All Food Recipes

This is a creeping, trailing plant which needs plenty of water. Its English names are water spinach or swamp cabbage, though in fact it belongs to the same genus as the morning glory and the sweet potato.

The asparagus bean or, more commonly, ‘yard-long bean’. The pods really can grow to three feet long, though if they are to be eaten the beans inside them are not allowed to ripen fully. This is much the best bean for eating raw. When I was a young girl in Bogor, we used to slice kacang panjang and cucumbers very thin and mix them with plenty of hot Sambal Terasi. The young leaves can also be lightly boiled or steamed and then eaten as a salad; they are called lembayung.

These are called Bambara Groundnuts by Herklots, and their home is Africa. Voandzeia resemble Arachis (kacang tanah, peanuts) in that its flowers dip towards the soil and the seeds or nuts develop underground; the pods and nuts themselves also look rather like peanuts, though there is usually only one nut to each pod. voandzeia, however, produces no oil to speak of. These nuts are delicious to eat, especially when still unripe, either roasted or boiled, and eaten, as Herklots says, ‘out of hand’ or as a sidedish. When I lived in Bogor as a child, I used to buy a screw of vendors who were to be found in any of the main streets. Indeed, you can buy these nuts anywhere in Indonesia, and the name ‘Bogor’ probably indicates only that the first trees were imported as specimens to the famous botanical gardens behind the Palace.

This is a kind, or several kinds, of small aubergine, egg-plant or binjal. It is about as big as small plum and comes in a variety of colours-white, purple, green, yellow. The taste is pleasantly bitter; we usually eat it raw.

The Pandanus, or screwpine, family is a tough-looking collection of plants, with long, broad, fibrous leaves armed with spines, prickles, hooks and other weapons. Their principal use is in making mats, brushes, ropes and so forth. It may seem surprising that such plants should be allowed anywhere near a kitchen, but some spieces have edible fruits, and Australian aborigines are said to extract and roast the seeds, ‘rather laboriously’ , as Burkill says. In Indonesia, however, it is the young leaves of P. Odorus which are used by cooks to add a distinctive aromatic flavouring and in some cases a delicate green colour. You buy daun pandan in the market in small square packets, the leaf having been chopped into lengths of about 5 cm; you may get 20 more pieces in a packet. If you cut a fresh leaf from the garden it should give you at least 10 of these little oblongs. There is no need to trim off the leaf-edges, which are smooth and unarmoured.

The Indonesian name means literally ‘leaves like cups’, and in  the old days they were used to hold food as well as being eaten themselves. They are usually cooked with dishes such as Gulai Otak. In Europe, a good substitute is curly kale.

Most Indonesian cucumbers are somewhat shorter than ‘ordinary’ Europan ones, but they have a good flavour, only marred from time to time by the bitterness of the getah, or juice. To get rid of this, cut off the last inch of cucumber at both ends and rub the cut surfaces vigorously together for a few seconds. This will dring out the whitish getah, which you them wash off.

Most English greengrocers call this Chinese cabbage, though white-mustard cabbage is an alternative. Indonesians sometimes adapt its Chinese name and call it pe-tsai. You will find two kinds in most market-places; sawi hijau (green) and sawi putih (white). Both are cooked. Sawi hijau is sometimes pickled. If your English greengrocers does not know it under any of its names, use cos lettuce instead.