More than a meal
Sri Owen, The Jakarta Post - WEEKENDER | Tue, 04/28/2009 3:21 PM |
Far from her homeland, Sri Owen has written some of the most respected books on Indonesian food. Here she explains why Indonesians need to look at their cuisine through a foreigner’s eyes for a better understanding of its merits.
All my life I’ve been passionate about food – eating it (of course), and cooking it, then learning and finally writing about it. I also love teaching people about food and introducing them to foods that are new to them. One of my greatest pleasures is to invite old and new friends to eat my food around my table.
Taste is the one sense that nearly all of us possess, in full strength, throughout our entire lives. Like all our senses, it learns from experience and from study. As a young mother, I had the joy of introducing my two sons to my favorite dishes from many countries, and as a new grandmother I hope to do something similar for my little grandson.
But although I’ve spent almost two-thirds of my life in the West, I was made and shaped, as we all are, in the early years: years of prosperity to begin with, then of war, hardship, revolution and some tragedy. In the 1930s, my parents ran a successful private school in Padang Panjang, among the hills of the Minangkabau country in West Sumatra. My father’s mother owned and managed her own rice fields and coffee garden, and as soon as I was big enough to keep up with her, she took me on her regular inspection tours. At home, my favorite place was her kitchen, watching her at work – she was an expert cook.
I don’t think anyone could have had a better introduction to food than I had, up to the age of seven. One result of it is that I have always felt completely at ease in my own kitchen and in pretty much anybody else’s kitchen, even those of celebrated chefs whom I’ve been lucky enough to meet and in some cases to work with and learn from. I have always made it clear to everyone that I am proud of my country’s food, and I agree with many Westerners who know Indonesia well that Indonesian food, at its best, can bear comparison with the best of any cuisine in the world.
However, no country’s cooking exists in isolation – certainly not among the countries of Southeast Asia. Diverse as they are, Southeast Asian ingredients, tastes and dishes have much in common: Think of their reliance on pungent fermented fish pastes and sauces, their love of hot chili peppers, their fondness for sourness to balance the natural sweetness of many of their basic foodstuffs. Our own national motto, “unity in diversity”, could well apply to the whole region, at least where food is concerned.
Then why isn’t Indonesian food better known, better understood, better cooked and more easily available, outside our own country? In any big Western city – Sydney, Toronto, New York, London, Rome – look up “ethnic restaurants” in the Yellow Pages and count how many Indonesian restaurants there are compared with Thai or Vietnamese. I should of course have said “any big western city outside the Netherlands” – yet even there our friendly regional rivals are gaining ground, while, I’m afraid, the standard of cooking in Indonesian restaurants has somewhat declined in the 40-odd years since I first visited Amsterdam.
Some people seem to know right from the start what their life’s work will be. Perhaps I was half-aware of mine as I helped my grandmother pick leaves for a salad, or watched as she stirred buffalo-meat rendang in her immense steel wok. Then the war separated us. I went through school and university reading English literature and working with the local radio station as a broadcaster. When I came to London with my English husband in 1964, I quickly found work with the BBC Indonesian Service and stayed with them for almost 20 years.
For various reasons, we didn’t return to Indonesia until 1981, when we took our two young sons for a full-length summer vacation in Jakarta, Central Java and Bali. By that time my first book had been published, almost the first Indonesian cookbook in English. Those two events decided the future course of my life. In the nearly three decades since, I’ve made it my mission to spread the word about how good Indonesian food is, when it’s properly cooked and presented and appreciated.
Today, my real purpose is to make the point that love and pride for your own country can only develop properly when you have developed the ability to see it, or at least imagine seeing it, through the eyes of a foreigner. And not the eyes only: You need to have a sense of what it sounds and feels and tastes like to that imaginary stranger. At the same time, you have to treasure the differences. Food today is going global. We are all tempted or bullied by advertising to eat the same industrially produced convenience meals. Globalization brings benefits, but it threatens traditional cultures, food customs and languages.
Food is a great way to bring people together while emphasizing their differences. When General de Gaulle was president of France, he famously asked, “How can you govern a country in which there are 246 kinds of cheese?” I read remarks of that sort as indicators of pride as much as exasperation: The general was proud of his people’s cussedness, and proud that only he could lead them. I enjoy surfing the Web in search of food blogs, and I’m encouraged to see how many there are, how passionately people argue about the merits of (say) all the different styles of laksa, and how expert some bloggers are (not all, of course, but there is ample opportunity for the ignorant and prejudiced to learn, by reading and cooking).
Best of all, debate is truly international: “native” laksa-eaters and “foreign” laksa-lovers in search of authenticity meet on equal terms … provided, of course, they have a common language.
