Indonesia as a whole has the fourth largest population in the world – almost 235 million – and more than 20 million of them live in the capital. This goes some lengths in explaining why there’s such a buzz about Jakarta that hits its visitors as soon as they arrive in the city centre.

 

Like so many big cities in developing countries, it’s become overcrowded, traffic is bumper to bumper and the contrast between people’s living standards is quite broad.

 

The minimum wage is said to be around $100 a month – hardly enough one would think to exist – yet when it comes to food there’s something for everyone.

 

People can eat virtually 24-7 if they want to from the wide choice of restaurants to the street hawkers offering food that might just be a tad unhealthy by our sanitised western standards.

 

Families eat out at least once a week together partly down to the fact that entertaining at home can be more pressurised because houses are small.

 

The vast majority of Indonesians are Muslims, therefore most of the food is halal. But all ingredients follow the current universal trend for all things fresh.

 

Leeds based Oriental Merchant, which had facilitated the trip, had organised a gastronomic experience that would take in different cuisines as well as an insight into the making of its key ingredients. Two of its main clients have plants in

Indonesia – ABC President and ABC Heinz.

 

Indonesia has the second largest noodle business to China and at ABC President’s factory at Karawang in Java, noodles are its main production line. Noodles are the main meal solution for the whole population – a $10bn a year business and ABC President has 8% of the market.

 

It also has a soft drinks facility at the plant that produces green tea. A product in the pipeline is green tea with red dates from the Middle East specifically for Muslims because they eat a lot of dates before Ramadan. “Muslims will drink

a sweet syrupy drink or a red date mix with honey an hour before a meal,” says business development manager Warren Choo.

 

ABC Heinz is the biggest soy sauce manufacturer and the number one chilli producer in Indonesia. Its factory at Karawang processes 100 tons of chilli a day – all locally produced.

 

Each chilli is selected one by one and any defect is removed. “There are many chillies around but we are very consistent with the chilli we use,” says export manager Eddy Wong. “We don’t add colour so we must have a consistent

product. When chilli prices go up we suffer on price.”

 

The business also produces syrup in different flavours again usually during Ramadan. “Ramadan is a big month for business. People don’t eat but they want sweet things so the syrups are in great demand,” says Wong.

 

Indonesia has a long history of being a trading post, particularly during the 16th and 17th centuries with a lot of through traffic. The Dutch in particular had a strong foothold there particularly in Padang in West Sumatra, and there are still Dutch influences to this day in the Padang food, which is just like tapas – small portions and lots of dishes.

 

Sweet and salty soy sauce are stock cupboard items for savouries and palm sugar is used extensively for sweet recipes. Rice is the main accompaniment to all meals along with chilli sauce.

 

Food shopping can be either from the upmarket shopping malls with their sophisticated outlets such as Bread Talk, an amazing stylish bakery serving exquisite bread and bakery goods – all baked on the premises – to a very carbloving clientele, to the local markets that have an abundance of unusual products.

 

At the Puri Pasar market in Jakarta, skinned whole frogs – not just legs – are ready to buy, huge paw paws, dried fish galore which would be taken home and either deep fried and added to rice or steamed. Yiu says that whole frogs are

eaten, and the bones would be crushed to use in casseroles and stews. Because there isn’t much dairy in their diets, it is a form of calcium for them, she says.

A local Indonesian seafood restaurant set the eating scene with its mix of Chinese, Thai and Shanghainese flavours.

 

Tom yang goong [Tom Yum] seafood soup containing shrimps and straw mushrooms, flavoured by lemon grass, lime and chilli was typical of local hot, sweet and sour flavours. Appetisers included shrimp filled spring rolls, prawn

sesame bread to dip into soy and chilli sauces, Chinese jellyfish and beef in sweet chilli sauce.

 

The jellyfish was a special kind that has its tentacles removed and the body cut into strips and was very common on Shanghainese menus, says Oriental Merchant’s sales and marketing director Hannah Yiu. Locally caught Ikan Gurame freshwater fish was cooked and served with deep fried fresh tofu, the latter being Japanese silk tofu, says Yiu.

