lunch-takeout-street-food-order-in” perspective.



Mie goreng (fried noodles) -- breakfast of champions

Pepes (steamed chicken in banana leaf)

First and foremost, up front and centre, top of the agenda, numero uno….is RICE. The Asian stereotype of people who eat rice is absolutely true, at least here in Indo. If you were to take rice out of the equation here, the scene would be right out of a post-nuclear-apocalypse movie with nothing left but the cockroaches. Rice really is life itself in Indonesia.

gorengan (deep-fried stuff)

By my estimates (so plus/minus 100%), I would say the average Indonesian’s diet is made up of between 50% to 80% rice (by whatever measure you want to use: volume, weight, size of the bowl, whatever). The Jakarta city slicker who has the odd pizza or Starbucks muffin would probably fall into the 50% category, while the toothless rice farmer in the back forty would hit the 80%+ mark. I am always amazed at how much rice Indonesians eat. Three+ times a day, rain or shine. As the Indonesian adage goes: anything without rice, is a snack. We’re not talking about the mini-dollop we westerners have on the side of our plate. We’re talking about 2 or 3 or 4 cups of rice, and shovelling it in by the spoonful.

Nasi goreng (fried rice) - street version

Bubur ayam (rice porridge with chicken) - breakfast to-go

Soto ayam (chicken noodle soup)

So ya, the ubiquity of rice in Indonesian food cannot be overstated. And, fittingly, the unofficial national dish must be nasi goreng. Nasi = rice, goreng = fried (hence “fried rice”, AKA “nasty goreng” among expats). It’s an everywhere anytime kind of thing. On the street, or in an upscale restaurant, it’s on the menu. Actually, it’s very good, and very tasty, often complimented with chicken and veggies mixed in, and often comes with a fried egg on top, which absolutely makes it. One major drawback: the artery-clogging, heart-stopping usage of palm oil in this country. If it’s “fried”, aka “goreng”, we’re talking palm oil (lots of it). If you aren’t familiar with the horrors of palm oil, google it. You’ll be updated quickly. So in reality, nasi goreng, while tasty and everywhere, gets shoved into the “survival food” category for when there really is nothing else available.

Gado gado ( Indo salad) - deconstructed version

Padang restaurant - everything on the menu

Speaking of palm oil and goreng, there is the ever-present street snacks called gorengan. You guessed it, roughly translates to “things that are fried” (fried in Indonesia means deep fried, in palm oil). This is their french fries and onion rings. The standard items dropped into the boiling cauldron are tofu, tempe, bananas, sweet potatoes, and an interesting batter made from flour/corn/cabbage called bakwan. While extremely tasty and fills that yummy greasy-snack category, we run into the same “heart-attack-waiting-to-happen” problem as with all gorengan in Indonesia (palm oil is not your friend). That said, at 10 cents a pop, it’s hard to walk by a gorengan guy during the mid-afternoon snack time.

Ok, moving along to more healthy options, we have the various dishes that are made with steamed rice, which, obviously, is where Amy and I focus our attention. The standard Indonesian rice dish is a heaping pile of rice (like, heaping), complemented by a small piece of meat (fish, chicken, or beef; not pork due to the Muslim factor), or tempe or tofu – a very popular protein source here – and a smidge of something green and steamed (cassava leaf is common). Typically the meat/tempe/tofu is stewed within a tasty sauce that is among an unlimited variety and variation – all of which, I am assured, have a specific name and origin. To be honest, it all kind of looks the same to me (but I’m a food redneck). All quite tasty, and actually quite healthy if you stay away from the word goreng, so all good.

Higher-end fare

Lunch

Absolutely top of the list among all rationale humans, especially expats, has to be nasi Padang. Ahhh, nasi Padang. Padang is a region in Sumatra where the curry sauce of nasi Padang originates (and hence the name). Various varieties of nasi Padang are available and include fish, chicken, or beef stewed in the delectable sauce, and draped over a heap of rice with some side veggies like stewed cabbage and cassava.  The lunch-time classic, and my all-time favourite “go-to” by far, is nasi Padang rendang “bungkus”. Rendang is beef in an absolutely stupendously delicious sauce, “bungkus” literally means “wrapped” in a banana leaf, in other words “to go”. Just writing this makes me want to go out and get some. Don’t believe the hype?, check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McEdn-gf9gs

Lunch with a view

Other lunch fare includes pepes, whereby a piece of chicken or fish is coated in sauce, wrapped in a banana leaf, and steam or grilled – and, of course, eaten with 2 to 4 cups of cooked rice. Bakso (pronounced baso) another Indonesian favourite, and basically their version of meatballs, typically comes in the form of soup with the meatballs floating in it (but it’s not soup, it’s basko…I cannot convince them otherwise). Tasty yes. But “interesting” given the mystery meat component. No one to date has been able to tell me exactly what is in bakso. Hmmm. Not sure about the basko. This is Asia, after all, where anything that moves could end up in a meatball.

Uhhm, not quite sure - it was a gift

Ikan bakar (grilled fish)

If meat is your thing, sate is big. Obviously sate ayam (chicken sate) is the go-to, with the obligatory drowning of peanut sauce. As with most things here, it’s advisable to go with “saus di samping”, or “sauce on the side”. Otherwise, you won’t actually see the chicken, or whatever else is underneath.

Soto ayam, another go-to of mine: soto = soup, ayam = chicken, basically chicken soup, but it comes with rice noodles and other tasty stuff. The side of rice is obligatory, unless of course, you are only having a snack J  Noodles, AKA mie, are also big (not like rice of course, but still pretty big). So you have the mie goreng (fried noodles), mie ayam (chicken with noodles), soto mie (noodle soup), and the hundred or so other things you can do with noodles. Again, all good, all tasty, just follow the golden rule: avoid goreng anything at all costs.

Em...no thanks...I'm really full

High-end gorengan

OK, then there is the Padang restaurant experience. Like nothing else on earth, upon placing your butt in a chair, the table is instantly and completely covered with plates of every imaginable form of food. Organ meat is big. Pass the lung please. Oh, have you tried the skin, it’s divine. And, this intestine, I have to get the recipe. Yep, it’s all there. But not to worry, there’s normal boring stuff like chicken and beef too, for us faint-hearted bules. So ya, you pick and choose what you like, and pay for only what you touched. In an interesting twist, it’s a favourite for foreigners, since you basically get everything on the menu placed in front of you, without having to ask or know anything about anything. Now, if we could only get pizza joints to do that…