Dish Twenty-Two: Indonesia

I thought Indonesia sounded quite an interesting one to start the new year with, and was looking forward to a tasty Asian meal.  I wasn’t disappointed. I got a load of international cookery books for my birthday, and I was convinced Indonesia was one of the countries, but I was wrong. In fact, Indonesia was predestined by Dawn and Grandma at the beginning of this project – Magadip, on p.124 from The Around the World Cookbook. So Grandma copied the recipe and emailed it over.

Indonesia

Indonesia is in South-East Asia. It’s capital city is Jakarta.It is made up of several islands, including Java, Bali and Sumatra. During the Second World War, a group of women who escaped Singapore when the Japanese invaded, only to have their boats sunk were captured and sent to all-women prisoner of war camps in Sumatra, with other female and child civilian POWs. At one of these camps were interned Margaret Drysburgh and Norah Chambers. The conditions were dire and far from sanitary. These two ladies created a vocal orchestra, orchestrated classical pieces of music for women’s voices that the multi-cultural POWs could sing together. The music lifted their souls, made life almost bearable despite the terrible conditions and brought the women together. Their experiences were made into the TV series Tenko, and the film Paradise Road.

I could write a lot more about them, but this is a food blog. The reason I bring it up, apart from it being in Indonesia and therefore relevant, is that 70 years later the music was sung for the first time in the UK, by the Chichester Women’s Vocal Orchestra. I was in the choir, the church was packed with the relatives of those POWs listening to the music their mothers, aunts, grandmothers etc had sung to survive 70 years earlier. I heard amazing stories from the audience and learnt all about this barely-known part of World War II history. We were video recorded too, and the recording is held in the Imperial War Museum. Yes, I am in a museum at the tender age of 38.

Anyway, back to food, Indonesian food. Grandma emailed me the recipe. One of the most important things I realised early on is that Grandma’s proofreading skills need a little honing. I’m glad I realised this because her recipe had me putting gloves into the food instead of cloves. I asked her whether they needed to be woolly gloves but she said that as long as it was a pair of gloves, she didn’t think it mattered. In the end though, actually, I chose not to waste the gloves and used cloves instead.

The other exciting part of this recipe was the fact that a number of spices all needed to be ground up. Why is this exciting? Because I got to use my pestle and mortar I got for my birthday back in October for the first time. See, told you it was exciting. Look, here it is in action, in case you don’t believe me:

Pestle and mortar in action

I didn’t get any help with this one. Dawn and Daniel were incredibly busy that afternoon. Dawn got Daniel some personalised stickers for Christmas so that he could play schools more effectively, which say “Mr Sands says Well Done” and such like, as well as a register. They spent four, yes four, happy hours playing schools, and I barely heard a peep from them until they went on a school trip to the zoo. This entailed them coming into the kitchen to visit the elephant (which was the upside down laundry basket in front of the washing machine). I wish I’d gone on a school trip like that – they were taking it in turns to go into the enclosure and actually play with the animals. Even Mr Sands was having a go. It was hilarious. But that’s why I was undisturbed, and made a lovely meal for dinner.

The finished result was delicious. It was a little bit like the Egypt meal that I made, but a completely different taste. By which I meant that it came out a bit like a coating for the chicken, although there was more juice than the Egypt meal. So actually, it was nothing like Egypt, now I come to think about it.

Magadip

Pestle and mortar in action

Ingredients

Some chicken breasts

1 tsp sugar

2 tsp coriander seeds

2 tsp cumin seeds

6 whole cloves

½ tsp ground nutmeg

½ tsp ground turmeric

1 small onion

1 inch ginger, peeled and sliced

½ pint chicken stock

salt and ground black pepper

 

Method

1. Chop the chicken breast pieces in half and put in a casserole dish.

Pestle and mortar in action

2. Sprinkle with the sugar and salt and mix them toss together. Apparently, this helps to release the juices in the chicken.

3. Fry the coriander, cumin and whole cloves until they smell really nice. Don’t burn them (as you know by now, I’m quite good at that).

4. Add the nutmeg and turmeric and heat for a little bit.

5. Grind the spices in a pestle and mortar.

6. Chop the onion and ginger finely and grind to a paste in the old pestle and mortar.

7. Mix the spices, onion mixture and stock.

8. Pour over the chicken in the dish.

9. Cover with a lid and cook until the chicken pieces are really tender, which should be about 45-50 minutes.

This meal is for 4 people. Eat it with rice. The recipe says have it with crisp deep-friend onions but I wasn’t going to do that. So we just had it with rice.