Food in Indo (Part 2)

In a three-day span, a couple of people have mentioned to me that they enjoyed reading about food--a veritable deluge of plaudits for Thought Porridge.  Ask and you shall receive, my darling readers!

Let's start this off with where and how you eat.  Picture your classic American kitchen/dining room.  Now, remove the appliances from the kitchen--dishwasher, microwave, toaster, blender, oven, George Foreman Grill.  Replace all that splendor with a gas stove powered by little propane (I think?) tanks about half the size of what you'd use for a grill in the States.  There might be a sink.  Refrigerator is fifty-fifty, but scrap any notion of that culinary/sci-fi fusion that makes ice and dispenses fresh water and freezes sides of beef and has space for all the food you want (and all the food you don't).  Replace it with a modest, older unit, possibly containing a small freezer box/tray thing toward the top.  And no ancient jars of pickles fermenting at the back.

So, imagine the dining room.  Now make it disappear.  There is none!  I mean, there's a room where you dine, but there's no dinner table, and it's a multifunctional space.  You eat in the living room, and you sit on the floor.  The food is set in the center of the eaters, and all take what they like.  Javanese often forego cutlery, opting rather for the squishy pleasure of eating with bare hands.  Afterwards, you usually wash your fingers in a little water bowl.  At restaurants this is provided along with your dish.  I've gone Javanese a few times--once out of curiosity and twice out of necessity--but I just find it...icky.  Hey, I compromise in plenty of other, far more onerous ways for the sake of cultural adaptation.  Allow me this small bit of obstinacy.

People also use cutlery, but, interestingly, not knives.  The main (and sometimes only) eating instrument is a spoon in the right hand, usually bolstered by a fork in the left.  When you consider that

(1) you're always eating rice, and

(2) there's rarely anything that needs cutting (usually there's not enough meat to require cutting and there's no bread or large/long vegetables), and

(3) ripping flesh with your hands is just as effective as cutting with a knife

--this does make sense.  Occasionally, however, you may go to a neighbor's house for an event where guests are given food and find yourself trying to cut through dry chicken with a plastic spoon.  You just stab-stab-stab at the birdmeat and hope that people aren't looking.  Note: they're always looking.

_________


Manners!

Now we're getting into the meat of things (forgive the pun).  I should probably preface by saying that my experience is limited, so drawing conclusions about the whole culture may be overhasty.  But here we go anyway.

Short List of Behaviors That Are Acceptable at The (Figurative) Table:

    •    Thunderous belch sequences that interrupt your own speech (and there's no need to say "excuse me")
    •    Making little slobbery smacking noises while you chew
    •    Picking up food from the floor (the rule here is ten minutes, not five seconds)
    •    Watching the television (dinner is TV time!)
    •    Lighting up a cigarette while others are still eating (I haven't seen anyone balk at this yet)

There's also no fuss about talking with your mouth full or getting up to leave before others finish.  One thing that is absolutely NOT okay is to start pawing the common plates with your left hand. 

(Side note: I used to think this was purely symbolic, until I realized that there is not a drop of handsoap in this house--where everyone wipes with their left hand--save for the bottle I keep next to the toilet.  Alas, this bottle is the only possession of mine stored in a common area that I'm sure nobody else uses, which fact is upsetting to contemplate for several reasons.)

More or less the only spices that are acceptable to add to food are sambel (a red spicy homemade chili paste), kecap (thickened sweet-ish soy sauce), and sambelkecap (combination of the two).  You will not find salt and pepper available to add, and this is the interesting/maddening part.  Javanese culture is places deep emphasis on respect and indirectness.  To add salt or pepper to a dish would be to assume that the cook did not know the perfect amount to put in.  Might be offensive, terribly sorry, old bean, no salt or pepper for you.  I have whined about the tea and coffee always being too sweet, and the principle behind it is the same. I mean, the conundrum of oversweetened beverages or undersalted food is, in theory, extremely easy to fix:  Just put a freakin' sugar bowl and salt shaker on the (figurative) table.  Regrettably, this is not the Javanese way.  The food must be eaten and the drinks drunk just as they were prepared by the mistress--and it is invariably a woman--of the kitchen.

___________

Family Time

The concept of "family dinner" as such does not really apply here.  Though I often eat with all the members of my host family, it is just as common to eat alone, or with only one.  This, too, reflects a fascinating aspect of Javanese culture.  In America and Europe, dinner (ideally) is supposed to be the one time of day when every person's schedule harmonizes.  Parents aren't working, children aren't playing, and teenagers aren't hiding away.  All are together for "family time". 

Not so, the Javanese.  This is a culture with a, shall we say, relaxed work ethic and where family is rock solid at the top of the totem pole.  People spend so much time with their families anyway, what's the big deal about dinner?  It's actually not-quite-polite to engage someone in conversation while they eat, because (duh!) they're hungry.  Javanese don't reckon mealtime as the relaxation time sandwiched between assorted drudgeries, or as the way to unwind after a taxing day at the office. 

_______

We're going to stop here, and I promise to put out the next installment of Food in Indo in short order!  Yes, there is still a lot to say.

