COOK LIKE A LOCAL: INDONESIA
Try spiced fish parcels, green coconut pancakes and beef rendang in this diverse Southeast Asian island nation
Try spiced fish parcels, coconut pancakes and beef rendang
Indonesia is a land of spice and rice. Part of Southeast Asia’s Malay Archipelago, and the largest island country in the world, Indonesia’s 17,000 islands are home to bamboo groves, tropical rainforests, smoking volcanoes, lush rice paddies and silversand beaches. Travellers have been lured here since 2,000BC when traders began journeying from port to port between the Far East and the Middle East exchanging goods from the Spice Islands, in what is now Indonesia (the only place in the world where cloves and nutmeg grew), along the way.
For a land that is so intrinsically linked to the spice trade, it is curious that Indonesian food is characterised not by its most famous exports but by its freshness. Rather than relying on dried spices, fresh ingredients are pounded to spice pastes known as bumbu to unlock their exotic, vibrant flavours. Ginger, galangal, red chillies, coconut, tamarind, treacly palm sugar, shrimp paste, lemongrass, smoky fermented soy sauce, turmeric root, peanuts, garlic – these are the Indonesian culinary backbone, imbuing the country’s dishes with heat, complexity, richness and a savoury piquancy.
From the roadside warungs (food stalls) of Java to the no-order Padang joints of Sumatra and the beach restaurants of Lombok, there is real diversity within the country’s culinary landscape.
In the tangled jungles of Borneo, young vegetables are cooked inside a bamboo stem over an open fire. In Bali, a Hindu island in an Islamic land, spice-stained suckling pig is cooked on hot stones. And while pisang goreng – fried bananas cooked in crisp rice-flour batter and served hot from street stalls – are ubiquitous throughout the country, even these have their regional twists, from plantain versions to those with flavoured batters, fritter-like shapes or sprinkled with condensed milk, cinnamon or even cheese. »