Sanctuary from The Mad World
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch. - Orson Welles

Amid tree-wasting cookbooks strewn on the floor of Gramedia, a local Indonesian bookstore chain, this handsome and charismatic hardcover attracted me. I flipped the pages and was intrigued further when I realized the book contains a selected recipe from Ibu Kartini’s family.

Ibu Kartini is an Indonesian women-lib icon. We, especially the girls, was brain-washed to recognize that she was solely responsible for our being in that classroom but I didn’t know she cooked! Anyway, the recipes are interesting as they’re classic Indonesian with Javanese tones and Dutch influence. I hoped this book would be more substantial and well-researched than the books on the floor and coughed up the money for its steep price.

The recipes are divided into rice, soups and stews, salads and other vegetable dishes, seafood, poultry, meat, condiments, savoury and sweet snacks, puding and cakes and pastries. I long to make things from the rice section with delectable finds such as Sega Liwet Ayam because I have a particular weaknesses for savoury rice. Others contain classics such as Indonesian-style beefsteaks, Gule (some sort of curry), various Soto (soups), all of which I love to try.

Each recipe has four versions: the (claimed) original version with Javanese characters and its accompanied Indonesian wordings, its translated old-Indonesian version, and the modern version which has been tried and tested by the kitchen of Femina, a local women’s magazine (which equals to a stamp of quality for Indonesian cookbooks).

I must admit I’ve not really used the book extensively but the one I tried, acar campur seems reasonable enough.

Despite its handsome cover, the binding is lousy (typical of Indonesian products: good look but poor quality). The book cracks like stiff joints when I open it.

The book is thick (351 pages) and yet the recipes are not tightly selected. I see no discernible differences for instance between Kuwih Lapis and Spekkoek. I understand the two to be the same thing with Spekkoek to be the Dutch name. Likewise, there are three versions of Besengek (some sort of curry) each for chicken, eggs, and beef. Why not put one and say it can be substituted with the other?

Nevertheless, I appreciate the book very much. I think it’s a good start toward having a David-Thompson-Thai style cooking book for Indonesian food. It’s a pity that the book is in Indonesian: I can’t distribute them as gifts to friends.