KennethT

After breakfast, we headed to the supermarket located in the mall connected to our hotel to get some fruit for our room. This is the same supermarket as before. Durian - you could smell this around the corner in the mall... After picking up a bunch of mangoes (they had no mangosteen on this day, but had some later on), we went off for some sightseeing. We decided to see the National Monument It's in the largest public square in SE Asia. It's here where we became a tourist attraction ourselves, again, as this is a large attraction for domestic tourists visiting Jakarta. The young girl in the turquoise shirt above desperately wanted photos of us (mostly my wife because she has red hair) so we spent about 10 minutes taking photos with the whole family. They then stayed with us while walking around, the young girl asking my wife lots of questions - like what were her hobbies, etc. You can go to the top of the monument, but to do so required standing on a long line, so we decided to skip it - especially considering that there really isn't much to see. We then continued walking around the area on the way to the main mosque, the largest in Asia, only to find it closed - we forgot that it was Friday... Some walking around photos:

Breakfast was included in our hotel price, which is great because this hotel's breakfast buffet was amazing thanks, in large part, to there being a lot of domestic travelers staying there so they had a lot of Indonesian options. They also had sushi, some chinese dim sum type stuff and western stuff (omelettes, yogurt, cheese/meats, etc.) that we didn't partake in. Gulai is like a thin curry using similar ingredients to rendang. with shrimp crackers, green and red sambal. In padang food, these are the primary sambals - called, unimaginatively, sambal ijo (green sambal) and sambal merah (red sambal). Neither one are super spicy, but definitely add a lot of flavor. Colo-colo is a condiment/sambal type from eastern Indonesia and typically served with fish/seafood. The fish was really meaty and nicely cooked. With squid ink crackers. Fantastic pineapple Turmeric jamu - this is supposedly healthy - it's made from (at least) ground turmeric, ginger and lime juice. My wife got some of the chinese dim sum - I don't kow what it was though. Lastly, I got some beef soup with beef balls and some kind of fish ball that is made from both fish/shrimp paste.

Our flight to Jakarta landed on time, around 10:30AM and we breezed through their immigration, thanks to the autogates utilizing facial recognition software and using their E-VOA (electronic visa on arrival). Because it's Jakarta and their horrendous traffic, we probably got to the hotel around 1PM. At this point, we weren't really hungry at all - that Singapore Airlines business class (upgraded using miles) can really stuff you to the gills! - and then eating more in the Singapore Airport and again on the Singapore Airlines flight to Jakarta - so we just took a much needed nap until around 6 or so, the plan being to wake up and get dinner, and then go back to bed, hopefully getting onto Jakarta time as fast as possible, which worked well for the most part. Our hotel is connected to a large mall which has tons of restaurants plus a food court which takes up a whole floor. We decided to go to a well known sate restaurant chain, Sate Khas Senayan (literally sate from Senayan), which serves food from the islands of Java and Bali. More info (including quite an exhaustive menu) here: https://sks.sarirasa.co.id/menu As we were exhausted, we just kept things simple by ordering some sate and a vegetable: Lamb sate - 7 skewers of lamb pieces, with each skewer having a piece of lamb fat, and 3 minced lamb sausage skewers (my favorite), sitting on sweet soy sauce with some chopped shallot and ground chilli sambal. To me, there is little in the world better than a nicely grilled piece of lamb fat with sweet soy sauce and chilli. I'm drooling sitting here thinking about it! Chicken skewers covered in sambal Stir fried kangkong (water spinach) with sambal terasi (shrimp paste, chillies, shallot, garlic) Traditional accompaniment - lontong - rice cakes cooked in banana leaf. All told, about $15 at the current rate of exchange which is about 1USD = 16,200IDR. After this, straight back to the hotel and to bed!!!

The texture of all the ciabatta I've seen here is chewy, especially the crust - great if having it by itself, but not so much as a sandwich delivery vehicle.

Hello, and welcome to another edition of our tour of eating around SE Asia! I am happy to report that, unlike the last several trips in the past, there was only very minimal illness so our enjoyment of some ridiculous foodstuffs was mostly unhindered. We usually try not to go to the same places so close together - we were in Jakarta last year, but we were only there for a couple days and barely scratched the surface. Even this time, with about 5 days there we barely scratched the surface! So, we decided to focus the Jakarta portion of this trip on Nasi Padang, aka Masakan Padang aka Padang food as it is extremely popular in Jakarta right now, even though it originated in the area of Padang, which is the NE part of the island of Sumatra (Jakarta is on the island of Java) - there are estimated to be at least 10,000 padang restaurants in Jakarta right now. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. As usual, our trip begins with Singapore Airlines, traveling from NYC JFK to Singapore, non-stop, the food from which can be found here. I am very happy that the route taken this time was over the North pole as sometimes they travel somewhere over the middle east which would make me a bit nervous nowadays.... our route: Once landing in Singapore, we had a few hours to kill before our flight to Jakarta (by design - there's multiple flights back and forth per day), so what better way to start than chicken rice? Our favorite chicken rice vendor, Wee Nam Kee, had recently opened a branch (open 24 hours!) in the newly renovated Terminal 2 in the airport, located in what's called the Gourmet Garden. A close up of the chicken rice and accoutrements: Even in the airport, their chicken rice is what I consider to be perfect. The chicken is so tender that you can cut it with a plastic spoon and the rice is fragrant with perfect texture. They also have an area where you get as much sauces as you like - chilli sauce, grated ginger and sweet soy sauce. They also have toasted sesame oil but I usually don't add any as I feel there's already enough there. Also included is a portion of chicken soup - which is basically the chicken poaching liquid that is really chickeny and aromatic with green onion, garlic and ginger. Another shot of the Gourmet Garden - there are several restaurants in this area including an old favorite for fried stuff, Old Chang Kee. We got some crab nuggets and prawn nuggets: While in T2, we also stopped by a new attraction, the sunflower garden, located on the roof of the terminal: Next stop, Jakarta!

My problem (at least with ciabatta that I can get here) is that they are a little tough and in the process of trying to bite a piece off, the fillings tend to squish out.

Who knows... I got the seeds from dried chillies in a local market in Indonesia. It's very hard to find packs of chilli seeds there - I actually went to a garden store there looking for a pack of seeds but they had none (but tons of veggie seeds) and when I asked, they said they don't bother carrying them because most people get seeds from the chillies they're eating. Whatever they are, they're growing true to the parent where the seeds came from.

Nice to come back to a bunch of ripe chillies and new flowers...

Yeah, it was mostly focaccia with the chicken more of a seasoning... haha. It was tasty though, and fine as it was just meant to be a snack, not a main meal.

A few hours before landing....

A few hours later I was a little hungry so I got the chicken sandwich of the Delectable list:

Second meal, SIN-Newark: The croissant was served warm and was nice and flaky. Wonton mee with char sieu and Chinese broccoli from book the cook. Pork was really tender and both the wontons and noodles were good also. And their sambal was a nice touch.

Singapore Airlines biz class has ruined me! I used to think that the food in premium economy on this airline was amazing, but this time it was disappointing - even though it was probably the same as always. Also, I felt like the service was extremely rushed, but now I'm comparing apples and oranges. Here inPE, there's a couple flight attendants for maybe 40-50 people - in biz, there's maybe one attendant for 6 or 10. Obviously there's no comparison. In biz, when my water glass (of Perrier) was slightly less than half full, the attendant poured more. Here in PE, they have Schweppes and no refills until much later... I'm not complaining - this is still heads and tails over what I've seen on most other airlines. Menus for tonight's fight: I didn't get anything off the normal menus but instead used Book the Cook ordered in advance. There's a lot of choices - even more coming from Singapore than from NY - at least 10. Cold smoked shrimp salad but rather than served with potatoes as on the menu, it looked like farro or something. The roll was warm and stuffed with garlic butter. Really good. Chicken biryani. Tasty as always. The lime cake was also really good - light and just sweet enough to balance the citrus.

Yeah, I have the brined ones... They're not nearly as good as fresh. I wish I could find them. Back when I was making a lot of Thai food, I was considering growing a peppercorn plant to have a ready supply! Haha. Grachai keeps well in the freezer.

Do you have access to fresh green peppercorns? I can get them once every couple of years! The Thai combination of fresh green peppercorns, grachai and Thai basil is a fantastic combo.

Not at all. We just landed in North Sulawesi coming from Jakarta but the active volcano is nowhere near us - it's a few hours to the east of where we are now. It won't affect our return home either.

Last airline meal for a while - Sing Air Singapore to Jakarta - 80 minute flight: "Carrot cake" with prawn, fried shallots, lontong (rice cake) and radish (that's the carrot part). All fried in lard... A Singapore specialty.

I think it depends. We've had some duck breast in various places in France, years ago, that was rare and really tender. It has to be the duck because one of the places was a Burgundian fondue place where you cooked your meat in a pot of hot oil on your table. Also had Charolais beef and lamb. I'd love to go back to that place.

2nd meal of Sing Air (about 8 hours later): Appetizer of citrus grilled shrimp salad with ginger balsamic vinaigrette. My wife got the duck confit from the standard menu. It looked a little tough. She said it was ok. I got the shrimp/pork wonton noodle soup. This was really good - super thin wonton skin, perfectly cooked shrimp, noodles had good texture in a nice chicken broth with not over cooked Chinese broccoli. They topped it with fried garlic chips and some fried garlic oil. Then came the dessert trolley: I got the apricot tart. Just in case there wasn't enough, they came around with a tray of chocolate...

In addition to the menu choices they have something called Book The Cook - a bunch of choices you can pre-order up to 2 days before the flight. And you can view the standard menu items at the same time so you wind up with maybe 12 choices of meals, plus the special meals like vegetarian, kosher, low salt, etc.

Singapore Airlines NYC-SIN. This time is something special - we were able to upgrade to Business class with our miles... Menu for dinner (served around 1AM Ny time) First course: Salad of smoked trout with micro greens, pickled onion and spiced hazelnut. There was a choice of breads - I took the garlic bread - really garlicky and nicely toasted. Chicken rice with chilli sauce, sweet soy sauce and lots of grated ginger. It was quite good, although I don't think Wee Nam Kee has anything to worry about. Chocolate ganache cake - holy crap this was good. Inside was a nice orange compote of some kind - not too sweet and not too orangy - just a hint.

@dcarchinteresting - I had never heard of that before.

My keriting chilli plant is going crazy and now we're going away for almost 2 weeks. I'm not worried about the plants dying (automatic watering) but what's going to happen to all those chillies on them? And no one around to hand pollinate the new flowers.... Oh well - we'll see in mid July!

Sort of. My parents had hosta beds that the deer LOVED. My father and I put electric fences around everything but we constantly needed to maintain them as the plants grew because the leaves would touch the wires and create a short (especially if rainy). Plus the beds were maybe 10 feet in diameter and the deer would always try to jump the fence to get into the interior... many times with disastrous consequences.

Even better (and traditional in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia) would be steamed rice cakes called lontong.