 

An example of a lavish Chinese meal was the nine course menu at the Golden Jade Restaurant in Jakarta. The meal was very much ‘low carbs’ – there is no rice with the meal until the final course, the idea being to fill you up with premium

food. “If at the end of the meal you still feel hungry, you can have rice,” says Yiu.

Drunk prawns lived up to their name as live prawns swam in a pan of garlic, chilli and spring onion in a generous dollop of rice wine and was cooked at the table. Pan fried sliced beef wrapped in a pancake with onion and hoisin sauce was very similar to pekin duck in a pancake except the pancake was softer, and was a combination of northern Korean and Beijing cuisine.

 

Double steamed sharks fin soup with chicken in coconut is a speciality dish that has to be ordered. The cost reflects this – 300,000 rupiah, equivalent to £16 each person which is pricey by their standards. The soup is presented in a coconut shell. It is double steamed for four hours and includes the shark fin and chicken, plus a sweetish broth.

 

Fried scallops and squid Sichuan style is special seafood from the Indonesian region and a very hot style of cooking, with a liberal use of dry chillies. The dish is served in spring roll wraps that have been baked.

 

Steamed winter melon balls with seafood uses what they call a premium broth. Sliced very thinly, the skill is to steam it so that you can actually roll it up. The stock is made from the shark fin while the filling of the melon ball is egg white,

shrimp, scallop and finely chopped vegetables.

 

Steamed star garoupa fish has to be steamed right to maintain a firm flesh. “That’s where a good master chef comes to the fore – if he can steam it right and serve,” says Yiu. With this dish, the fish head is put in front of the heads of the table as it is considered a luxury prize and a piece of prime fish. Up for grabs are the cheeks, the lips and the eyes.

 

Fried rice in pineapple is very Thai but the Indonesians have adapted it. It is half a small pineapple filled with fried rice containing rice, pineapple pieces, char sui pork, chilli, egg and shrimp.

 

Red bean [adzuki bean] jelly and coconut milk jelly was paired with a round cake that was covered in a mixture of mainly walnut dust and its soft centre consisted of black and white crushed sesame seeds and palm sugar.

 

“A lot of craft goes into producing the round cake – making the ball and then injecting the sesame mix inside. Chinese don’t have sweet snacks – they eat this sort of thing throughout the day. They have resurrected the snack idea and turned it into a fancy presentation.”

 

What could only be described as the Indonesian version of the UK’s Good

Housekeeping Institute, the PT Gramedia publishing company’s test kitchen

was set up for its visitors to learn more about Indonesia’s favourite dishes in

association with ABC Heinz, and then to replicate them as best as they

could with the help of recipe booklets that had been printed specifically for

the demo. PT Gramedia publishes 39 magazines including the monthly

magazine Sedap, which means delicious.

 

Soy and chilli sauce were the key to the cook off. Yiu says that not many people are aware of sweet soy sauce in Europe, with the exception of Holland, while in Indonesia people can’t live without it. The group included two chefs from Oriental Merchant Siang Joo Yeo and Christian Boaler, Loughborough University’s executive head chef Mark Price, and Howard Ball, purchasing manager for Hampshire based contact caterer Host Contract Management.

 

Eight recipes were created which included kangkung hotplate (see recipe page 82), poached milk fish, fragrant rolled beef stew and nasi goreng java using some unfamiliar ingredients. For example milk fish, kangkung and candle nuts. Price had a few suggestions for alternatives. “Milk fish is an oily fish and a bit like sea bass so that would make a good substitute,” adding that the candle nuts were very like hazelnuts and kangkung could be replaced with cabbage.

 

Other ingredients included salam leaves that had a hint of curry flavour, and

very sour jeruk limau fruit. This could be eaten raw but Indonesians preferred them dipped in salt. It got the saliva going in the mouth and the taste was very similar to that of a crab apple.