Food in Indo (Part 1)

One of the first questions I get from Indonesians upon meeting them is what I think of the food here. I mean, I always get it. I don't think I've met anyone who didn't ask me what I think of the food in this country. They usually have two primary curiosities:

1. Do you like it? (They wring their hands and shiver with anticipation)

2. Is it too spicy for you? (Their eyes light up with an evil gleam, awaiting affirmation)

Whether you like Indonesian food is irrelevant. The only answer to the question is: Yes, you do. Saying otherwise would be steel-edged, Terminatorian cruelty. Indonesians, you see, love their own food, and they want you to love it, too. I have not yet met an Indonesian who professed to prefer "ethnic" to local.

At first, this took me by surprise, as America is full of variety, and most of my friends are hummus-eating artsy-fartsy types who extoll exotic "cuisine" over unhealthy, bland "food". If it comes from another country, especially one peopled by those who don't look like Europeans/Americans, it's probably imbued with some wholesome, salt-of-the-earth nourishment that realigns your chi and keeps pandas from extinction. But even those blue collar, God-fearing, meat-and-potatoes types are susceptible to burritos. People in America love foreign food, often more than "classic" American grub.

The foodscape here is very different. Every meal has a center, and that center is white rice. You might have one or two meals a week that don't involve rice, which means you're eating noodles. Indonesians claim--boast, really--that they simply don't feel full if they don't eat rice. For them, it's a sign that rice is the realest food out there; everything else is relegated to the role of snack. Now, I'm no doctor, but for me, it's a sign that they have larger stomachs than everyone else, because they're stuffing them three times a day with a food that expands after ingestion. Thus, the owner of a stomach constantly crammed with rice is rendered incapable of feeling full if said owner only eats things that aren't rice. Be that as it may, they love their rice. They take it more seriously here, too. Exhibit A: In the Indonesian language, there are four different words for rice…

1. While still growing in a paddy, it's called padi.
2. While still unhulled and unhusked, it's called gabah.
3. After hulling and husking, but before cooking, it's called beras.
4. When it's cooked and ready to eat, it's nasi.

Rice is king, and the only variable is what should flank it on the plate. Thankfully for my pampered American palate, there is variety here. Meat is relatively expensive here, so often enough there is none. If it's a meatless meal, you'll usually get tempeh (fried), tofu (fried), or eggs (fried) for the protein portion. There's usually some sort of vegetable, or combination of veggies. If there is meat, it's probably chicken, either grilled or in a soup. There's also a kind of beef soup called rawon that, if you ignore the spiciness, isn't so far from a kind of potatoless, carrotless Irish stew. Obviously, there is never pork.

Fish pose an interesting quandary for the non-vegetarian. I don't like seeing a creature's face while I'm eating its meat, which has turned me into whatever the inverse of a pescetarian is. That's because fish here are always cooked whole and served whole on the plate, heads, bones, scales, tails, and all. You're just supposed to dig out the meat. Which, don't get me wrong, is fantastic. No sugarcoating reality -- you are literally face-to-face with the thing you are eating. If you've got the intestinal fortitude to rip the guts off of an animal, pack them into your mouth, and spit out the bones, congrats on your membership in the Circle of Life. If, however, you do not have the mettle it takes to pick meat out of an animal's head, you just don't eat it. And the world is better off because meat consumption is reduced to less unsustainable levels. Win-win(?)

Of course, the food here is spicy as well. Indonesians don't like food that isn't spicy. And they're kind of smug about that, as well, if we can be honest here. They're usually licking their chops when they inquire about your ability to handle the spice factor. You can practically see them thinking: …Come on…just sayyyyy it…TELL ME IT'S TOO SPICY OH GOD I NEED TO HEAR IT!!!!

Here's the truth. It's spicy. But if you're used to eating Thai food above wussy spice level or putting real hot sauce on your tacos, then it ain't no thing. You can handle it. What's more likely to get you is accidentally popping an entire hot chili pepper into your mouth and chewing before you realize what's happening and ask yourself why the hell anyone would sneak whole chili peppers in a plate of rice. At that point, you'll feel like you just chomped on a chunk of lava and any natives around you will go into hysterics.

About half of the time, food is pre-spiced. The other half you have a spicy homemade paste the color of salsa called sambel on the side, to add as you like. Sometimes it's sambelkecap, which is a spicy AND sweet.

_________________

"Why, yes, I generally take tea with my sugar"

Which leads me into the third main thing about how Indonesians like their food: sweet. Kids love sweets. They love sweet drinks. I often see little kids prowling the streets, lips pursed around straws that snake their way into little plastic bags full of fluorescent looking liquids. The only limits on how many kids you can make happy and/or bribe are how much candy you can carry around with you and the amount of littering you're willing to put up with seeing after those wrappers open. Tea and coffee, the two beverages served most often at home, are usually sweetened to the point that you wonder what the stuff actually tastes like. Homemade sweets are normal for dessert, and are also put on the table basically any time you visit anyone, or if there is some social gathering (meaning anything that involves either a party or a communal prayer at someone's house). It is quite difficult to convince Indonesians that you like things without sugar.

All this eating sweets and the, uh, less-than-comprehensive education about dental hygiene, not to mention the general lack of medical/dental insurance, means that most people have some tooth issues. There is also a high incidence of diabetes here (colloquially referred to as kencing manis, or sweet piss).

I'm going to cut this topic off here, though it is far from exhausted, because I've run over a thousand words and attention spans are likely flagging right now. Also, it's late and I'm tired. I shall return to the topic of food soon, because it is truly a central feature of Indonesian social life and there remains a lot to say about it.