C O O K a L O C A

Note: Before you complain “Fried rice again?!” Let me explain that since we moved to our new house, I have not really got the time to cook something elaborate. We always settle for something quick and easy. And fried rice seems to fit the profile.
and… Who does not have tinned tuna in their cupboard? Most of us always stock up in tuna. It is very versatile. Mixed it with mayo and celery stick, you have a tasty bread spread. Cook it with tomato, garlic, olive oil and parsley, you have a healthy pasta sauce. Or you could simply throw it in mix salad, for an extra protein.
This recipe is another alternative of using tuna. If you have some left over rice from the day before and some celery stick, you could create this healthy but filling meal.

What you need for two portions:
3-4 cup cooked rice from the day before
Vegetable oil to fry
1 clove of garlic, roughly chopped
1 small onion, roughly chopped
1 good quality tinned tuna in oil, drained
2 celery sticks, sliced ½ cm
2 table spoon fish sauce
A pinch of ground white pepper
Optional: 1 red chilli, chopped or a teaspoon of sambal

Methods:
Heat a wok
Add oil and fry the garlic, the chilli and the onions until soft but not burnt.
Add the tuna chunks and stir fry until it is a bit brown
Add the celery.
Add the rice and the fish sauce
Fry until the rice is a bit charred.
Check the seasoning. Add salt if necessary and a pinch of ground white pepper.
Serve warm.

Mustokoweni, is a gem waiting to be discovered. The amiable little boutique hotel is intimate and memorable. This former colonial school is boasting a lush tropical garden, vintage furniture, cozy bedrooms and an elaborate traditional breakfast. The architect/artist owner has decorated the hotel exquisitely down to all the small details. Her charming personality is manifested in all aspects of the hotel.

The verandah

The charming historical room

Dried flower

The batik display

The batik pen

The verandah and batik hall

The main staircase

The owner, Mrs. Sita, a charming lady, an architect/artist/mother which is bursting with energy and creativity

I got the chance to stay in this hotel when I was organizing the Post Earth Quake workshop together with the owner. I fell in love instantly with the place and the genus of the place.

The breakfast was particularly fantastic, served by the very own mother of the owner; a very elegant older lady who looks very young for her age. We were served a traditional Jogjakartan breakfast; Nasi Gudeg or Jack fruit stew with steamed rice wrapped in banana leaves, accompanied by tea and turmeric drink; and also an array of traditional cakes from the market place. Everything was served on a table draped in indigo batik table cloth. The mother organized local batik craftsmen to produce the innovative indigo batik. Charming!

The breakfast table, with the famous Nasi Gudeg

The traditional turmeric jamu drink, it is good for your digestion and complexion

The traditional “kue basah” sweet snacks from the market place

The hotel really tells the story of the family. The building was previously owned by the grand mother of the owner, a Javanese dancer, who had danced in Leiden, during the year 30s, to raise fund for the victims of the Merapi volcano. Now the grand daughter is rising money for the reconstruction of the recent earth quake in Jogjakarta. A very social family indeed!
In the breakfast hall, one could find a charming portrait of a great aunt, painted by the father of Basuki Abdullah, one of the most important Indonesian painters of all time (and he certainly did not paint ordinary people! Talking about a very interesting family!)
The husband of the owner who is an architect/musician sometimes plays the grand piano in the hotel lobby.
I guess, you would know where I will be staying when I am back in town! Nothing is nicer than a small family hotel that is full of character.

The lobby with the painting of the grandmother, the dancer

We finally moved in to our new house: Number 254. After 5 years living in Delft we decided to move to Rijswijk. New house, new stove (Smeg 6 burners!!), new dining set and new life.

With a steep and narrow staircase; a very typical feature of an old Dutch house, moving things was not easy at all. Thanks to our great friends who have made the moving possible! One Bavarian couple who like to work hard and party harder, one lovely Malaysian-Dutch couple, one super strong Nordic Dutch girl, one fabulous Dutch Chef, one Chilean who is as strong as an Andean Indian as he always claims, two super helpful Indonesians, one Taiwanese daddy (J, you are the best!).

Starting this year I am trying harder to stick to the “Eat Seasonal and Local” philosophy. (change starts with your self, right?) Well, I must say, it is not easy to actually do it. Some of the reasons are that sometimes you don’t know what are seasonal and local or sometime if you did know them, you are not sure how to cook them, or you are just not in the mood to eat them.

But since I like beans so much and since broad beans are sold everywhere in the marketplace this months, I decided to give them a go (again). I tried many different preparations of broad beans, I had them steamed and ate them as snack (healthy and tasty!), then I added them to my paella (see previous post) together with the blood sausages, then I also had them in spring salad. The truth is, they are very versatile and they really go well with almost everything.

