Bookshelf: Sri Owen's Indonesian Food Adds Fuel to the Tiki Fire

A new book by Sri Owen is a matter for celebration.

~ Alan Davidson
Petites Propos Culinaires

Sri Owen, a one-time BBC broadcaster and now one of the grande dames of Britain’s culinary scene, may not be well known to Americans, but she is a dogged sleuth at the very top of her game. Framing it for the cocktail crowd, she’s Ted Haigh, David Wondrich, and Jeff Berry rolled into one.

She has traveled to far-off villages in Bali, Java, and Sumatra with notepads and a camera. She was hip to Batavia arrack long before American cocktail enthusiasts knew what it was. She has tracked down endangered recipes across social, religious, and linguistic bounds, and presented her findings in a dozen books, various articles, and presentations at scholarly symposia. Her field? Indonesian cookery. Others have written about the foodways of these Pacific islands, but when you want to get right to the source, read no further than Sri Owen’s books.

Of what interest is Indonesian food to American drinkers? Think tiki.

Her latest book, Sri Owen's Indonesian Food, contains a 29-page spread on satay alone. Forget those “Monkeys on a stick” from mid-century tiki bars. A tiki enthusiastic looking for fresh ideas for backyard/basement luaus or a refreshed bar menu would do well to study Owen’s latest book. Here, she presents satays of minced beef, of pork, prawns, sweet potatoes, fish, ox tongue, and tripe along with an entire chapter on sambals (condiments akin to salsas or, more closely, chutneys) for giving them a tropical kick. Ok, maybe your guests won’t cotton to tripe-on-a-bamboo-skewer, but the rest have broad appeal.

In clear, engaging prose, Owen introduces ingredients, techniques, and dishes of the Indonesian archipelago. Recipes for braised beef ribs, tamarind lamb, stuffed wontons, steamed plantains, fish cooked in bamboo segments, grilled catfish, stuffed and poached prawns, and ice creams (of kaffir lime, durian, avocado, and black rice, to name a few) blend familiar and novel tastes and textures. Lumpia—fried spring rolls—will be familiar to tiki enthusiasts, but the book is packed with fresh takes on Pacific islands cookery. Well, fresh to Americans, anyway.

To accompany and enliven the dishes, readers learn how to make a variety of condiments and bumbus—seasoning pastes with exotic spices such as galangal, fresh tumeric, lemongrass, shrimp paste, candlenuts (careful: they’re toxic if eaten raw), and more. A useful glossary explains the ingredients and pronunciation.

One of my favorite recipes—and she’s printed it elsewhere—is for rendang: chucks of beef (water buffalo if you want to stick to the taste of the islands), simmered in spiced coconut milk that permeates the beef until the water evaporates, leaving coconut oil to collect which the cook then uses to fry the chunks in the same pot. Rendang is time-consuming and rich, but delicious, and perfect for heating the kitchen and belly in the ungodly cold weather the rest of the country is having.

Owen applies a similar technique to fried chicken. It’s not the same as the Southern fried chicken so familiar on these shores, but it has become part of our yardbird repertoire. For Ayam Goreng Jawa, Owen cooks chicken in seasoned coconut milk until it absorbs the sauce, then briefly cools and deep-fries it. Imagine the same recipe applied to a batch of chicken wings and served alongside a mai tai, a fogcutter, or a cinnamon-spiced nui nui.

As the Brits might say, it tastes rather more-ish.

Ayam Goreng Jawa
Central Java Special Fried Chicken

One chicken, about 1.5 kg/3.25 lbs), cut into 8 pieces
Peanut oil for deep-frying

For the bumbo (paste)
390ml/14 fl oz coconut milk
6 shallots
1.5 tsp ground coriander
3 candlenuts (or macadamia nuts), chopped
1 tsp fresh galangal, chopped
1 tsp fresh turmeric root, chopped
1 tsp fresh lemongrass, finely chopped
1 tsp sea salt (and more to taste, if necessary)

Using just three tablespoons of the coconut milk, blend all the other ingredients for the bumbu to make a not-too-smooth paste. Put the rest of the coconut milk in a saucepan, and add the paste. Mix thoroughly, add the pieces of chicken, and boil for 45-50 minutes until all sauce has been absorbed by the meat. Allow to cool, then deep-fry the chicken four pieces at a time until golden brown [at 300°F, about ten minutes, a bit longer for breasts].

Notes: We ate with this with sambal ulek, a bright and lively chile paste widely available in Asian grocery stores and easy enough to make at home. If using candlenuts, be aware that they are toxic if eaten raw and must be cooked. Another tiki connection: the oil of candlenuts (so-called because they could be lit for light at night) was sometimes used as a coating for outrigger canoes so often seen suspended from the ceiling of tiki joints.

My notes are for the UK edition of the book published by Pavilion. Interlink has published an American version titled The Indonesian Kitchen: Recipes and Stories. I haven’t read that one, so I can’t comment on its contents. Owen herself, however, writes that the differences are minimal.


