Tribal Sous Chef

The “cooking class” event my brother hosts has become a regular thing of late, where we invite over a handful of friends to cook around a central theme and then settle down to enjoy the results. We’ve done barbecue and we’ve done Japanese, and so this time we decided to do “traditional”, seeing as it’s Ramadhan and all that.

“I can’t cook Indonesian” I said resolutely. The thought of countless spices give me cold feet. Memories of the best maid we ever had, years ago, came back to me, with her much-missed out-of-this-world fried chicken and the secret recipe: her chicken was marinated in 11 kinds of spices, each spice an odd number. E.g. to have 4 pieces of bay leaf and 6 stalks of lemongrass, would be sacrilege and ultimately disastrous. How would I be able to work my way through spices I don’t even know the looks of, let alone meticulously count them? And besides, Jamie Oliver never cooked Indonesian, so why should I bother? (Yes I am far too obsessed with ‘western’ über-trendy lifestyle cooking).

But the others seemed determined. They came up with wondrous delicacies as follows.

Rice-cakes in smooth beef coconut-curry soup.

















Tender grilled chicken satay marinated in light peanut sauce.

So I finally agreed to do a joint brother-sister project on a seemingly easy recipe: Tofu-Omelette in peanut sauce and shrimp paste (affectionately known as Tahu-Telor). It’s tofu wrapped in omelette. And then you pour peanuty whatsits over it. Sounded like child’s-play. As it turned out, I was utterly deceived.

Exhibit A:

The pre-sauced tofu + omelette which dear brother completed with minimum fuss.

Exhibit B:

Say hi to prehistoric stone-age kitchen utensil, also known as The Grind. It’s not your normal mortar and pestle, which may be due to the fact that it weighs 10 times more and is carved out of solid rock. I felt rather tribal as I crushed the peanuts together with the garlic and chilies and shrimp paste and soy sauce. The peanut sauce turned out very tasty, and with all my biceps working it damn well better be.

I only hope the gods have mercy on my soul for not counting the peanuts.