Tag Archives: Food

Sambal and Coconuts

Posted on by

‘Laugh at yourself, but don’t ever aim your doubt at yourself. Be bold. When you embark for strange places, don’t leave any of yourself safely on shore. Have the nerve to go into unexplored territory.’

~Alan Alda (Oh, how I loved to watch M*A*S*H)

I’m such a Katjang* at times… I just had toast with goat’s cheese, no cow’s cheese for me since being half Asian comes with having no enzymes in my system to digest some of the sugar in cow’s milk. I can hear you think: what’s wrong with having toast and cheese?

Well… I added a thick layer of Sambal Badjak extra hot/spicy on top of it, the kind of Sambal that makes some of you run for the water tap *hehe* That’s what you get when you mix two races… *LOL* At least I can laugh at myself and my weird cultural habits.

Another one is having leftovers for breakfast, not just any leftovers but Nasi Goreng for instance. I remember some of my Dutch friends had this weird look on their faces whenever they caught me having my Indonesian or Chinese leftovers covered in sateh sauce for breakfast the next morning.

I can’t get my favourite Sambal Badjak here, actually it’s hard to find any Indonesian ingredients here especially the boemboes [pastes]. My friend K, who is a quarter Indo and lives in London as well has the same problem. There’s only one solution which is preparing it all from fresh ingredients. Read: lots of work!

Luckily when I went to the Lowlands in April to move my stuff to London I bought two of the biggest jars of Sambal Badjak that I could get 750g each. There’s a bigger size still but hey… there’s no need to exaggerate right?

:P

Last weekend I bought three coconut palms to add a nice touch to my office. I remember my dad kept one for years in the cellar, he brought it to the Lowlands when he moved from Indonesia. I remember I asked him about it when I was a little girl, I didn’t know what it was, he told me he wanted to plant it one day, he never did. So these brought back memories and I simply couldn’t resist… Remember to always follow your dreams and take steps to move closer. Even something as simple as planting a coconut…

Have a beautiful weekend!

*Katjang means peanut… In the Lowlands Indos are sometimes called Katjang which is considered name-calling to some but others [yes even Indos] consider it to be a nickname…

A spoon and a jar is all I need :P

My coconut palms sitting on top of my cool chest of drawers flightcase :)

Self-indulgence

Posted on by

I have the place to myself for two weeks: I can eat what I like, I can cook whenever I like [earlier than usual], I can watch shows on TV that I like, I’ll have no distractions, no obligations, I’ll have all the time in the world, I can be me… So I promised myself to cook Chinese over the weekend, simple but beautiful and tasty dishes: egg fried rice and fish. And I’ll finally bake that chocolate cake next week which has been on my mind for a while already. I’m gonna indulge myself and treat each and every one of my six senses [yes all six *hehe*].

I also decided today that I’m gonna book afternoon tea for my birthday. Why? Because I deserve it and I want my birthday to be special this time. But that’s not the only reason, I want to try all the wonderful things this country has to offer and especially things that are cultural, from pub grub to afternoon tea at Claridge’s. Last week I went to another car boot sale, MvdM., CS. and AS. came along as well and it was fun to have a look around. To me it’s about the atmosphere, the chatty friendly people, joking about the things they sell, their happy attitude.

It was cold that day so two hours later we went to the local greasy spoon/caff to have a proper breakfast. One that would normally serve a quick recovery from a decent hangover. I don’t like greasy food that much and I try to eat as healthy as possible but I really can’t resist a nice breakfast twice a year. My birthday was mentioned and I told them that I would really like to have afternoon tea that day and I asked MvdM. if he ever had one. MvdM. moved here about eight years ago but never had afternoon tea. How can you not have had one in all those years?

So this is why I decided to have it for my birthday and since you need to book twelve weeks in advance I will call next week to make reservations and make sure that I’m allowed to take pictures [not allowed at the Ritz, yes silly…] I want pictures of cakes, pastries, scones and sandwiches. And hopefully tea will be served in beautiful flowery tea cups with shiny golden rims. According to the Claridge’s website the introduction of afternoon tea, a quintessentially English tradition, is credited to Anna, Duchess of Bedford, in the early 19th century.

Now that was your history lesson for today. I’m off to call my mum, she sent me a pretty card last week and to my surprise I found a copy in there of an article that was published in a well-known Dutch magazine. An interview about her… my mum in a magazine. I can’t help but feeling proud and it made me realise that I miss her. For now I’ll leave you with a picture of lunch that I prepared a while ago: smoked salmon and cream cheese soufflé with crispy garlic/red onion bread [own recipe with secret ingredients: it’s in the details baby *hehe*].

All this talk about food makes me hungry… :D

I so want this tea cup… ‘only’ nine pounds each

Lunch…