February 11

making the bumbuh

February 11

We are beginning our day with the traditional nasi goreng, the Abu Pensione cook has come in from her prayers and is cooking us some food as I type this. We just had a couple of kopie tubruk each and we are looking forward to tasting the Abu's cook's nasi.
Aahh, just ate her Nasi Goreng Spesial..... It was delicious....it had a fried egg on top, cucumber and tomato garnish. The dish contained a nice bumbuh, of bawang mera, bawang putih, terasi and lombok.
Some interesting additions included: cabbage, daun pokchoi, all cooked in palm oil.

Botanical gardens in Bogor

In a few minutes we will head out to visit the famous Raffles Botanical Gardens, locally known as the Kebon Raja. These gardens surround the mansion of the famous Raffles, of the Raffles Hotel in Singapore fame. The walk one way is about 45 minutes.
We returned from the Raffles Botanical Gardens also known as Kembung Raya. Entrance fee was 9000 IR (85 cents) per person....DTM !!
This garden was built by Mr. Raffles in colonial times. We enjoyed looking at the largest mature tropical tree collection in the world and Annetta would have enjoyed it tremendously.

a 200 year old tree

Upon exiting the gardens we found the staff-lunch room where we ordered 2 portions of rudjak. This starts by grinding a mixture of chilies, gula jawa, lemon juice, assem, peanuts. This is all hand ground to a paste with a mortar and pestle. Then slices of unripe mangos, djambu air, cucumbers, apple, and various other hard, fresh fruit are mixed with this sweet and sour and hot sauce, and served on a plate.
The combination of the flavors were excellent, and we enjoyed it thoroughly! I did notice from the corner of my eye, that several Indonesians were watching us as we devoured our food, because they did not think that those belandas could eat that spicy hot food, I guess we showed them.
We waked back for another 45 minutes for a much needed mandi. In total we walked for about 5 hours in the heat, although the gardens are designed to offer a lot of shade.
After we had a good mandi, back at the Abu Pensione, we decided to do a bit of reading and we ate some pisang goreng, that the Koki made for us to have with our tea.

Eating area at Abu Pensione

After reading several chapters we had a short siesta to get ready for the night time food excursion.
We left around 7 and it was dark already, many food stalls were open, but even more were closed due to Friday prayers.
We first waked around the hawkers, and checked out what we wanted to eat.  

The culture here is so different. I have seen more large rats here in a couple of days then all my years living south of Detroit. Cats also seem to come out when the food hawkers set up their little eateries, but they look like they could be rat food, not the other way around... in any case, when you see enough of these little varmints , you tend not to pay much attention to them any more.
We decided to start with a soto ajam, each. This is a delicious soup of shredded chicken meat, lovely broth, glass noodles, crisp-fried onions, kunjit, green onions and some of Yan's Wonder Powder....it was delicious and for drinks we were offered free tea and we bought 2 large glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice on ice....bill $ 1.50 each.....DTM again...
We decided to walk around a little and maybe eat some sate...we found a stall that looked good, so we each had 20 sticks of sate ajam and some lontong,.. lontong is sticky rice steamed in banana leaf.
The sate was delicious, the sauce was also very good as was the lontong... Bill?...a whopping 25000IR in total equals about $1.50 per person....wow check these prices....
We were so pleased with ourselves that we bought 5 klepon to snack on while walking around and looking at the rats scurrying around.
A klepon is a sweet dessert, made of sticky rice flour mixed and cooked with coconut milk and filled with Palm sugar, then steamed and rolled in coconut....delicious....they are the size of golf balls and cost about 12 cents each.....crazy...why would you want to buy and cook anything at all here with all this tasty food around at those prices.
On the way home I wanted to do a small photo reportage if the making of another street food, called martabak....

Step 1

You first decide if you want to have it made with chicken eggs, or duck eggs....we decided on chicken eggs.
He starts out by taking a small piece of, what looked like phyllo dough (or Strudel dough)and proceeded to slap and pull it until it was thinner than paper thin, and fried it in a large flat wok pan  in a bit of oil.

Step 2

step 3

This he topped with beaten eggs, mixed with a bit of cooked meat, bean sprouts, MSG, onion, green onion Salt and pepper, and folders the Strudel around the cooking egg, like an envelope. He cooked it in the oil until both sides were brown, and the center was well cooked, because we could not eat it we took it

step  4

home, had a nice bite of it and gave the rest to the young man who is here on the night shift....oh...how much you ask?? About $2.-- and this easily feeds 2 people......OMG....
We staggered in, in enough time for me to make this little update.
Tomorrow we will take the train to Jakarta to visit the old harbor, Tanjong Kalapa which is the old harbor of Colonial times, where the shrimp and fish are waiting to be consumed by a couple of "rakus belandas".
We hope to visit the pasar, and China town (Glodok also known for having large rats with saddles on them)
Also on the itinerary is the Cafe Batavia, where we will enjoy a tall, cool, drink.
We also want to visit a food court, that is staffed by ex-executives, who have lost their jobs, working for the Indo version of Wall Street, when the bottom fell out of the kranjang.
Out of necessary they opened little hawker stalls, at or near the entrances of the ex-places of work. This idea has become so popular, among local business men, that others have joined these folks and it is now an internationally famous place to eat.
We hope to be back in the late afternoon, on the express train.

Glossary

Kopie tubruk is a sweet black coffee, made by pouring boiling water, over powder fine coffee.

Nasi Goreng Spesial is Indonesian friend rice, most often eaten as breakfast or as a snack

Bumbuh is a mixture of ground herbs and spices

Bawang merah are red shallots

Bawang putih is garlic

Terasi a pungent smelling fermented shrimp and fish paste should be roasted or fired prior to use

Lombok are hot chili peppers

Cabeh rawit are birds beak fiery hot chili (pronounce C as Ch as in Chili sauce)

DTM is... "Do The Math"...

Kranjang is a woven basket

Rakus Belandas are Dutch Gluttons

Ajam is chicken