musang s.x.

Nasi (kuning), tahu-tempe… & sambel terasi!

2009.04.08 01:04

If there’s anything that can explain what makes a people, it may well be their food.

(Most) Indonesians will say the day’s not complete if one hasn’t eaten rice yet (belum makan namanya kalo belum makan nasi). More so for the Javanese, if one hasn’t eaten rice… and tempe… and spicy hot sambel terasi…!

The latter (any condiment with chili peppers can essentially be called sambal) is somewhat more important perhaps… as the Minang people might prefer rice with rendang (kind of dried beef curry) or dendeng (beef jerky), the Batak like love babi panggang (grilled pork chops), the Balinese make an art out of sea fish cuisine, and the Minahasa are proud of both their pork and fish dishes… yet all these Indonesian groups of people have sambal in common, with slight variations for each: the rendang’s gravy and dendeng’s oily sauce are in themselves the spicy hot sambal, the (heavenly) pork chops are usually accompanied with some green chili condiment, the fried fish with sambel matah (chopped up red chili peppers and shallots in coconut oil), and the Minahasa dishes tossed with rica-rica sauce (I’m not sure what’s inside that sauce, but it’s damn hot and damn finger-lickin good! :p)

So here’s a picture of our attempt to bring some “real” Indonesian food to our table… especially the sambel terasi and tempe… in our desperate longing of such homely dishes whilst in this foreign land… (I, having cockily claimed that I could do without Indonesian food, just the local food… :p)

(Hey! Get your grubby fingers out of the shot, man! :p)

As we can see, there’s some rice on the bottom right… the tahu (tofu) and tempe in the middle… the sambel terasi on the bottom left… the lalapan (fresh-cut vegetables, or salad, you might say) on the top… and a nice cup of hot tea…

Now let’s dig in! :p

We of course had to adapt to what ingredients were available locally…

The rice is of the Indian-type basmati rice. We had in one occasion made nasi kuning (rice dyed yellowish using turmeric), using a sachet of ready-made ingredients from Indofood (an Indonesian foodstuffs producer).

Here’s a picture of our nasi kuning… decorated with slices of carrots and green and yellow paprika… (We also found out how sweet-tasting fresh yellow paprika is…)

In Javanese culture, it’s common to make nasi kuning during a celebration… on birthdays, for example, with the nasi kuning shaped into a cone or mountain-like figure, which is called nasi tumpeng. In our case, I guess we can say that we were celebrating our achievement of making a full-course Indonesian meal… :p

Next on… The tahu, was available from the local “W.H. Lung” Chinese supermarket. Now the soy-bean-based tahu are of the more porous and spongy type (which I prefer for deep frying), rather than the more densely-textured tofu…

The lalapan are simply fresh spinach, sliced cucumber, and half-boiled carrots. I ran out of tea that I brought from Indonesia, so we substituted it with some Sri-Lankan tea. The bowl, spoon, fork and cup (or is it a mug?) are some melamine-ware I brought from Indonesia… :p

Now, on with the tempe…

Tempe (pronounced teym-pey) is a traditional Indonesian food –Javanese, to be precise. It has been acclaimed to be highly nutritional, and is revered as the “vegetarian’s meat”.

Like tofu, tempe is made from soybeans, but fermented with the Rhizopus oligosporus fungi, with the beans –still in their whole– then packed and decked into brick-like shapes (rather than crushed and boiled and curdled like tofu).

Hopefully we’ll have time to write about how to make tempe, but for the meantime… perhaps this Wikipedia article will just have to do for now…

Oh yeah, tempe is sometimes spelled tempeh in English… which sounds lame to me… but hey, if it works for people…

One thing we’d like to stress… Please bear in mind that tempe is a traditional Indonesian food. We’re nice enough of a people to share our know-how of tempe… Hey, the tempe for our meal was even locally-produced and purchased from the local “Eighth Day” vegetarian co-operative shop…

What irks us is when some people claim tempe as their national food, and worsely, patent tempe as theirs. The same goes for batik, a traditionally dyed and patterned cloth which originated from Java.

We know it’s a dog-eat-dog capitalist world or creative industry or whatever out there… but who told you to get so trapped in such a capitalistic world anyway? Please respect the tradition of others who might not want to be part of such a lame system. Btw, the nowadays twisted concept of patents and copyrights and the misnomer “intellectual property rights” suck! That’s right, let’s repeat that together: They suck!)

Anyway…

So here’s a pic of our tahu and tempe goreng (deep-fried tofu and tempe)… That’s super-duper-yummy with the upcoming sambel terasi…

It’s common in Indonesia to fry tofu and tempe and almost anything with palm cooking oil, but we had to substitute it with some locally available cooking oil… I think it was a concoction of sunflower, rapeseed and olive oil. We also know that some people may think fried food is so-unhealthy… but then, it tastes good! :p

We marinated the tahu and tempe first before frying them, with a mixture of water, a pinch of salt, a pinch of garlic, and a pinch of coriander. We had to use powdered garlic and powdered coriander instead, as it was a bit difficult to find freshly crushed ones…

And lastly… our sambel terasi…

Sambel terasi (pronounced sahm-beyl tra-see) is essentially fresh red chili peppers, garlic, salt… and the (secret?) ingredient of terasi (fermented shrimp paste)… all ground up together into a condiment whose coarseness or smoothness is up to your taste…

We couldn’t get the smoothness of the mash that we wanted because we didn’t have a cobek dan ulekan (a stone grinder of sorts), which is commonly used to make sambal. We had to improvise using a ceramic bowl and the butt of a peanut butter jar as a grinder… :p

(This is why sambel terasi is also called sambel ulek –ulek being Javanese for ground up.)

We used what red chili peppers were available… threw in some cabe rawit (birds-eye chili peppers) for that extra zing of hot and spicy taste… and in one occasion, had even (accidently) used some Scotch bonnet chili peppers, which turned out not for the weaker of tongues and stomaches!

Find out more about chili peppers here; while these pictures from Wikipedia will hopefully illustrate the gradual increase of the hot and spiciness of each chili pepper.

Red chili peppers:

Birds-eye chili peppers:

Scotch-bonnet chili peppers:

Warning! Hot! Hot! Hot! The devil is in the chili peppers! :p Especially that last one, despite its innocent appearance of a mini paprika…

The terasi, or fermented shrimp paste, is a common ingredient amongst South East Asian cultures. While Indonesians know it as terasi, Malaysians name it belachan. I don’t know what the Thai call it, but it’s present in their cuisine as well. The shrimp paste we used was a produce of Thailand (available, again, at “W.H. Lung”).

We plan to write some more about this sambel when we have the time… but again, here’s a Wikipedia article for the meantime…

The pronounciation of sambel –note the e, not an a, which would make it be pronounced sahm-bahl– is just an Indonesian thing of an accent, I guess… Or maybe it’s a cue of how much sambal you’ve had:

If you’re still pronouncing it with an e then you’re fine, have some more… but if you’re already shouting sahm-bahl-hahl-hahl-hahl, then I guess your tongue’s already on fire from all that chili… :p

To quote a friend of mine:

“It’s a bit of a masochistic feat, eating sambal… You torture yourself with all that hot and spicy taste, even to the knowledge that you might get a stomach-ache afterwards… but then, you still want some more of the stuff…”

I guess that pretty much sums up the addiction that is sambal… :p

And with that, our meal is served… Bon appetite! :)

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