A week in Lombok and Jakarta, Indonesia

[KennethT]

34 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

 

I do indeed; in fact almost exclusively. I'm never without it, but then I use a lot of garlic.

 

 

Known as 独蒜 (dú suàn - literally 'alone garlic'), it is, I'm told, native to Yunnan province, but widely grown in Sichuan and elsewhere today. It ís easy to peel and for me one bulb = one clove is (usually) the perfect amount for one dish.

 

It is becoming easy to find in the west, I've heard. I remember @Anna N saying she had found it in Canada and I've seen it in London's Chinatown.

 

P.S. It makes excellent black garlic, too.

 

 

Reserve me a room in that supermarket, too please! Thanks for the detailed account. Fascinating.

 

 

Nice. I wish I could find that garlic but I'd go through it like it were candy.  Malaysian/Indonesian food uses a TON of garlic.  One dish will usually use at least 5-6 standard cloves, so if I was making a dish plus a vegetable, I usually go through a whole head of standard garlic in one meal.

[KennethT]

16 minutes ago, blue_dolphin said:

 

Ditto what @liuzhou said!  I love visiting markets when I travel - even if they're not as amazing as these. 

 

And how nice that your hotel procured the cobek for you, @KennethT, and explained their quality concerns. I'd say their price was worth it. Lovely piece. 

I'm continually surprised at how cheap things are there compared to home or even to places like Singapore which is already cheap compared to home.  While I paid the hotel IDR100,000 (technically $6.06 at 16,500/$) I saw quite a few on the Indonesian versions of Amazon for like 65,000, so around $4!  Incredible...  Actually, I paid about $9 for the cobek because I gave the guy who went out to get it for me another 50,000IDR (about $3) just for him and he was so appreciative.  He went back out to get a bunch of newspapers and stuff to wrap it with to get it home safely.

[Senior Sea Kayaker]

Thanks for the market tour.

 

[Shelby]

Really enjoying this as always!

[ElsieD]

Thank you for bringing us along.  I have to say - you're one adventurous eater!

[MaryIsobel]

Your travel blogs are first rate! I love how adventurous you are. We have one thing in common; I almost always get sick when we travel. At home, I am pretty healthy but even camping I almost always get sick for part of the trip. Trying hard not to become agoraphobic!

[KennethT]

Thanks @ElsieD and @MaryIsobel.  Funny enough, my wife and I were both super picky eaters growing up!  I wouldn't eat pizza (what kid doesn't eat pizza?!?) without taking the cheese off first!  I would refuse to eat a hamburger for some reason, although meatballs with spaghetti were ok, and the only part of the chicken I would eat were the legs.

 

About getting sick - unfortunately, I have an autoimmune disease and take medication which reduces my immune system further.  So even when I'm home, I constantly feel like I'm fighting something but it's usually manageable.  In fact, I was feeling like I was fighting something for weeks before we left, even though my wife and I were both quasi-quarantining for 6 weeks before the trip - which means that whenever we left our apartment, even just to the laundry room on the floor or garbage room, we wore N95 masks.  I think whatever I had been fighting bloomed just from the lack of sleep and stress of traveling for so long.  We're trying to rack up enough points to be able to upgrade our flight there to Biz class which has a fully lie flat bed - I'm curious if I can get an actually good amount of sleep, will I still have the same problems....

[MaryIsobel]

1 hour ago, KennethT said:

Thanks @ElsieD and @MaryIsobel.  Funny enough, my wife and I were both super picky eaters growing up!  I wouldn't eat pizza (what kid doesn't eat pizza?!?) without taking the cheese off first!  I would refuse to eat a hamburger for some reason, although meatballs with spaghetti were ok, and the only part of the chicken I would eat were the legs.

 

About getting sick - unfortunately, I have an autoimmune disease and take medication which reduces my immune system further.  So even when I'm home, I constantly feel like I'm fighting something but it's usually manageable.  In fact, I was feeling like I was fighting something for weeks before we left, even though my wife and I were both quasi-quarantining for 6 weeks before the trip - which means that whenever we left our apartment, even just to the laundry room on the floor or garbage room, we wore N95 masks.  I think whatever I had been fighting bloomed just from the lack of sleep and stress of traveling for so long.  We're trying to rack up enough points to be able to upgrade our flight there to Biz class which has a fully lie flat bed - I'm curious if I can get an actually good amount of sleep, will I still have the same problems....

Interesting. I also have an auto immune condition but I seem to be able to keep it under control at home. Funny you mention business class. My sister and I are planning a trip to Tuscany next spring and the difference between economy and business class is staggering! I can dream...

[ElsieD]

When I met my husband, spicy food meant putting black pepper on something.   I now make him spicy red pepper sauce made with Scotch Bonnet peppers.

[KennethT]

After coming back from lunch and checking out my cobek (and trying to figure out how I'm going to get it home!) we had a bunch more fruit and took a swim in the pool.

 

By the time we got back, it was getting late so we decided to go back to the mall as the 4th floor was devoted completely to restaurants - both dine in and food court style, called Food Avenue.

