Week 3 - Indonesian

The last time the Indonesian challenge came up (in 2015), I tried to make nasi goreng, and while it tasted like fried rice, it didn't taste like any nasi goreng we had had before. It was just missing something. For the Indonesian challenge this time, I wanted to make something different. I looked through lots and lots of delicious-sounding recipes, but wasn't sure what to make since there were many ingredients I didn't have access to, especially during a pandemic when we couldn't shop around at specialty stores. I eventually decided on mie goreng, a fried noodle dish, based on a recipe I found on Recipes Indonesia. Even though I knew I would need to make substitutions, it at least seemed doable. Also, unlike the last time I did the Indonesian challenge, this time I had a bottle of kecap manis (Indonesian sweet soy sauce) and didn't have to try to fake the flavor with other things.

I made a lot of substitutions, perhaps too many since the finished product (spoiler alert) wasn't like any mie goreng we had eaten in Indonesian restaurants before. (If you think this is sounding like a repeat of last time's nasi goreng, you would be right.) We couldn't get to an Asian grocery store before making this, so the only noodles we had were spaghetti. I used a can of chicken instead of an actual chicken fillet, trying to save a little money since our grocery bill that week was higher than usual. Instead of slicing up my own cabbage and carrots, I got coleslaw mix, something we've used as a substitution before when cooking that has done well. Instead of choy sum, I used a little baby bok choy. The store had no bean sprouts. I left out the chiles, except a little bit of sambal, because I didn't want it to be too spicy for B. We left out the eggs because of our allergy, fried onions, and parsley. With all the ingredient changes, it was a somewhat different dish, but they all seemed like similar enough substitutions that could potentially work at the time I planned it out.

Non-traditional ingredients for mie goreng

The ingredients for our version were:

- 1 package of whole wheat spaghetti ($1.39)

- 1 tbsp grapeseed oil ($0.10)

- 3 large shallots ($1.43)

- 6 cloves of garlic ($0.33)

- 1 can of chicken ($1.92)

- 1 bag of coleslaw mix (green cabbage, red cabbage, carrots) ($2.99)

- 1 baby bok choy ($0.75)

- 7 scallions ($0.99)

- 1 small spoonful of sambal oelek ($0.05)

- about 1 tsp chicken bouillon ($0.10)

- about 3 tbsp kecap manis ($0.84)

- about 2 tsp soy sauce ($0.10)

- white pepper to taste ($0.05)

The noodles cost about $11.04 on their own. We ate them with some stir-fried bok choy and red onion on the side that I made in the same wok right afterwards, and they tasted pretty good together. The total cost was about $13.73, a great price for dinner for three and a lot of food. There was a (very) little bit left for the next day.

I generally followed the same procedure to make the noodles as the original recipe, but with a couple of significant differences. One was skipping all the egg-related steps. The other was that, instead of grinding the shallots and garlic into a paste, I just fried them in the oil. I didn't have time to make a paste, and we only had a wooden mortar and pestle that I didn't want to forever smell like shallots and garlic. It probably would have been better as a paste, but I don't think it would have made so much of a difference as to change our final conclusions on our version of the dish. The steps we followed were:

The original recipe said five shallots, but this was three shallots, so I stopped there. Thankful for the goggles we bought and never used for COVID, because they have become onion and shallot goggles...

1. Prep - finely chop shallots, finely chop garlic, rough chop baby bok choy, chop scallion greens and whites into medium-sized pieces and keep separated, make sauce by combining the chicken bouillon, kecap manis, and soy sauce, boil water for spaghetti. [I started that last one way too late, which delayed everything and made our vegetables a little too soft.]

2. Heat grapeseed oil in a hot wok. Add shallots and garlic. Fry until fragrant.

3. Add chicken, stir-fry for a little bit, and then add the sambal oelek. [If using actual chicken fillets, this would obviously be a much longer step until the chicken was mostly cooked.]

4. Add the coleslaw mix, baby bok choy, and scallion whites. Stir-fry until beginning to soften. [That was the intention, but getting to step 5 took far longer since the water wasn't boiling yet.]

5. Add noodles, scallion greens, and sauce. Mix everything together well, and make sure sauce is evenly distributed. Adjust to taste. [It was a little too bland for us, probably because we had so much stuff in the wok. We added more kecap manis and more soy sauce here as well as a little white pepper.]

The noodles were good, a little on the blander side but with a nice mild flavor. They were not, however, something we would have ever guessed as mie goreng in a taste test. Similar to our last Indonesian cooking experiment, it just felt like there was something missing, and I'm really not sure what it was. The chiles? Too little sambal? Not enough sauce? Too much/too many noodles in the wok? They just tasted like lo mein to us with nothing distinctly Indonesian. Maybe next time I try making Indonesian rice or noodles, I'll finally get it right.

