Ingredients:
For the soup
55 ml vegetable oil
2 large onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
450 g black bean, soaked in water for four hours and drained
4.5 lt water or vegetable stock
450 g tinned tomatoes, chopped
1 tsp each of cumin seed, coriander seed and dried oregano
1 bunch coriander, chopped
2 bay leaves
1 red chilli, deseeded and diced
Salt
Ground black pepper
For quesadillas
2 avocados, peeled
1 clove garlic, peeled and crushed
Juice of half a lemon
2 tomatoes, peeled, deseeded and finely chopped
Dash of tabasco sauce
Salt
Ground black pepper
8 wheat or corn tortilla, ready-made
10 g feta cheese, crumble
55 ml sour cream
1 small lettuce, shredded
1 bunch spring onions, finely sliced
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Remember that kacang in Indonesian means both bean and nut. The name of this one translate into English quite literally as ‘ground-nut’, so called, of course, because the flowers of Arachis have the remarkable habit of diving back towards the soil and burying their seedpods in it. Like so many other useful plants, the ground-nut or peanut evolved in Central America and the basin of the Parana River; it was one of the first prozes that Colombus’ men and their successors brought back to europe. Dialect names for the plant, however, suggest that it may have reached the East in Spanish or Portuguese ships across the Pacific. Certainly peanuts have been an important crop in Java for at least 200 years. Raffles says that in the early 1800s they were grown near all the large towns, principally for their oil, which I suppose was used for cooking. Peanut oil is indeed very good for this purpose, though personally I prefer corn or coconut oil.
There are several ways to make peanuts into delicious savoury snacks or makanan kecil 9’small food’). Rempeyek Kacang, admittedly not the easiest, is perhaps the best of all. People in Java even make them into a fermented paste, called oncom, rather like a kind of peanuts tempe, which they fry before eating. Unfortunately I have nit yet been able to find out what strain of bacillus is used in this process.
Ingredients:
500 g (1 lb) peanuts
2 cloves garlic
Salt
Vegetable oil
Put the peanuts into a bowl with the crushed garlic and a teaspoonful of salt. Pour in enough boiling water to cover the nuts. Cover the bowl and let it stand for 30 minutes, then peel off the thin skin from the peanuts-it is usually enough to rub the nut between finger and thumb, the skin will have become very loose. Put the nuts on absorbent paper, when the peeling is completed heat a cupful of oil in a wok or a deep frying-pan. Stir-fry the peanuts in this, 1/2 lb at a time, for 5-6 minutes. Let cool before storing in airtight containers.
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 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.
Ingredients:
