It's time for a food revolution: Goodbye Pad Thai & Mongolia Lamb; hello Beef Rendang!

Australians are pretty well sold on Asian food. I think probably most Australians have a ‘go-to dish’ they order in Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, and Japanese restaurants. But ask an Aussie what their favourite Indonesian dish is and they will most likely scratch their head and say in default, 'nasi goreng'.

As far as dishes go, nasi goreng is tasty enough, but there is a wealth of other dishes that, unbeknown to many Australians, are being cooked to drool worthy perfection in their neighbours warung (village) a few hundred miles West in Indonesia. In fact, I will go out on a limb and generalise here: most Indonesians can cook Indonesian dishes like Ramsey can cook a beef wellington or Oliver, a pasta!

I don’t know if I’ve just stereotyped the majority of the population into top chefs and created unspeakably high expectations, but it does seem like some sort of genetic transfer happens in the womb and Indonesian babies come out at least knowing how to prepare Indo Mie.

In Indonesia, one can pretty much go up to someone’s house and knock on the door with a twenty (thousand rupiah) and ask for the special. OK, that’s only half true. I don’t advise harassing complete strangers for authentic meals, but it’s absolutely OK if there is some sort of signage out the front of a house advertising ‘soto ayam’ or ‘nasi pecel’ for example.

To support my argument that all Indonesians can cook, I offer this as evidence: every second house is a kitchen. If you’re too lazy to cook lunch, or there’s no food in your fridge, just wander down the road and within about thirty seconds you will notice that people have turned their houses into restaurants. Enter through the garage and sit at a plastic chair and table or just order at the window and soon a steaming bowl of ‘sayur lontong’ will arrive.

It’s a mystery why Bali is the most visited tourist destination for Australians, and yet we have so few Indonesian restaurants in Australia. When I’m home I crave certain foods I’m use to eating in Indonesia-my home of the last six years-and actually I really crave my helper’s cooking. She’s been with my family more than four years and single-handedly made sure I try a cookbook of Indonesian dishes. Trust me, there’s at least another three editions I haven’t tasted; too much food, too little stomach space.

One of my favourites is, and this might sound unappetising, a firm block of peanuts and tofu, cut into rectangles and fried, called ‘tempe’. Every disbeliever I’ve made try it has seen the error of their ways. I don’t have particularly exotic tastes though, so there are many off-limits foods for me.

I’m not a seafood lover and I’m turned-off by meats if it looks ‘carcassy’ or gristly. So I’ve got my favourites which I return to again and again. ‘Lumpia’ is one of them - an Indonesian soft spring roll with carrot, chicken, potato and celery leaf inside a crepe made of egg and flour, fried, and served with sambal sauce or, as I like, sambal and soy sauce. I also love, as my helper calls it, ‘keju Indonesia’, or Indonesian cheese. It’s fried soft tofu. Of course gado gado has to be right up there, which is an Indonesian salad of bean sprouts, potato, cucumber, egg and fresh peanut sambal sauce.

So for any entrepreneur who is wondering how they can convince their local community that they need a fifth Thai restaurant within one hundred metres of the other four, how about using those 457 visas wisely and getting some Indonesians over to charm our Aussie taste buds?

 

Lauren Gumbs-May 2013