Week 34 - Indonesian

I'm not really sure where to buy Indonesian ingredients around here. Probably somewhere in Queens, but I didn't know where exactly and didn't have time to go searching for stuff when Indonesian week rolled around. (Sounds like the same issue I had last year during Week 34!) That made choosing what to make for the Indonesian challenge a little bit more difficult, but eventually I decided on nasi goreng (Indonesian fried rice), a dish we frequently have at Indonesian restaurants and enjoy, using this recipe from food.com as a starting point.

I picked that recipe as a starting point mostly because I had most of the ingredients. The one thing I didn't have, and which I found in lots of Indonesian recipes, was ketjap manis, Indonesian soy sauce. Although I could have substituted dark soy sauce, I decided to go all-in on the challenge and actually try to get the flavor of ketjap manis instead. Based on this ketjap manis recipe on food.com, we made a small batch of sauce to use in the nasi goreng. I don't remember exactly how much we made, or how much we used of what we made (made this months ago), so I'm not going to price out the cost of this dinner in the interests of accuracy. But the ingredients were brown sugar (I didn't have dark brown sugar, just regular brown sugar), water, soy sauce, molasses, minced ginger, ground coriander, and ground black pepper. A helped me out by making the sauce while I tried to tackle a lot of the other prep work.

For our version of nasi goreng, I used:

- 2 cups (uncooked) brown rice
- 2 eggs, beaten
- a few tsp of sesame oil
- a pinch of salt
- 2 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into smaller pieces
- 2 tbsp canola oil
- 1/2 head of garlic, minced
- 1 onion, chopped
- 2 tsp ginger, minced
- 1 tbsp dried shrimp paste
- 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
- 1 tbsp chili bean sauce (plus more to taste)
- 1 tbsp oyster sauce (plus more to taste)
- 1 tbsp (or so, didn't measure) of ketjap manis (plus more to taste)
- a few green onions, chopped
- 1/2 bunch of cilantro, chopped

The original recipe used shrimp, but I chose to make this just with (white meat) chicken. I also swapped the white rice for brown rice to make it a little bit healthier. I made the rice the night before in the rice cooker and then stuck it in the fridge overnight. I don't always make fried rice with day-old rice like they recommend, but this time, since I knew the challenge meal was coming up, the timing worked out.

I mostly followed along with the recipe for the steps to make the nasi goreng with some help from A so that we could get things done more quickly. First, I combined the egg with sesame oil and salt, and then put them aside. In the wok, we heated up the canola oil, and then added the onions, ginger, shrimp paste, garlic, and black pepper. At this point, you were supposed to squash the shrimp paste while everything was cooking. We certainly tried. This was the first time either of us had ever worked with shrimp paste and judging by the finished product, that stuff didn't break up that well by squashing it in the wok. Is there a better way? Anyone experienced with using shrimp paste have any suggestions for us? I bought it some time ago intending to make Malaysian vegetable dishes, but we didn't open it until we made this. As a side note, it certainly stunk up the pantry afterwards, despite being in 3 layers of bags. (We now have it in 3 layers of bags inside a jar.)

Next we added the chicken and stir-fried it until it was mostly cooked. Then we added the rice and cooked it some more. After a few minutes of stir-frying the rice, we added the chili bean sauce, oyster sauce, and ketjap manis, and kept stir-frying. Last up, we added the egg mixture and stir-fried it into the rice mixture.

If I remember correctly, we tasted it a bit at this point. In addition to not tasting like any nasi goreng we had previously had, it didn't seem especially flavorful as a general matter. I think we added more of the chili bean sauce, oyster sauce, and ketjap manis, but I just don't remember how much. When it was almost time to take the nasi goreng off the heat, we stirred in the chopped scallions and cilantro. We stirred everything around some more and then took it off the heat.

This fried rice was okay, but it didn't taste like the nasi goreng that we had had at Indonesian restaurants before. Maybe this is what nasi goreng tastes like in other parts of Indonesia, but it wasn't what we were expecting. It's also entirely possible that I did something wrong or off in the cooking process or ingredient choices, but if I did, I can't pinpoint the misstep. It's not that the dish was bad. It wasn't. It was fine, but really just tasted like fried rice with funky shrimp paste flavor. I was hoping it would taste like some of the nasi goreng we'd had before so I could replicate that at home, but it looks like I'm going to have to keep searching.