I end with a notion that’s been at the back of my mind for a long time. There are four dimensions to Indonesian food, as there are to any developed cuisine: space, time, taste and language. Viewing Indonesian food in this context helps us develop a greater understanding of what we have on our plates.
All my life I’ve been passionate about food – eating it (of course), and cooking it, then learning and finally writing about it. I also love teaching people about food and introducing them to foods that are new to them. One of my greatest pleasures is to invite old and new friends to eat my food around my table.
Taste is the one sense that nearly all of us possess, in full strength, throughout our entire lives. Like all our senses, it learns from experience and from study. As a young mother, I had the joy of introducing my two sons to my favorite dishes from many countries, and as a new grandmother I hope to do something similar for my little grandson.
But although I’ve spent almost two-thirds of my life in the West, I was made and shaped, as we all are, in the early years: years of prosperity to begin with, then of war, hardship, revolution and some tragedy. In the 1930s, my parents ran a successful private school in Padang Panjang, among the hills of the Minangkabau country in West Sumatra. My father’s mother owned and managed her own rice fields and coffee garden, and as soon as I was big enough to keep up with her, she took me on her regular inspection tours. At home, my favorite place was her kitchen, watching her at work – she was an expert cook.
I don’t think anyone could have had a better introduction to food than I had, up to the age of seven. One result of it is that I have always felt completely at ease in my own kitchen and in pretty much anybody else’s kitchen, even those of celebrated chefs whom I’ve been lucky enough to meet and in some cases to work with and learn from. I have always made it clear to everyone that I am proud of my country’s food, and I agree with many Westerners who know Indonesia well that Indonesian food, at its best, can bear comparison with the best of any cuisine in the world.
However, no country’s cooking exists in isolation – certainly not among the countries of Southeast Asia. Diverse as they are, Southeast Asian ingredients, tastes and dishes have much in common: Think of their reliance on pungent fermented fish pastes and sauces, their love of hot chili peppers, their fondness for sourness to balance the natural sweetness of many of their basic foodstuffs. Our own national motto, “unity in diversity”, could well apply to the whole region, at least where food is concerned.
Then why isn’t Indonesian food better known, better understood, better cooked and more easily available, outside our own country? In any big Western city – Sydney, Toronto, New York, London, Rome – look up “ethnic restaurants” in the Yellow Pages and count how many Indonesian restaurants there are compared with Thai or Vietnamese. I should of course have said “any big western city outside the Netherlands” – yet even there our friendly regional rivals are gaining ground, while, I’m afraid, the standard of cooking in Indonesian restaurants has somewhat declined in the 40-odd years since I first visited Amsterdam.
Some people seem to know right from the start what their life’s work will be. Perhaps I was half-aware of mine as I helped my grandmother pick leaves for a salad, or watched as she stirred buffalo-meat rendang in her immense steel wok. Then the war separated us. I went through school and university reading English literature and working with the local radio station as a broadcaster. When I came to London with my English husband in 1964, I quickly found work with the BBC Indonesian Service and stayed with them for almost 20 years.
For various reasons, we didn’t return to Indonesia until 1981, when we took our two young sons for a full-length summer vacation in Jakarta, Central Java and Bali. By that time my first book had been published, almost the first Indonesian cookbook in English. Those two events decided the future course of my life. In the nearly three decades since, I’ve made it my mission to spread the word about how good Indonesian food is, when it’s properly cooked and presented and appreciated.
Today, my real purpose is to make the point that love and pride for your own country can only develop properly when you have developed the ability to see it, or at least imagine seeing it, through the eyes of a foreigner. And not the eyes only: You need to have a sense of what it sounds and feels and tastes like to that imaginary stranger. At the same time, you have to treasure the differences. Food today is going global. We are all tempted or bullied by advertising to eat the same industrially produced convenience meals. Globalization brings benefits, but it threatens traditional cultures, food customs and languages.
Food is a great way to bring people together while emphasizing their differences. When General de Gaulle was president of France, he famously asked, “How can you govern a country in which there are 246 kinds of cheese?” I read remarks of that sort as indicators of pride as much as exasperation: The general was proud of his people’s cussedness, and proud that only he could lead them. I enjoy surfing the Web in search of food blogs, and I’m encouraged to see how many there are, how passionately people argue about the merits of (say) all the different styles of laksa, and how expert some bloggers are (not all, of course, but there is ample opportunity for the ignorant and prejudiced to learn, by reading and cooking).
Best of all, debate is truly international: “native” laksa-eaters and “foreign” laksa-lovers in search of authenticity meet on equal terms … provided, of course, they have a common language.
I end with a notion that’s been at the back of my mind for a long time. There are four dimensions to Indonesian food, as there are to any developed cuisine: space, time, taste and language. Viewing Indonesian food in this context helps us develop a greater understanding of what we have on our plates.
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