 

 

It's set around twists and turns - it's hard to know how many stalls there even are!!

 

We decided that you can never go wrong with sate....

 

 

This is chicken sate - at the bottom of the plate is a mixture of peanut sambal and sweet soy sauce, and spicy chilli sambal on the side.

 

We also got some tongseng, which is kind of like a cross between a soup and thin curry.  This one is coconut milk based and had a bunch of dried spices liek cinnamon, clove, etc. and had beef and pieces of cabbage.

 

[KennethT]

Breakfast the next day:

 

The hotel has an in-house patisserie, and at breakfast, someone came and passed around some of their wares:

Some kind of pandan jelly on sticky rice

 

Someone also came and passed this around:

I'm not exactly sure what it was.  The bottom was some kind of starchy thing - maybe taro.  On top was a mixture of tofu, bean sprouts, chilli, dried shrimp and who knows what else.....

 

Chicken balado with red and green sambals, some ok passionfruit, a squid ink cracker, a tempeh/kaffir lime cracker and a shrimp cracker with white rice.

 

chicken soup (soto ayam) with mung bean starch noodles, sliced cabbage and tomato.

 

I went back for more chicken balado - damn that stuff is tasty!

[KennethT]

For lunch, we had wanted to go to a Padang style restaurant.  As I think I explained earlier, Padang is a region of Western Sumatra and the food from there is very popular in Jakarta.  I even think I saw some Padang restaurants in Lombok as we drove by.  Padang restaurants are the original fast food.  Basically, the moment you sit down, a server brings a variety of dishes and places them on the table.  You pay for whatever you wind up eating and when you're finished, they put the rest back for someone else.  In addition to this, you can also order other things that would be made to order.

 

This is one of the more well known Padang places in Jakarta, Rumah Makan Surya. (Rumah makan means "eating house").  Masakan Padang means "Padang food"

 

 

This is what you see when first walking in:

 

And as soon as you sit down, you get the layout:

 

We're not exactly sure what everything was - Padang food does tend to use a lot of offal.  A common dish is cow brain, but I didn't want to try it as I'm always a little worried about mad cow disease. 

 

We wound up eating the vegetable plate

 

- which was red sambal, eggplant, string beans and a common Padang vegetable, singkong or boiled cassava leaves. In this photo, beneath it is sambal ijo - or green sambal made with green chillies and green tomatoes, which is not very spicy but goes really well with everything which I ordered in addition to what was brought.  It arrived immediately so it was made in advance which is not surprising.   At the top left, there's a finger bowl full of water - it's traditional to eat this type of food with your right hand, so the bowl is to wash your fingers beforehand and then when you're finished.  We also had the brown slices to the right of the veggies in the main photo - here's a closeup:

 

At first, we didn't realize what it was - I thought it was some kind of beef jerky that had been deep fried, but it turned out to be cow's lung which was delicious.  Like a beef cracker - it was really dry and hard like a rock but you could bite off a piece easily.  It tasted a little smoky and savory. My wife LOVED it!

 

We also ate the beef rendang - Padang is supposedly the origin of rendang.  The classic way to make it results in a curry so dry there's basically no liquid left whatsoever.  So it's the meat covered in a heavy paste that had been cooked for hours.  It was amazing.  In the main photo, it's the super dark brown lumps on the bottom right. 

 

Finally, we also ate the shrimp balado as I can't get enough of balado....

 

The shrimp were shell on, but deep fried so the shell was nice and crispy.

 

 

Edited July 24 by KennethT (log)

[KennethT]

For dinner, we had wanted to try an Indonesian version of fish head curry since we enjoyed the Singapore version so much.  I didn't think it was, but now I'm wondering if it was a Padang place. 

 

 

When we sat down, the came over with 2 huge trays full of dishes with plastic wrap over each and a label in the middle saying what each one was.  Like a live menu.  They came and went so fast, I wish I was able to get a photo of it.  The fish head curry wasn't on the tray so I asked about it and the waitress got a big smile and then I also ordered 2 of what they called pigeon that I had read about. 

 

 

 

They rub the pigeon in turmeric and a whole bunch of other stuff and then deep fry the bird.  There's no breading or crust or skin either.   I don't think they were the type of pigeons that we were used to.  The ones we know are all dark meat, but these seemed smaller than any pigeon that we've seen and seemed like white meat.  It reminded me of a big quail.  Whatever it was, it was really tasty.

 

In addition to the birds, we got:

 

At the top of the photo is singkong (cassava leaves) that's been cooked in some kind of curry.  The bottom is sambal ijo.

 

Sambal merah

 

Gulai kambing - goat in a thin curry made with a ton of spices like nutmeg, cinnamon and clove - I think this was probably the highlight and I definitely want to try to make it at home.

 

The fish head curry.  I have no idea what kind of fish it was - there wasn't nearly as much meat as the Singapore one, but what was there was juicy and gelatinous.  The curry was very mild but really rich.  It was thick and unctuous with coconut cream - so different than the South Indian style one in Singapore.