This time, I am having them in fried rice. This dish is actually a variation of the Chinese style fried rice, but instead of using the peas I am using the broad beans, and for the meaty part I add some Chinese sausages (lap xiong) instead of the usual roasted pork (char siu). Chinese sausage is one of my favourite treats; it tastes a bit sweetish, aromatic and smoky. It has lots of fat in it (that’s why it is so good) but I guess if you ate it once in a while, it would not kill you.

A tip to make fried rice: To make fried rice, you have to use day-old rice or left-over rice. Freshly cooked rice does not make good fried rice; as the rice would stick together.

Ingredients for two portions:
Vegetable oil to fry
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
1 large chilli, roughly chopped.
2 -3 Chinese Sausages, slice to ½ cm
20-25 broad beans, double shelled
4 cups cooked rice
2 table spoon fish sauce
1 table spoon soy sauce
A handful of chopped spring onions

Methods:
Heat the wok until really hot.
Add a little oil, add the eggs and scramble them.
When the eggs are more or less set, keep them to one side of the pan; then add a little more oil and fry the garlic, the chilli and the sausages, until fragrant.
Add the beans and stir fry for 1 minute. Take care not to let the garlic burnt.
Add the rice, fish sauce and soy sauce, and then mix well.
Let the rice gets charred a little bit, it gives a nice smoky flavour.
Lastly add the spring onions.
Check the seasoning.
Serve warm.

Semur or just to put it simply is actually braised beef. It is cooked for hours and hours in very low heat, until the beef is meltingly tender and all the spices are absorb thoroughly. It is one of the most typical Indonesian dish, that (strangely enough) could not be found anymore in many restaurants all over the country. It is considered as a very humble domestic dish that is surely not fancy enough to be featured in a food blog. Most people eat it at home. (Seriously, have you ordered semur in a restaurant? me not! Not that you could find it anyway on any menu cards)

The Dutch is also very fond of this dish or Smoor as they call it. I could not really say, the origin of this dish. What I can tell you for sure, the Dutch version is nowhere close the Indonesian version. Ok, ok, enough of me mocking the Dutch food (again).

There are many different varieties of semur in Indonesia. It could be from chicken or beef. Though they are very different in term of the combination of the spices, there is one common characteristic; they all bear sweet soy sauce. Semur has to be a kind of sweetish in its nature. It is also very aromatic and tasty. This one is a version from the city I grew up Jakarta, it has a lot of spices in it. This recipe is adapted from my paternal grandmother’s recipe.

But before I proceed to the recipe, here are some tips for cooking semur.
1. Lean beef does not make good semur. We have to use the part that has some fat and muscles on it (flank or shank or brisket) that needs more cooking time but it really makes a whole lot different. Trust me! If you are not sure which part to buy, just tell your butcher that you need stewing meat.
2. Potatoes or no potatoes?
Some semur have potatoes in it, some do not. If really depends on your preferences really. Potato also helps to thicken down the gravy.
3. Use a Dutch oven or a thick bottom cooking pot. If you want to cut down the cooking time, use pressure pan instead. You could cook it in 1/4 of the time that you’d need in a normal cooking pan.
4. Which spices to add? Most semur bears white pepper, coriander seeds, cloves, cinnamon, candle nuts, chillies, ginger, purple onion and garlic. Some other recipes also add galangal, nutmet and cumin, but I think the aforementioned ones are the most important ones.
Candle nut is crucial to form the base of the gravy as it thickens down the sauce nicely. If you could not find it, add the potato to thicken the sauce.
5. Use good quality real Indonesian kecap manis (sweet soy sauce), don’t ever attempt to use the Dutch kecap. It is watery and more salty than sweet.

Ok here is what you need for 5-6 portions.
Ingredients:
800 kg stewing meat, cut into 5×5x2 cm
1 cinnamon stick
3 cloves
2 big plump tomato, quartered
800 ml water or more
8 small new potatoes, peeled, keep whole or cut into 3X3X3 cm
50ml sweet soy sauce
2 table spoon vegetable oil to fry
Salt to taste

Pulse the following ingredients in a small processor to a smooth paste:
6 cloves garlic.
1 big purple onion, quartered.
1 thumb ginger, peeled.
1 table tea spoon white pepper corn (sorry for the typing mistake!!)
1 table tea spoon coriander seed (sorry for the typing mistake!!)
6 candle nuts
2 big red chillies, don’t bother to deseed them.

Methods:
1. Heat the oil in the cooking pot, add the spice paste and stir fry until fragrant. (around 4 minutes)
2. Add the meat and brown them at all sides (around 5 minutes)
3. Add the tomatoes, a pinch of salt, sweet soy sauce, cloves and cinnamon.
4. Add the water and simmer for 1.5 hours with very low heat until the meats are tender. Add some water you must. The gravy should be somewhat thick not watery though.
5. After the meat is tender, add the potatoes and cook until they are done. Don’t let them desintegrate.
6. Serve warm with steamed white rice and crispy fried onions (available at most Asian supermarket).

p.s. ok, ok, i know i have to submit my phd thesis in 6 days, but please let me write this post before that.