Tempo Doeloe

Our memories of our rijsttafel at Tempo Doeloe in Amsterdam three years ago are getting a little hazy, but on the anniversary of our visit, we thought it was about time that we got back to our 2010 Europe trip recaps (before another year goes by!).

Tempo Doeloe is the green awning on a quiet street

We went for a relatively late dinner that night, after having various snacks and meals throughout the day (pancakes, herring, beer and ossenworst). It was our second rijsttafel of the trip (the first was at the more "modern" Blauw) and we were excited to go to one of the more "traditional" places that has been in Amsterdam for years. We didn't make reservations in advance (we didn't make reservations anywhere on that trip) and there was a short wait. As we waited, they gave us some chips (krupak udang and another shrimp cracker) and a sauce that we can't remember too much about.  We were hungry so we were thankful for the free snack.  

Bar snacks

[Side note: Since our visit, we've seen Tempo Doeloe featured on TV, including on Bourdain's show. While we loved seeing it and reliving our time there, internet research tells me that reservations are basically required now since the restaurant is so small (and that you have to ring a bell to be allowed in). Perhaps it was that busy back then too and on a random Wednesday night in September we just got lucky, but I think it's gotten busier over the years.]

Ordering at Tempo Doeloe was easy, since we knew we wanted another rijsttafel adventure. We really enjoyed having such a great variety of small tastes and were really pleased to see how extensive their rijsttafel menu was. They have some smaller rijsttafel options but we went for the grand one. Three years later, we couldn't possibly tell you which of the dishes were our favorites, but I'm not sure we would have been able to do that three weeks later either. It was all really good.

Clearest photo of our rijsttafel but no iPhone yet and didn't want to use flash for everything

The rijsttafel came with two types of rice (white and yellow) and four trays of dishes (three on burners to keep them warm).

Fluffy white rice

"Yellow" rice - basically like fried rice, topped with delicious fried garlic/onions

The four trays of rijsttafel dishes were separated by type and spiciness. The small circular dish had snacks and cold salads, and the others were mild, medium and spicy.

Snacks and salads

Mild (I think)

The dishes in the rijsttafel according to the menu were:

• babi tjien (pork in mild soy sauce with aniseed)
• daging semoor (beef in sweet soy sauce and tomatoes)
• paksoy (green leaf vegetables with sesame oil)
• sawi toemis (Chinese cabbage with Indonesian spices)
• ajam opor (chicken in mild coconut sauce)
• gadon dari sapi (beef in creamy coconut sauce and fresh coriander)
• sambal goreng tempeh (fried soy cake in spicy sauce)
• sambal goreng tahoe (fried tofu in spicy sauce)
• sambal goreng oedang (small shrimp with peteh beans)
• sambal goreng boentjes (string beans in spicy sauce)
• sambal goreng hati (chicken livers in spicy soy sauce)
• oerapan (fresh vegetables with rasped coconut)
• ajam roedjak (chicken in strongly seasoned sauce of chili peppers and coconut)
• ajam bali (chicken in a sauce of tomatoes and peppers)
• sajoer lodeh (vegetables in coconut broth)
• orek arek (caterpillar cabbage with garlic)
• daging belado (beef in spicy sauce with red peppers and garlic)
• daging rendang (the spiciest thing there - very spicy beef stewed with coconut)
• sateh babi (pork skewers with peanut sauce)
• gado gado (fresh vegetables with peanut sauce)
• kroepoek (crispy prawn crackers)
• emping (crispy chips of belindjonuts)
• seroendeng (rasped coconut and peanuts)
• atjar (sweet and sour Indonesian salad)

Medium (I think)

Spicy (definitely)

A story about Tempo Doeloe's spicy dishes, which I will let A tell:

M and I had heard so much about the spicy dishes of a traditional rijsttafel, and I was really intrigued to try them. I remember the first four having decent heat, but it wasn't that overpowering. The second to last spicy dish was the dish with red chili peppers shown above. This had a definite kick to it. The burn was pretty intense, and that made us pretty worried about trying the last dish. So we each built ourselves up and tried little pieces of the spiciest dish pictured above with the slice of what appears to be a scotch bonnet pepper as a garnish. To quote The Simpsons, "It tastes like... burning..." Dear god, this was one of the spiciest things I had ever eaten in my life. The burn consumes your mouth, and no amount of anything helps alleviate it. Our waiter recommended some toasted coconut that comes with the rijstaffel, but that only did a little. M didn't eat as much of the spicy dishes as they were a little overwhelming, so the majority of these dishes were mine to eat. I'm pretty sure I ate it all, but I suffered through it.