 

This was probably the most expensive meal of the trip.  The fish head alone was about 200,000IDR or about $12.  The total bill was around $25.

 

Once out of the restaurant, we called a Grab taxi and watched the street scene while waiting.

 

 

The big puppet coming towards us was accompanied by a young adult asking for money.  Up until then I don't think I'd ever seen anyone just asking for money - if anything at all, it's usually people trying to sell something.

Edited July 29 by KennethT
now with photos of the pigeons!!! (log)

[KennethT]

Breakfast the next day:

 

This is the serving dish of what they called "grilled chicken" but it's really ayam panggang - which, yes, means grilled chicken, but is different from ayam bakar which also means grilled chicken!  Panggang is different because it is first stewed in a broth made from a bunch of soy sauce, herbs/spices (called a bumbu and typically contains chillies, shallots, garlic, kaffir lime leaves etc) but then it is grilled after that.  This two step process is actually not that unusual in Indonesian cooking.  Between making the spice paste (some dishes use 2 different spice pastes - one for each cooking method), stewing then grilling or frying, it's really labor intensive.

 

Talking about labor intensive, this is potatoes balado:

The potatoes are first double fried, then fried with the spice paste.

 

My first plate:

Ayam panggang, potatoes balado, green sambal (sambal ijo) and red sambal (sambal merah), shrimp chip, rice and puffed beef skin cracker-y thing.

 

Awesome pineapple

 

This is the soup station setup for soto padang, which is a beef soup made with spices, and also includes double fried potatoes, tomato fried shallots, mung bean starch noodles and then they float a couple of shrimp chips on top that kind of melt into it

 

 

This was the day we were checking out, so after breakfast we packed and still had a lot of time before our flight so we checked out an art museum located in the mall next door.

 

The museum is dedicated to a single artist - an Indonesian artist who was a political prisoner for years.

 

 

 

Edited August 3 by KennethT (log)

[liuzhou]

1 hour ago, KennethT said:

The fish head curry.  I have no idea what kind of fish it was

 

And neither do I. But it looks like Big Head Carp (Hypophthalmichthys nobilis), used here in fish head and tofu soup, which I like a lot. I can imagine it working in an Asian curry.

 

I could be totally wrong of course!

 

 

Edited July 25 by liuzhou (log)

[KennethT]

Once in the airport, we checked our luggage and head to security. 

 

Right near the security area were a bunch of restaurants - one of them was a sate chain that we had seen all over the place, so we decided to give it a try.

 

 

Inside, it's nicely decorated, including an area with these puppets for wayang kulit - or shadow puppets which we had seen in Jogjakarta:

 

We had some kangkung (water spinach)

 

Chicken sate with peanut sauce and sweet soy sauce

 

Goat sate in sweet soy sauce - this was interesting - there was the standard cubed meat sate but also a minced goat sate - we had seen this in Bali, called sate lilit but this one was snappy - like it was in a sausage casing.  It was delicious!

 

All washed down with some fresh squeezed lime juice

 

Security people move around on Segways and other hoverboard type things:

 

 

Earlier, I had not-intelligently decided that I should bring the cobek/ulekan on the plane as a carry-on to try to minimize damage.  So, we got two heavy cloth grocery bags from the supermarket (we already had one from our first fruit purchase) so I could double bag it to hold the weight, I wrapped the cobek and ulekan in lots of newspaper, put a thick layer of socks in the bottom of the bag, then the cobek and ulekan surrounded by more clothes so it wouldn't want to slide around in the bag.  Of course, security wasn't happy that I was trying to bring 2 heavy blunt objects on the plane and made us go out of the security area to check it in.  Luckily, right next to our airline's check in area was a guy stretch-wrapping luggage.  I asked if he had a small box and after looking around, he found one, and we lowered the bag in which happened to fit perfectly.  He then wrapped the whole thing up, creating a handle and all and completely embalmed it.  All for 80,000IDR or about $5.

 

Getting into the security area, you pass a nice plant display

Lots of Indonesian travelers were posing in front of it for their photo.  It's no Singapore Changi airport, but the new Terminal 3 in Jakarta is pretty nice.

 

Our flight left on time (love you Singapore Airlines) and we had a couple hours in the Singapore airport transit area - I visited my favorite (but abhorrently expensive) tea shop, TWG to pick up some tea to hold me until Xmas time when I can get back there again.  Even though they fed us on the 1h15m flight, I got a little snack while we waited for the long flight home.

 

One crab and one shrimp nugget on a stick.

 

Crab nugget.

 

Singapore Airlines fed us well on the very long flight home and then finally....

 

Home sweet home, landing at dawn (on time).

 

Thanks for reading!

Edited July 25 by KennethT (log)

[rotuts]

thank you for taking us along on your trip.

 

enjoyed it all.

[Shelby]

I loved every second of this!  Thank you!!

[KennethT]

Just in case anyone was interested, I found some more photos of our last supper (so to speak) and added them here: