Makanan Indonesia

I’ll say this outright: Indonesian food is among the best in the world. I’ve tasted amazing food in so many countries, and I have to put Javanese cuisine right there at the top of my list. Wonderfully lucky me—I get it three times a day every day for the next two years!

Food here has got it all: lots of regional variety; extreme diversity and abundance of vegetables and fruits whose growing season is year-round, thanks to the climate; and great seasoning. So, yeah...I get to eat richly-flavorful, ultra-delicious, healthy food pretty much all the time.

Javanese people tend to like their food either spicy, sweet, or both (ever had a fruit salad with hot sauce?). Yes, I’ve had foods that were mind-blowingly spicy. One memorable dinner at the hotel in Kediri, I ladled myself up a bowl of innocent-looking shellfish stew, and stirred in a tablespoon of a black sauce for flavoring. At the first bite I worried I’d done real damage to my esophageal tract. No amount of water could drown that fire! I hate to waste food, and above all meat, but the soup was actually inedible. I told my friend about my experience, and she was confused: “My soup wasn’t spicy at all!” It took me so long to figure out it was the black sauce that had done me in—it looked just like a non-spicy, Hoisin-like sauce we’d had at lunch.

Finding a whole chili (or three!) on your plate is common. A few times I just bit straight into them, pretending to myself that I didn’t know what they were; now that I’ve had my share of really scary ones I usually just leave them alone or cut off pieces to spread around the whole dish. Generally, though, I absolutely love the spiciness level; it’s just perfect to my tastes.

Argentina was unbelievable in the complete opposite direction. I would be forewarned that a dish was “picante,” only to be literally unable to taste the slightest hint of spice, or even have friends turn down the dish because they found it too hot. Every meal here I send up a silent prayer of thanks for my spice tolerance (all those dinners I cried my way through as a child have prepared me well!)—I don’t know how I’d survive, or at least get so much pleasure out of eating, otherwise. It’s probably also the case that eating spicy food at the upper limits of my tolerance for breakfast, lunch, and dinner is probably pushing up said tolerance. Bring it on! It feels like the hotter the foods I eat, the hotter I want them. Right now I feel like I’m at the peak of health (knock on wood!), and maybe that’s thanks in part to the adrenaline I’ve been metaphorically feeding on since I got here, but surely a lot of appreciation is also due to all that spice. What else is there to keep my gut’s microbial levels in check?

On the sugar side of things, anyone who knows me in the slightest knows I’m a freak for sweets. Here I’ve had some things, amazingly, that even I’ve found too sweet for my liking, mainly liquids, since I don’t like sugary drinks. In general, though, I love the desserts.

Where’s the best place to be a vegetarian or even, very easily, a vegan? It’s got to be Indonesia. Meals here are really well-rounded between greens, starches, and varied protein sources. Besides meat (and I’ll come back to that a little later), there are also eggs (and not just from chickens—lots of delicious smaller eggs from other birds are common), tempe (fermented soy beans), tofu, and nuts aplenty. A strange thing is that when we first arrived here and were staying in Surabaya and Kediri, really the only food I didn’t like at the hotels’ buffets was the fried tempe. But then, as soon as I got to my host family, I quickly discovered that was my favorite food my host mom prepares. I don’t know if it’s that my host mom just cooks it much better, or if my taste buds adjusted, but it makes me so happy to see it laid out on the table every morning. In contrast, while I love tofu the way I’ve had it in the U.S., I have yet to have tofu I’ve enjoyed here. Maybe it’s that I’ve always had it served room-temperature, and I crave it hot.

The one protein source that isn’t here, that was basically the only one I ate back in the States, is cheese. Apparently it’s out there, but prohibitively expensive. I ate as much cheese as I could before I left—including many demasiado-cheesy Mexican meals—expecting to be mourning it with internal tears of blood as soon as I got off the plane. To my enduring surprise, I have yet to miss it in the slightest. Okay, you say, it’s been barely three weeks. But get this! Last Saturday I went with a few dozen of the other volunteers to the mall in town to see Beauty in the Beast in theaters and go to Pizza Hut. For most people Pizza Hut was the real source of anticipation, but going into it it didn’t seem all that appetizing to me. I figured maybe when I actually sank my teeth into some of that cheese-filled crust all the love and longing would come rushing right back, but no. I didn’t enjoy eating it and afterwards, even though I’d only had two small slices, I felt so sick. Sure, Pizza Hut is not the most upstanding cheese representative out there, but really, the idea of cheese is pretty unappealing to me at this point. I’m so glad; if I craved it as much as I thought I was going to I’d be unable to think of anything else.

My cheese expectations are not the only ones I’ve had subverted. It doesn’t always hold true, but a pretty good rule of thumb is that the food here probably isn’t going to taste how you expect it will. All fiery red? Okay, it’s probably super spicy, but not necessarily! What’s spicy, a red chili or a green one? Trick question, they’re both super spicy, but I’d sooner crunch on the red one. Does that bowl of veggies look like it’s just veggies? Absolutely no guarantee it’s not spicy. You get something that looks like it’s going to be cream spread between biscuits, and then it turns out the biscuits are either unflavored, like saltines, or maybe salty, and the cream spread is, well, not. Maybe it’s even cheese-flavored. Eating can be a very surprising activity.

On the meat side of things, chicken is by far the most common one I eat. Fish dishes are also pretty common, including one that’s basically salty sardines mashed into a spicy red paste. Although Indonesia’s a Muslim-majority country, pork and dog are available. Kediri is a conservative Muslim area, so our “Cultural Facilitator” told us we probably wouldn’t see either of these written on restaurant menus, but they might be available upon request; someone else told me that in restaurants in Yogyakarta they write “B1” or “B2” on menus as codes for dog and pork, respectively. I was surprised to hear that not only is dog eaten, but apparently in some places it’s rapidly gaining in popularity, I guess because of the cheap price, and maybe also because everyone I’ve met here who’s eaten it says it really is delicious. Our language teacher, who’s from Yogya, told us that interestingly there are two big camps of people there: those who have dogs as pets and really, really love them; and those who really like to eat dog meat.

I didn’t tell my host family I was vegetarian, even though I vowed to go vegetarian when I came here, because I didn’t want to inconvenience them and because I wanted to try the full scope of foods available. My new plan, though, is to be vegetarian at my permanent site (at least how I define it, which is to avoid meat when possible, and eat it when not doing so would mean wasting already-prepared meat). There are so many wholesome vegetarian/vegan options that there’s really no excuse not to, and killing animals makes me sad.

And now here’s a list of some of the foods I’ve had here.

Gado-gado: A traditional Javanese dish, this is one of my all-time favorites. It’s basically a salad—think lettuce, cucumber—drowned in delicious spicy peanut-and-shrimp sauce with lots of goodies like chunks of tofu, fried tempe, and cassava. It’s really tasty and fresh.

Pecel: Another Javanese dish, also known as “nasi pecel.” It’s layered white rice, cooked vegetables, and pecel (spicy peanut sauce—similar to, but different from, the one in gado-gado). The pecel I’ve had is generally too spicy to use more than a couple spoonfuls of.

Sambal kelapa: Sambal is generally a spicy chili sauce or paste (I’ve had some that was fishy-flavored, others pretty sweet), but my favorite kind is “sambal kelapa,” which is neither a sauce nor a paste, but dry and feathery. It’s the texture of finely-grated coconut, because it is coconut, and it’s spicy and salty.

Bakso: Fun fact! This is actually Obama’s favorite food in Indonesia, and, more interestingly to me, if you poll about three dozen Indonesians on their favorite food (as I have done, whether for various language class assignments or to fill dead air when talking to strangers), the majority will tell you it’s bakso. Bakso is meatballs (in circumference about the size of when you touch your index finger to your thumb in the “OK!” sign), and they’re served in broth with some veggies and maybe ramen noodles and kind of peppery seasoning. I have mixed feelings about bakso. I find them flavorful and pretty tasty, but also very…meaty. Eating a bowl of maybe ten is just more meat than I care to have.

Soto ayam: I’m a big fan! One night I went out to dinner with my host family at a Soto ayam warung (kind of a street-food-stand restaurant). Soto ayam is basically chicken noodle soup, but it tastes like pho to me, with bean sprouts, lime juice, basil and chilis. My host family showed me how to crush the chilis with the back of my spoon against the inner rim of the bowl and then stir it around. In typical fashion, I tried putting just one in my soup and found it was just perfectly spicy for me, while the other members of the family had three apiece in their bowls.

Pisang goreng: The single greatest food I’ve had in Indonesia. It’s a deep-fried breaded banana. You can get them with chocolate or, commonly, cheese; I’ve yet to try either of these styles. There are a million different kinds of bananas here, though, and there are certain very sweet ones which are designated for pisang goreng. You don’t need to add sugar and it tastes like it came out of a confectionary. So delicious!