However, this wasn't the end. On their menu is a stewed chicken dish that is hotter than the spiciest dish listed above. They actually offer you a taste if you really want one, and it's also offered as a full dish. We decided against destroying what was left of the feeling in our mouths, but one brave soul at the far end of the restaurant tried it. He had apparently been bragging all night about how he could take any heat to the staff so they were more than happy to oblige. After the small dish was delivered, our waiter came back with a wry smile and told us to watch as the guy ate the chicken. He put on a brave face for the first 10-30 seconds, and our waiter told us to wait for it. Within 5 seconds of saying that, an intense look of pain crossed the guys face. He got really red, started sweating profusely, and was banging his fist on the table in an attempt to stem the tide of pure flame coursing through his mouth. He ran back to the bathroom, and I'm pretty sure we didn't see him again before we left. Our waiter enjoyed a small chuckle with us before departing to continue his duties. Knowing that it's spicier than the spiciest dish we tried, we couldn't even begin to imagine how nasty that chicken would have felt.

Even after 25 dishes, we wanted dessert, so we got the "grand dessert" (to go with our grand rijsttafel) - a selection of various ice creams (can't remember the flavors) with tropical fruit (one piece each of kiwi, star fruit, passion fruit, watermelon, strawberry, pineapple). This was a sweet and refreshing end to a great meal.

Pretty fruit plate

There was also a complimentary plate of mints/chocolate chips at the end of the meal.

Our blackberries! This was so long ago...

We were glad we got to try the rijsttafel at both Blauw and Tempo Doeloe, since they were very different experiences and both delicious. The dishes at Tempo Doeloe centered mostly around beef, pork, chicken and vegetables, while Blauw's rijsttafel also had fish and goat. Tempo Doeloe had more dishes in the rijsttafel but Blauw compensated for less variety with larger dishes. We really thought both restaurants were excellent and would love to go back to Amsterdam for more rijsttafel. Unless you live in an area with phenomenal Indonesian food, we highly recommend a rijsttafel meal during any Amsterdam visit.

Blauw

Rijsttafel. One of our "must-have" meals in Amsterdam. The word translates to "rice table" and consists of a number of dishes in small portions served with rice.


We decided to go to Blauw for rijsttafel, partly because we were sure it would be open on a Sunday. We had read about how it was a tasty place for a more modern rijsttafel and thought it would be a good place for our first one.

We had never had a full rijsttafel meal before and were really looking forward to it. There's only one Indonesian restaurant in our area and we had some small assortment dinners before, but a full rijsttafel was new to us. We knew the Netherlands was known for their Indonesian food (generally and rijsttafel in particular), so we had to try it!

The restaurant was away from the main tourist areas which was nice because it allowed us to see more of Amsterdam. We took the tram and then walked along the bottom of Vondelpark before arriving at the restaurant. (We suppose they need to advertise that they are airconditioned? We never quite figured out why.)


We started out with iced tea. Sparkling lemon iced tea seems to be the way people like their iced tea in Amsterdam.


Next, they gave us free shrimp chips with 2 sauces (sambal?). It's like chips and salsa, Indonesian style. Did we mention our love for shrimp chips?

(A brief note about the menus: they were nicely designed and came with mini book lights to help you read! How awesome!)


The rijsttafel came with 2 kinds of rice - plain white rice (not pictured) and a fried rice with egg and vegetables.


The first rijsttafel dishes that came were the ones that didn't have to be put on the heater on the table:


Then we got the 6 meat dishes that had to be on the heater:



The rijsttafel came with the following dishes (translating the best that we can with a wikipedia guide and google translate - if any of the translations are wrong, please tell us!):

• Ikan blauw (some kind of fish dish)
• Ikan blado (a different fish dish)
• Daging pedas (spicy beef)
• Daging koenjit (tumeric beef)
• Babi ketjap (pork belly in sweet soy sauce)
• Sate ayam (chicken satay)
• Sate kambing (goat satay)
• Sajoer lodeh (spicy vegetable stew in coconut milk)
• Gado gado (vegetables in peanut sauce)
• Prekedel (meat and potato patties)
• Sambal goreng telor (fried eggs?)
• Sambal goreng kentang (fried potato sambal)
• Tahoe ketoprak (tofu with vegetables)
• Atjar ketimun (cucumber salad)
• Pisang goreng (banana fritters)
• Seroendeng (coconut and peanuts)
• Kropoek (shrimp crackers)

Then for dessert we got es ketan hitam, black rice pudding with pandan ice cream and coconut milk:


The plate looked so pretty!

It was a very successful first rijsttafel experience. We loved the variety and complexity of the flavors of all of the dishes and wanted to try more. It's too hard to choose a favorite dish out of the medley of dishes, but it was a delicious feast!