Week 5: A digression on food

This week has been quite uneventful so I thought I would use this opportunity to digress on a particular topic of interest: food. Food is everywhere here, both physically and in terms of the cultural importance allocated to it. Eating out is commonplace and in Tebet there are hundreds of restaurants, cafes spilling out onto the street and street stalls, where you watch your food prepared on the spot and eat it sitting on a little plastic chair. I am also a big fan of warungs, small cafes, usually run by little old ladies, where you order your meal by pointing at the different dishes lined up in the window.

I always thought that British people loved their food but Indonesians put us to shame. I think Western people are more ambivalent about food than we care to admit; we eat it, enjoy it, obsess over it, but then feel bad about it afterwards. Indonesians simply cut out the last step, which seems to me to be a far healthier attitude. One of the unexpected joys of travelling has been feeling like I am re-discovering food. I have been enjoying eating here in a way that I rarely do at home. You don't really realise how repetitive your eating habits are until you are placed in unfamiliar culinary terrain. Western food is easy accessible in Jakarta - all the usual global brands are here - but so far at least I have no desire to eat it. I am having far too much fun trying new foods and, now that I have been here a few weeks, indulging in new-found favorites.

Most dishes here are pretty carbohydrate and protein rich, although sop (soup) is also popular. The two basic dishes in Indonesia are nasi (rice) and mie (noodles), which are usually served with meat or tofu, plus maybe a token gesture towards vegetables such as a slice of cucumber. The other volunteers and I were commenting the other day that all of us learnt the word for fried (goreng) within a few hours of being in Indonesia, but we all agreeed that this was a bit of a wasted effort since fried food here is pretty much synonymous with food. I was even presented with deep-fried sushi the other day, which I must admit was surprisingly palatable.

One of the prominent flavours in Indonesian cooking is peanut and two of my favourite dishes I have found are gado gado, which is cabbage, avacado and beansprouts in a rich, peanutty sauce, and ketoprak, which is similar but comprised of a mix of lontong (congealed rice), noodles, beansprouts and tofu. Another of my favourite finds is tempe, soybean cake marinated in soy sauce, which tastes so good it almost makes me want to turn veggie.

The lack of vegetable dishes is made up for by the quantity and quality of fresh fruit. I swear, even the familiar fruits taste better here, and I have come across some interesting new ones, such as Rambutan and Durian. You can buy fresh (and I mean actually fresh, as opposed to Innocent smoothie 'fresh') smoothies on the streets here for 6,000 Rupiah (less than 50p). As you might expect in a country with a tropical climate, drinks here are rather more exciting than they are at home. One of their more peculiar traditions is putting jelly in drinks. I honestly didn't know what to do with myself when on my first night I was presented with a drink of iced coconut milk with cubes of pineapple, jelly and avacado floating around in it.

One of things that has suprised me about Indonesian food is their love of all things sugar-based. I always thought that cakes and puddings were a Western invention, eschewed in more health conscious Asian countries. How wrong I was. Cake is big business in Indonesia and never before has a culture so wholeheartedly embraced the humble doughnut. It is no exaggeration to say that the American chain Dunkin' Dohnuts is ubiquitous in Jakarta. The flavours, however, are slightly more adventurous than they would be in the states (mango and lychee for instance).

Not all Indonesian foods have been a hit though, I must admit. One of the most famous Indonesian dishes is baso - meatballs - but I find them rather tasteless in comparison to their Italian counterparts. Also, I find sweets made of congealed rice pretty inedible. The same goes for rujak - fruit salad covered in a spicy sauce - which tastes not dissimilar to vomit. Also, whilst I am not craving Western food per se, I do miss breakfast. What I wouldn't give right now for a good bowl of porridge . . . .

The most notable event this week was my first Indonesian night out on Friday. Indonesia, as you might expect, is not a drinking culture, so most of the bars are in big hotels. Whilst it was certainly nice to be in such plush surroundings, the exorbitant drink princes were a bit of a shock (around 160,000R per drink, which would normally feed me for 3-4 days). The two bars we went to had house bands, who play an impressive repertoire of Western pop songs, complete with matching outfits and choreographed dance routines. Shoreditch it was not, but it was fun nonetheless. There were a few memorable moments, such as persuading the lead singer that it was Hannah's birthday and watching her squirm as he pulled her up on stage and made the whole room sing happy birthday. The evening also produced perhaps my favourite chat-up line of all time, when a Saudi Arabian guy that Hannah was talking to told her "if only you were my cousin I would marry you". The evening was a bit blighted, however, but the feeling that Indonesian bars mostly exist to facilitate sleazy encounters between Western expats with beer bellies and receding hairlines, and distressingly willing young Indonesian girls. Nevertheless, the evening was a lot of fun and it was good to see a different side of Jakarta.