Es campur: There are lots of different kinds of “es” (literally “ice”): “es jeruk,” for instance, is basically a chilled orange drink, while “es kelapa” is sweetened ice water with chunks of coconut. Es campur, however, is a dessert you eat in a bowl with a spoon. It’s very brightly-colored fun things floating in a sugary milk/water-blend bath with ice. Said fun things include gelatin, fruit (papaya, watermelon, avocado, etc.), gooey balls of pistachio paste, bread, and boba (the “bubble” part of “bubble tea”). It’s so sugary sweet I can’t eat a ton, but it’s a very fun experience to comb your spoon through it and see what comes up. The mix of all the different textures is great.

Ronde: Ronde is like a hot version of es campur with a twist. It’s piping-hot spicy ginger liquid (very sweetened) with balls of peanut dough, shelled peanuts, boba and gelatin. Like es campur, I was in heaven for about the first fifteen spoonfuls of it (heady visions of eating it every day for every meal filled my soul as I slurped it deep and contentedly), and then the ultra-sweetness overtook me and I wanted it as far away from me as possible. If I can just have a small bowl next time I think I’ll be able to head off when sweetness turns to saccharine.

Waktu di antara hujan

Let’s start with an image.

Almost every afternoon it rains, hard. The morning might be densely humid and airless, you steam and sweat; then just after lunch you start to feel a breeze; you see patches of blue in the sky between fast-moving cloud patterns reforming mercurially; the sky clouds up fully, darkens, bursts; God turns on the tap full blast. My favorite moments are those in-between ones right before or after the rain, the waktu di antara hujan. The lighting and the cloud patterns are incredible. Yesterday the rain ended maybe fifteen minutes before I needed to bike home from where we had our afternoon session. It’s only four minutes’ ride home, and I was feeling alive and invigorated and didn’t want to rush to go back indoors. So on my way back to my street I turned off the main road onto the narrower road I always pass that cuts through the sugarcane and rice fields. Instantly the sky opened up all around me. Freed from the confines of leafy trees and house skylines, it was boundless. The clouds were huge, lightly pink-hued, fresh, above; I was sailing across a thin stripe of paving in a sea of green below, stripes of cloud reflected in rows of paddy water.

It was so perfect I wanted a photo of it. I’ve taken so few photos since coming here, and I’ve seen such amazing things. But I didn’t want to stop and get out my iPhone in this slightly more isolated area, and above all I didn’t want to fixate on how I was going to capture it forever. Photos are precious, especially the longer time has passed from when you took them, but I also see so much value in living an un-digitally recorded life. I have a deep gut aversion to introducing technology (especially that which is designed to distract and cleave attention) into those moments out in nature when I feel most at one with the divine. I’ve also been strongly affected by a New York Times article I once read that confirmed my intuition, that there’s something very unnatural about our newly-programmed reflex to document everything. The article talked about how taking photos, particularly with digital cameras and phones (where you snap a thousand photos of the same thing, of everything, because you can) actually affects how your picture’s subject is woven into your memory. Your brain processes the moment as information that has been offloaded externally, and so it doesn’t retain it itself—i.e., by focusing on how you frame your shot, you lose the ability to remember what you’re seeing in the frame. At the same time, mass photo-taking disrupts the mind’s natural and necessary process of forgetting: giving importance to and burnishing some moments, which become long-term memory, while letting others be lost. I also think about the Japanese idea of “mono no aware,” which is that essential emotion we feel at our awareness of the impermanence of all things. Better to let ourselves ache and exult at that than reach for our iPhones.

Every day I am so grateful to be here.

Suara desa

It’s four-thirty AM on my first morning with my host family. It started with the roosters an hour ago. I woke up and thought it must be getting near 6:30, when my alarm is set to go off. Then I realized I’d woken up from the roosters, remembered they start the day well before their culturally-allotted dawn, and checked the time. At four I heard the chanting start at a low volume in the distance and guessed at what was coming. At the resort we were staying at here in Kediri before we moved to host families yesterday, starting at 5 in the afternoon I would begin to hear the murmur of a voice filtered through a speaker in the distance, and then by 5:30 when I would go for a walk around the resort’s grounds, the azan (Muslim call to prayer—there are a million spellings of this in the Roman alphabet, because the actual Arabic letter it uses doesn’t carry over, but I think in Indonesia they call it “azan,” if not the actual Arabic word) would be in full force. At the resort, Bukit Daun, there was a small hill with a parking lot on top; I would make a loop for my walk, and at the high point I could see three mosques at once and hear about five, seemingly in a line across the rice paddies, all with their own azans mixing in the air. 