Sri Owen (2008)
Sri Owen's Indonesian Food
288 pages, hardback
Pavilion
ISBN: 1862056781
Price: £25.00

White Dog and Pink Shrimp

For years, I've been a fan of Indonesia's sweet soy sauce called kecap manis, distant cousin to America's ubiquitous tomato ketchup. Even though it's practically a staple in grocery stores catering to Asian customers in the US, Westerners don't often know the molasses-like sauce. And that's a shame—because a bottle keeps forever in the larder and in a pinch when guests arrive, it lends itself to a lot of different on-the-fly marinades, dips, and even sneaky barbecue sauce.

In particular, I like a simple marinade that's little more than the kecap, melted butter, and lime. Sometimes I doctor it up with ginger or red chiles. And if I happen to have a supply of straight-from-the-still white dog, a dose of moonshine whiskey is liable to go in the sauce, too. No moonshine? That's ok: You could leave it out entirely or, if you have some overproof rum such as J. Wray & Nephew or Lemon Hart 151, use a dose of that instead.

With a few tweaks and optional ingredients, this is my recipe as Fred Thompson used it in his Barbecue Nation (The Taunton Press, 2007).

Bootleg Shrimp

2 lbs 24-26 count shrimp
4 oz unsalted butter
4 oz fresh lime juice
4 oz kecap manis (Heinz ABC brand)
2 oz white dog or overproof rum
1 Tbl fresh ginger, grated (optional)
1-2 tsp crushed red pepper (optional)

Clean the shrimp, but leave the shells on, rinse them, and set them aside.

Melt the butter in a small pan or skillet. If using, add the red pepper and ginger. Simmer briefly to extract their flavor. Remove from heat (remember, kids: high-proof liquor is flammable) and add the remaining ingredients. Stir to combine.

Add half this marinade to the shrimp, toss to coat, and set aside for 20-30 minutes while heating the grill. Grill the marinated shrimp 2-3 minutes per side (in two batches if necessary) until pink and showing a little char on their shells. Dump them in a large communal bowl and serve with the remaining half of the sauce (heated) for dipping on the side.

Lots of towels. Make some rice or bread to go with.

Nah, I'm not shilling Heinz products. It's just that ABC is good and—at less than a cup of Starbucks coffee—the 21-oz bottles are cheap. According to Business Week ("The Ketchup King Prospers" by Matthew Boyle, 8 Sept 2008), ABC is the second-largest soy sauce company in the world, second only to Japanese behemoth Kikkoman. With over $200 million in sales (2007), it's a good bet there's some in your neighborhood. If not, you could swap out sorghum or cane syrup such as Steen's. Won't be the same, but I'm happy to come over and try the results.

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Instant Pineapple Pickle

Korean and Indonesian cooking will stop me in my tracks, though I am forbidden from making kimchee at home and, in San Diego, it’s the occasional soto, rendang, or sambal on a supposedly Chinese menu that hint at an Indonesian influence in the kitchen.

At one of our occasional shindigs, both Mama Charlie and Dr. Smokesalot (whose respective mothers are Korean) brought bulgogi for grilling. Some call bulgogi Korean barbecue. I call it a very good night for me. The thin-cut sirloin was marinated in garlic, rice wine, sesame oil, red pepper, soy, sugar, and lords knows what else. Rice was a given.

Last night, with a batch of bulgogi waiting for the grill to heat, I veered off-course and cranked out an Indonesian-inspired pickle to go with the beef. You could just as easily call it a sambal. The recipe is loosely adapted from Rosemary Brissenden’s classic South East Asian Food and is best in the first 24 hours. If you buy your fresh pineapples trimmed and cored, this won’t even take five minutes to throw together.

The stuff goes great with bulgogi, of course, but it turns out also grilled chicken and fish, carnitas, and pork chops. It's lightly salty, kinda pungent, but sweet at the same time. Break open a beer or three while you're at it.

Don’t be scared of the fish sauce; it is an essential foil to the sweetness of the pineapple. I’m tempted to say it’s optional, but if fish sauce skeeves you, eh, just skip the recipe and open a can of pork and beans.

Instant Pineapple Pickle/Pineapple Sambal

One pineapple, peeled, cored, and diced into ½” to 1” chunks, plus all its juice
1 Tbl crushed red pepper*
1-2 cloves garlic, chopped
one ½” piece of fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
1 Tbl brown mustard seeds
1 large pinch turmeric
1 tsp coarse grey sea salt
1 Tbl Thai fish sauce
4 oz white vinegar (rice, champagne, or plain ol’ Heinz)

Grind the red pepper, garlic, ginger, mustard seeds, and salt together, using a bit of vinegar if necessary to make a loose paste. Combine the paste with the remaining ingredients in a large mixing bowl.

* I used Crushed Aleppo pepper from Penzey's: hot, slightly oily, but not so pungent that you can't taste that the pepper is actually a fruit.


Goes well with:

• Korean Favorites—Bulgogi, a YouTube video laying out the basics for a marinade. After a rest of a few hours to a day or two, beef prepared like this would be grilled over high heat to give it a hint of char.