City of God kids

I have recently finished teaching a class of seven 4 year old boys. Despite their age, and their tendency to bring massive amounts of (toy) weaponry to class, they were reasonably well behaved, and would quite happily sit around and have a conversation. There was hierarchy with an unofficial leader, who they would defer to and ask advice, an ‘enforcer’, and the runt of the litter, who was the butt of their jokes. Despite the obvious disparity in class and circumstances (e.g. they all have Blackberries), they reminded me of the favela kids from the Brazilian film City of God. They sit around and chat, gossip, compare recent antics, and (probably) hatch schemes to defraud their schoolmates and make it big in the Jakartan underworld. 

Attempts at making the local food and drink

So far, so unsuccessful. Not bad, just a little bit bland. I’ve tried cooking a tempe curry, a fish curry, a long bean dish, fried noodles and rice, and some sambal. The sambal was great, really sweet and spicy and very easy to make. The curries have involved making pastes (similar to the stuff that Thai curries use), which have smelled really good, but not translated into a tasty end product. Not sure if the pastes are to blame, or what I do to them afterwards. The fried noodles and rice have been pretty good, but then all I do is fill them full of kecap manis (sweet soy sauce), and that makes anything taste good.

I’ve also tried making juices/smoothies, and, damn it, it isn’t as simple as throwing a load of fruit into a blender. I started by not peeling or deseeding the fruit. That was a mistake, which I knew even as I was doing it; the results were very fibrous and full of ball bearing like pips. Before anyone scoffs too loudly, I only did this with fruit that can sometimes have edible skin, such as guava.

I’ve now taken to peeling and deseeding the fruit, but the results are only marginally better. In search of an answer I took to observing and questioning the local juice makers. The solution is as unsurprising as it is obvious: loads (and loads) of sugar. So much for the natural sweetness of nature’s bounty!

What to drink (non-booze)

If you’re going to go local, then you need to wash down your nasi goreng with a bottle of teh botol. It’s the local brand of iced tea, and quite nice, though packed with sugar.

The coffee is certainly an experience. There are no new fangled western innovations like filters, the coffee grounds are poured into a glass and topped up with hot water from a thermos. You wait until the grounds have settled at the bottom and then drink, leaving a few mill of water so that you don’t drink the grounds themselves. It’s really nice, if a bit on the gritty side.

Another coffee experience is coffee lewak, reputedly the most expensive coffee in the world. The coffee beans are eaten by a jungle cat, digested, and crapped out. The coffee is then brewed from these beans. Apparently the jungle cat only eats the best beans, therefore only the best beans get brewed for your coffee. Anyway, the coffee costs about £10 (a bewilderingly high amount for a coffee, especially in Indonesia), and is nice. Not much else, just nice.

There are fresh fruit juice stalls everywhere, providing a plentiful supply of Vitamin C, and sugar. One of my favourites is young coconut; there are several versions, the most interesting being the whole young coconut with its top macheted off, and a straw put it- simple and effective. Another notable drink I’ve come across is a combination of avocado and chocolate. I can’t comment any further, I’ve yet to pluck up the courage to try it. I’ve also recently had a grass based drink, involving ice, grass and some sort of jelly. It tasted of grass. 

What and where to eat in Jakarta

Rice! And noodles! Either fried, or boiled and eaten with some dishes on the side for flavour. Nasi goreng (fried rice) is a national dish, and my usual lunch.

Some dishes I particularly like, and that are particularly Indonesian are tempe, and gado-gado. Similar to tofu, tempe is made from soy beans. Whereas tofu uses the milk, and has a slightly slimy unpleasant texture, tempe is made from the beans themselves, and has a much more pleasing meatier texture.

Gado-gado is the national salad. A mixture of whatever comes to hand, it normally features beans, tofu and/or tempe, lonton (rice steamed in banana leaves until its solid), bean sprouts, an egg and krupuk (prawn crackers). It is dressed with a spicy peanut sauce. This sort of sauce is found everywhere in Indonesia food; you can have it with fresh fruit (when it is called rujak), or maybe with some deep fried catfish (when it is called pecel lele). A famous example would be sate, marinated meat (chicken or goat usually) grilled on coconut husks and then served with spicy peanut sauce.

Jakarta has an admirable selection of places to eat. They cater for almost any budget, and can be found in almost any location. I would say any budget, but I don’t think our office boys (probably the lowest strata in employment) can afford to eat there too often, instead contenting themselves with IndoMie, the local instant noodles. These are cheap, and despite some far fetched scare stories perpetuated by various  bule about them causing cancer, are actually really nice - several cuts above likes of Supernoodles.

The cheapest food outlets I am referring to are known as Kaki Lima (5 legs). They are one or two person stalls on wheels that get pushed from point to point, selling their wares. They normally consist of a wok, a burner and gas canister, a bit of storage, and probably an umbrella to keep the sun and rain off. The five legs refer to the two legs of the pusher, the two wheels and the stand. They provide quick and cheap meals (from about 40p) of reasonable quality. Each kaki lima only sells one product and sometimes the quality will be better than you find in some restaurants, but I concede this may be due to familiarity and a personal fondness for nasi goring and deep fried tempe.

Kaki limas are found everywhere. If there is an unoccupied pavement space, there will be a kaki lima. If they discover a handily placed block over an otherwise open sewer they will have set up next to it, and the customers will be sitting on the block eating their lunch. Each type of kaki lima makes a distinctive sound, which they sound as they move to attract custom, much like an ice cream vans tune in the uk. Useful you may think, until they decide to sell their bakso (meatball soup) at 6am outside your house. And your house is on a dead end street, so you know that even if you quickly get back to sleep, you are going to be woken up again in 5 minutes.

A step up from the kaki limas are the warungs; essentially the same thing, but a bit bigger and with a fixed location. They sell the same sort of thing, at the same sort of quality, for a slightly higher price.

A step up again are the places selling regional Indonesian food. The main types near me (and throughout Jakarta as far as I can tell) are Javanese (from Java), Padang (from Sumatra) and Sundanese (also from Java). These are apparently entirely separate cuisines, although I currently have difficulty telling them apart. It’s certainly true that the Javanese places don’t sell beef rendang, and are a bit cheaper (rice and 3 different dishes can cost from 50p up to about £1), but at the moment the subtleties are lost on me.

Telling Indonesia people that I like nasi padang has become one of my favourite pastimes; there is sharp intake of breath, a short and loaded silence and then a load exclamation. Their reaction seems to encompass surprise that I have heard of it at all (strange since places selling it are everywhere), surprise that I’ve tried it (they are admittedly funny looking places), surprise that I find it tasty (I can’t understand why, it is really is good), but mostly surprise that I can tolerate the heat. I suppose I’ve acclimatised to the heat of the food now, but nasi padang seems no hotter than any of the other food. That said, I do use the sambal sparingly, as they can be murderously hot.