Ok, before I present you the recipe of the drink stated in the title of this posting, let me tell you a little story about sirop. Yes, sirop not syrup, I have not misspelled it. The word sirop derived from the Dutch word stroop. Sirop in Indonesia, is actually a concentrated fruit juice, does not matter whether it is made of real fruit or purely chemical. People drink it diluted in cold water. It comes in thousands of flavors; strawberry, grapes, orange, melon, rose, pineapple and so forth. I just hated them all.

Alas, I simply could not avoid drinking it. It is omnipresent in every Indonesian household. You visit a friend in his/her house, the first thing that the maid would bring out from the kitchen is a glass of brightly colored cool drink; the diluted sirop. Out of politeness and to show good education, you just could not help but drinking it while suppressing your disgust, under the watchful eyes of your host, and briefly thanking him/her for the hospitality.

The one that I despised most was the grenadine sirop. Artificially pink in colour, overly sweet and unmistakably chemical! Unfortunately for me, everybody around me seemed to have a life time supply of grenadine syrup in their kitchen. Why? oh Why? If you want to serve your guests fruit juice, why not serving the fresh one instead, not that it is expensive or something.

I actually could not pin-point the origin of this tradition. It is not that we Indonesian loves drinking sirop anyway, since we only serve it to our guests. We don’t really drink it our selves on the daily basis. Serving your guest plain water is just not being done in Indonesia. It has to be colored, be it diluted sirop or tea or coffee. I suppose sirop is an easy alternative, as you could always stock it up in your cupboard, mix it with cool water in a flash, just in case you have guess to serve. And it has longer shelf life than an actual fresh fruit juice. Convenient isn’t it?
What I know for sure, this tradition is really old. As far as I could remember, my mother always served her guests sirop, especially the Sarang Sari grenadine sirop, poor soul! Even my grand mothers had done the same thing, too.

Fortunately for me, since I move to Europe, I could happily settle with tea or coffee. No European in their right mind would offer their guests concentrated fruit juice. I guess it is just not being done in their tradition. Phewww, lucky me.

My mother just like any other Indonesian good housewives, occasionally made her own sirop. Mind you, it was not the chemical one, but the real deal made of real fresh fruits. Among her favorites are the ginger, the tamarind and the lemon grass sirop. Ohh, I used to hate it as a child. She never succeeded in convincing me to drink it. Nevertheless, despite the fact, she was always very determined in making them in a large batch, enough to quench the thirst of a thousand soldiers. She would put the sirop in thoroughly sterilized bottles, which she would neatly stack-up in our kitchen cupboard. I never understood how she managed to consume them all.

The funny thing, these bottles of sirop often came in handy…for paying the service of the neighborhood general practitioner. Well, this is the nice things about living in Indonesia. Anyway, the story was, we had this nice lady doctor in our neighborhood, every time me or my sister got sick, my mom always brought us to her. The funny thing, the nice doctor always refused to get paid for her service. (Ahhhh… the good old day, when neighbors knew each other’s first name, respected one another, sent each other cakes and lived in harmony). Well, okay, I am not sure it still works like this nowadays in Indonesia. Since we got sick a lot, we visited her quite regularly. Feeling ashamed for getting free services all the time, my mother decided to give the nice doctor the things that she could not refuse, a couple of a good homemade sirop (which the doctor actually loved!), every time we went to seek her advice. You see, they came in really handy!
Though I could not really appreciate the sirop as a drink back then, I surely could appreciate it as a token of friendship or gratitude.

The funniest thing is now I actually love sirop but of course not the industrialized supermarket-bought ones, and surely not the grenadine syrup. I am talking about the real deal like my mother used to make. Summer is the perfect timing to make sirop, as I always crave for cold refreshing drink. Since I don’t like sweet frizzy drink and not so keen of drinking ice tea, I need another alternative of a cold sweet drink apart from white wine and fresh fruit juices. And guess what it is, yes, sirop. The drink that I loathed so much as a child started to make more sense to me nowadays.
I could not understand why I hated my mother’s ginger and lemongrass sirop so much back then. It is actually so nice and refreshing. It is sweet, tangy and full of flavor. Mixed with sparkling water and a generous squeeze of lime, it is simply divine. Add a shot of gin or white rum like Brazilian Cachaca, it is even better.
So here it is the recipe of the formerly loathed sirop. I promised you, it is nothing like the chemical laden supermarket version!

Ingredients:For making around 750 ml syrup you would need:
100 gr ginger, sliced and crushed.
100 gr lemongrass, cut in 5cm length and crushed
2 cup sugar
4 cup water

Method:
Put all ingredients in a thick-bottomed pot, simmer for 30 minutes in medium heat.
Cool it down while letting the flavor infuses further.
Pass the syrup through a sieve and store in a clean glass container.

To serve:
Put around 50ml syrup in a tall glass, top up with 250 to 300 ml very cold sparkling water.
Add a slice of lime and stir well.
Serve really cold, add ice cubes if you must.