These are much smaller than the red and green chillis and are consequently much hotter. It seems that the capsicum family was one of Columbus’ first worthwhile discoveries in the New World; seeds and cuttings were taken back across the Atlantic at once, and the Portuguese soon transplanted them to their new colonial possessions in India and South-east Asia. The Dutch later pinned onto them one of the Mexican names, chilli, so that the East India Company’s customers would not confuse this new spice with pepper. A variety of capsicum (C. baccatum, or C. minimum) often appears in English greengrocers’ shops as a neat little ornamental houseplant with bright red or yellow peppers growing profusely on it. Sometimes they are thin cones, sometimes egg-shaped or almost spherical. The thin cones are nearly as hot as cabe rawit and my greengrocer no longer looks startled when I ask him for another ornamental pepper-tree ‘because I’ve eaten all the last lot’.
For cooking, we need to distinguish between green chillis (cabe hijau) and red chillis (cabe merah). These can both be bought easily enough in most places. Red chillis, either fresh or dried, are crushed and used to give body to a hot sauce. The crushing (with ulek-ulek and cobek). Is hard work, and if you have a tender skin or a cut or scratched finger the juice of the chilli can be uncomfortable. You can often, instead, buy ready-pounded red chillis, with a little salt, under the name of Sambal Ulek; or you can, if you develop a taste for it, make your own sambal ulek in large quantities by stuffing red chillis into a food processor as if you were mincing meat. Take out the seeds and chop the chillis before putting them in, and wash the processor very thoroughly afterwards. Alternatively, make sambal ulek in a liquidizer, adding a little water. Put in a little salt later as a preservative.
Red chillis can also be powdered, and in Britain one can buy tins of chilli powder almost anywhere. Green chillis, however, cannot be powdered, and I have mostly suggested cuting them into very thin slices. In Indonesia, red chilli are also crushed, to release the maximum flavour, and much larger quantities are used than I would dare to suggest here.
Cayenne pepper should come from the first of Capsicum Annum or C. Frutscens (cabe rawit, below), but the powder that is sold in Britain as Cayenne pepper is nowhere near as hot as I think it should be; it is, as Burkill says, ‘very easily adulterated’.
This is the soy or soya bean, which the world’s food experts tell us we are going to have to get used to eating in much larger quantities as other staple foods get dearer. There are over 2000 varieties, but the only two the cook needs to know about are the two leading groups-yellow beans and black beans-and even these two colours have often been lost sight of by the time the processed vegetable reaches the shop or the market. Let us be clear about one thing, otherwise transformed before they can be eaten. Fresh beans, boiled in the pod and then shelled, are a popular and cheap food in countries where they are grown.
However, exported beans are usually dried before they travel. In any case, plain boiled beans do not taste very interesting, and they are somewhat indigestible. Although they are packed with protein, 20 per cent of this goes straight through you unless some way is found to encourage your system to assimilate the stuff. For all these reasons, the future of the soya bean lies in what can be made out of it. The western food manufacturer’s answer is to create imitation meat and other familiar-looking things by the use of various additives. The Asian way has always been, generally speaking, to ferment soya beans, using micro-organism to break down the indigestible substance and attractive flavours.
In Indonesia we also extract a kind of artificial milk from the yellow beans, which is almost as nutritious as cow’s milk (one manufacturer dehydrates it and markets it under the brand name of Saridele). Bean sprouts can also be grown from soya bean seeds, though we usually prefer kacang hijau for this.
These ‘green beans’ are used more than any other kind for growing bean sprouts, and you can grow your own if you wish; they are ready for eating after 4 to 6 days in a warm room, and need only a well-soaked flannel, thick rag, or even paper towel to grow on. Soak them overnight in cold water, and spread a single layer of beans evenly over the growing surface. The requirements now are moisture, warmth, fresh air, and darkness. A closely woven basket with a cloth over it is excellent, and I put mine in the cupboard under the stairs, which is, of course, the warmest place in any English house because no one ever goes there. Sprinkle a little more water over the seedlings each day or so. After 4 days you will probably be able to take a harvest of the more precocious bean sprouts, leaving the rest another day or two to develop. Whether you grow your own or buy them in the greengrocer’s, remove any seed-husks that are clinging or serving raw-it won’t do you any harm if you leave it on, but the dish loooks better without. Trimming bean sprouts takes time and patience, but can be a restful occupation, properly regarded.
There are plenty of ways to eat mature green beans, always after they have been shelled. You can soak them overnight, boil them in salted water for 20-30 minutes, and then deep-fry them (with a little chilli, if you like) to make a savoury snack. You can make Rempeyek Kacang with them. Green beans also make a very nourishing porridge, which I am told was once used as a staple diet on sea voyages-the equivalent perhaps of ship’s biscuits, but softer and a little better-tasting. Soak the beans overnight, then boil for an hour or more (2 volumes of water to one of beans) with a little salt and sugar, until the beans are mushy and there is no more surplus liquid. If you want this a little more de luxe, stir in some very thick santen just before you take the pan off the heat.
This is what any English gardener would immediately recognize as a French bean, and any French gardener as a haricot vert, though there are, of course, many varieties and cultivars. Although the generic name, Phaseolus, was applied by the Romans to all sorts of beans, P. Vulgaris was unknown in the Old World until it was brought from the Americas. The word buncis is just an Indonesias spelling of the Dutch boontjes-little beans.
Kara in Javanese. These are Lima beans or (in some varieties at any rate) butter beans-the flat, white kind. ‘Pagar’ means a fence or hedge, and these beans often are grown in the hedges around village gardens. The beans need to be shelled and then well-boiled to get rid of any toxic acid that they may contain, although you would have to eat an awful lot of beans to suffer any ill-effects. We often make them part of a meat-and-vegetable stew, which cooks them very thoroughly. In my experience, however, eating too many kacang pagar can give you a headache-exactly the same dire consequence that Burkill threatens peanut-eaters with.
These are much smaller than the red and green chillis and are consequently much hotter. It seems that the capsicum family was one of Columbus’ first worthwhile discoveries in the New World; seeds and cuttings were taken back across the Atlantic at once, and the Portuguese soon transplanted them to their new colonial possessions in India and South-east Asia. The Dutch later pinned onto them one of the Mexican names, chilli, so that the East India Company’s customers would not confuse this new spice with pepper. A variety of capsicum (C. baccatum, or C. minimum) often appears in English greengrocers’ shops as a neat little ornamental houseplant with bright red or yellow peppers growing profusely on it. Sometimes they are thin cones, sometimes egg-shaped or almost spherical. The thin cones are nearly as hot as cabe rawit and my greengrocer no longer looks startled when I ask him for another ornamental pepper-tree ‘because I’ve eaten all the last lot’.