Here at my host family’s house, yesterday I’d heard two azans while sitting in the living room, and it sounded like the mushollah was right next door (mushollah: prayer hall, smaller than a mosque), the speaker vibrating through the solid walls. Sure enough, even as the distant hum of different azans built this morning, I guessed the next-door mushollah hadn’t joined in yet—and when it did, I definitely knew. Meanwhile, the roosters continued to crow (a whole network of them, too), and all against the  background drone of night insects—sort of a white-noise cicada hum—and the occasional whir of a motorcycle speeding past. 

My friend and I often joke about the hashtag Peace Corps encourages on social media, #howIseePC. For me, though, this kind of morning is the most #howIhearPC thing possible. It’s exactly what I imagined and hoped for and love, and am now living. It’s a quarter to five and even with earplugs I don’t know how long it’ll take me to train myself to be able to go back to sleep with all the sounds still echoing through my open window, but it’s a beautiful thing.

  

Selamat datang

Hi there. Welcome to my blog of my time in the Peace Corps in Indonesia!

Nearly seven years ago I had my first blog as a post-high school exchange student in Slovakia, and boy, did I write a lot there. My blog content focused on all the nitty-gritty, minuscule nuances of the daily happenings of my Slovak life. I was glad to write out everything (much in the way that I do when transcribing a dream--in that case, whatever I omit will later be forgotten forever; in both cases, the writing style is very Blakeian à la "to see a world in a grain of sand"), particularly because I had no communication with my family and friends for most of my time away. If I didn't type and post, they would have no idea if I was alive, and --more importantly--, no idea what my life was like!

Everything about Slovakia was new and surprising and interesting to me, so I (correctly or incorrectly) figured it must be doubly so for them to read about and experience secondhand. I've also always loved writing, so to have an excuse--and even a duty! (/sarcasm)--to write for an audience was a true pleasure. I have yet to learn the art of concision, however, so right from the start blogging, even when it was enjoyable, was an ordeal. Nothing eluded the net of my record, but weaving that net could take anywhere from three to eight hours at a time. It was exhausting, and finally when my life had slowed down to such a point that few things felt new enough to work up the motivation to write up in a peppy, excitable, unwaveringly-fastidious way, I stopped blogging entirely.

Since that experience, my relationship with the medium has evolved. I kept a quality blog about my study abroad semester in Spain, but notably felt much less of a crushing guilt when I would do something significant and then never write about it. As a grantee in Argentina I didn't care to spend five hours typing up the definitive review and rating of my daily empanadas consumed. (That is, however, what I spent most of my time thinking about. #notjoking) Getting older, and with a lot more solo travel under my belt and several lives lived far from family, probably had a lot to do with this shift. Neither my slow-paced daily Argentine life nor the jolts of excitement that punctuated it (some stand-out weekends; my travels most of all) inspired me all that often to the diligence a true chronicle requires. I wrote occasionally, but found most of the topics I composed essays about in my head couldn't ever actually see the light of day--so much of Argentine culture is political, and my #1 priority in blogging always is to be uncontroversial.

This is blog #4, and there will probably be no blow-by-blow detailing of the day-by-day, and definitely nothing ~remotely~ polemic--so what's left? When I was writing about Slovakia, I wanted my family to know what my life was like, which really meant I wanted them to know what Slovakia was like (at least as seen through my eyes). I hadn't known what to expect, and everything surprised me; I wrote as if writing to my past selves who had yet to experience what I had. I've done so much research on Indonesia over the last year, and still have no idea what to expect. I really would love to pass on whatever I learn to all my American friends and family, and I'm sure there's a way to do it that isn't characterized by an underlying desperation to pull a Hanuman and just pick up the whole mountain/country to show it to you guys. (300,000 words later--"Now you get it!") The intention there of cultural sharing is actually the "Third Goal" of Peace Corps, to (-paraphrasing-) teach Americans more about the rest of the world, or, specifically in my case, Indonesia. Blogging, no matter in what form this current site might take, is a wonderful way to do this. So, I really want to make this work, and I'm hoping I can find enough time for writing; that maybe the muse of brevity will finally visit me (or else work it out with the god of Time to give me some more, whichever works); and that I'll find ways to evoke without having to rely on the saturation method. I'm so excited for this next great adventure, and happy to have you reading along with me. Ayo!