Yes, another food discussion

Isn’t there always a food entry?

 

For the coffee nuts out there- I won’t be trying the Kopi Luwak (see earlier postings) but I really wanted to find a regular coffee I liked. There are so many different types, from so many different regions of Indonesia, I was overwhelmed. One day I stood there reading all of the information on about a dozen of them and selected 2 to try. One was a “house blend” that seemed to be a winner. Low acidity and other good qualities. The second was Java Arabica, a really local coffee. I liked what it said on its side panel as well. It turned out that I really liked the Java Arabica. After I made the first pot and was admiring the qualities of this coffee, a tiny print statement on the lower front of the bag said “with chocolate undertones.” Well, no wonder.

I got inspired by something I saw on Pinterest so I made a batch of these special cookies for Valentine’s Day week and sent them off to work with B. The construction was a little more complicated by the lack of a heart shaped cookie cutter! Turned out pretty well though and they were tasty butter cookies.

We tried an assortment of traditional Indonesian “sweets” on our walk to the nearby mall last Sunday. We’ve discovered that most of these little items taste a lot alike. B is not a fan. They come individually wrapped in stiff plastic sheets and are squishy enough sometimes it’s hard to cut the tape off to open the package. Typically the consistency is a gummy jello-like concoction flavored mildly with coconut. The white and yellow one had banana in it. I did like that one as well. My favorite is the orange and white one. The orange is coconut/sweet potato and the white part is coconut only. The whole thing is jello-like, but gummier. The green rolled up item(another green food) is filled with toasted coconut so while the inside is tasty, the outside is sort of a gummy (green) crepe. The white and green one was mostly mild coconut gummy jello but filled with toasted coconut.  I must confess, however, I will never eat an Indonesian “cupcake” again. Icky! There are not words. Nothing remotely like what the word “cupcake” means to my palette.

And still one more entry into the “green food” category:

I tried this one myself. A green apple slush basically. This drink was pretty sour, especially at first. On later sips, the sugar level drowned out the initial sour punch. I couldn’t finish it.

Rujak salad- Ibu Tin created a traditional rujak salad for us. She did not add ketimun (cucumber) as we’d used what we had in a vegetable salad, but the following items were included: kedongdong (hog plum), mangga (mango), jambu air (rose apple), nanas (pineapple), bangkoang (jicama), gula jawa (palm sugar), cabe (chiles), garum (salt), kacang tanah (peanuts), and shrimp paste ( can’t remember the Bahasa Indonesian for that). One of these days I will stop putting in the English translations. Ibu Tin asked me how spicy to make this dish. She showed me some chili peppers the size of a small fingernail and said they were very hot, so I said just use one this time. It turned out my heat tolerance must be increasing because I thought the final result was pretty mild. Next time- 2 tiny chilis. Apparently we did not take a photo of the rujak salad. We must have been too eager to try it.