Cradle of Flavor: Home Cooking from the Spice Islands of Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia [Hardcover]

James Oseland (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 17, 2006

The first book to reveal the undiscovered jewels of Southeast Asian cuisine.

Just when you thought you knew everything about Asian food, along comes James Oseland’s Cradle of Flavor. Oseland has spent two decades exploring the foods of the Spice Islands. Few can introduce us to the birthplace of spice as he does. He brings us the Nyonya dishes of Singapore and Malaysia, the fiery specialties of West Sumatra, and the spicy-aromatic stews of Java. Oseland culled his recipes from twenty years of intimate contact with home cooks and diverse markets. He presents them here in easily made, accessible recipes, perfect for today’s home cook. Included is a helpful glossary (illustrated in color in one of the picture sections) of all the ingredients you need to make the dishes and where and how to buy them. With Cradle of Flavor, fans of Javanese Satay, Singaporean Stir-Fried Noodles, and Indonesian curries can finally make them in their own kitchen.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Oseland, who has lived in Singapore for 20 years, hopes to help people who haven't had the benefit of a trip to West Sumatra or Kuala Lumpur to discover those places' scents and tastes. Oseland devotes close to half the book to explaining ingredients, techniques and eating traditions as well as relating anecdotes from 20 years of roaming the islands and picking up the natives' cooking wisdom. Many ingredients will require special trips to ethnic markets, though Oseland allows for some substitution or omission of difficult-to-find items like fresh galangal or daun salam leaves. The first chapter covers sambals, every meal's essential spicy accompaniment, as well as other small dishes like the fiery Sweet-Sour Cucumber and Carrot Pickle with Turmeric; he follows with slightly more familiar street foods and snacks such as satays and gado-gado, then rice and noodles in all their guises, from simple, heavenly steamed rice to the zingy Malaysian Penang-Style Stir-Fried Kuey Teow Noodles. Oseland's instructions are detailed, and he makes a convincing case that with a little time and care, the best of these complex, interrelated cuisines can be enjoyed thousands of miles from their origin. Maps and color photos not seen by PW. (Aug.)
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About the Author

James Oseland’s writing has appeared in Gourmet, Saveur, and Vogue. He has been traveling to Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia for twenty years. He lives in New York City.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (August 17, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393054772
• ISBN-13: 978-0393054774
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 8.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #197,986 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #15 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Regional & International > Asian > Pacific Rim

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

58 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cradle of Flavor -- an epic trip through culinary terra incognita, November 18, 2006

By 

David Plotnikoff "writer and editor" (San Francisco) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cradle of Flavor: Home Cooking from the Spice Islands of Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia (Hardcover)

IT'S not entirely clear to me if it's because of the San Francisco Bay Area's great cultural diversity - or in spite of it - but there's no denying that more than a few of us (and not just self-professed foodies) suffer from Jaded Palate Syndrome. The most obvious symptom: A pronounced grumpiness and malaise around lunchtime. We've become so accustomed to finding everything from East Indian to Ethiopian cuisines, all as close as the nearest suburban mini-mall, that the region's signature pairing of whine and food should be: "OK, amuse me. Show me something really new."

And into the breach steps the intrepid James Oseland, with a masterful introduction to a rich, intensely vibrant cuisine that has yet to find more than a token presence in the United States. With "Cradle of Flavor: Home Cooking From the Spice Islands of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore," Oseland, the editor-in-chief of Saveur magazine, lays out a vast map of hitherto uncharted culinary territory. The book is not an addition to an existing canon of literature. Rather, for any non-Indonesian chef it will more than suffice as both the first and last word on the subject.

How could an area as vast and populous as the Malay Archipelago escape notice for so long? As one Indonesian acquaintance told Oseland on his first trip to the region more than two decades ago, "We're the best-kept secret in Asia. Too few of us are living abroad to share our cuisine." If you've tasted any food from the region at all, it was most likely cosmopolitan, Chinese-influenced fare from the city-state of Singapore and not the home-style cooking typically found in the far provinces of Indonesia.

"Cradle of Flavor" is more than the sum of its parts. It is a compendium of exotic recipes, but it is also a short course on how the many cultural streams at play here - Chinese, Thai, Dutch and Indian among them - came to intersect in the kitchens and alley food-stalls of Indonesia. And the book works as what -- for lack of a better term - we'll call anecdotal ethnography. Food is culture. It's impossible to read a chapter without coming away with some understanding of the rhythm of everyday life in Indonesia.

While the instructional passages are authoritative and straightforward, they're interwoven with a cultural portrait that's intensely personal. It begins with Oseland's first journey to Indonesia at age 19. His extended stay with an aristocratic Jakarta family would include, among other things, a bout with dengue fever and a portentous meeting with a screen-star-turned-fortune-teller who informs him that he is fated to keep returning to Indonesia for the rest of his life. You've got to love a cookbook author who would begin a chapter titled "Fish and Shellfish" with an eyewitness account of the great exodus of Muslim fundamentalists streaming through the port of Ambon after the Bali bombings of 2002.

Oseland is the sensible, streetwise friend any American visitor would want as a guide through the open-air markets of the region. Indonesian cooking techniques are neither exotic nor particularly demanding (except, in my case, reducing coconut milk, something I am about as likely to master as Tuvan throat-singing). But the ingredients are another story. The greatest challenge facing the novice cook is procurement, not processing. "Cradle of Flavor" includes an encyclopedic and obsessively detailed section on ingredients - how to evaluate them, where to buy them, how to handle them, how to store them. For those of us who don't know our lemon basil from our lemongrass, this should save untold expense and frustration on forays through the local Asian supermarket.

The focus here is on classic home dishes. The 100 recipes - from condiments to cocktails - have been carefully selected with the success of the American non-professional chef in mind. In other words, you will not need to acquire specialty kitchen gadgets or send halfway around the globe for ingredients in order to master an Indonesian feast that's both authentic and delicious.

David Plotnikoff
sushimonster - at - emeraldlake.com

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 10 Out of 10 Recipes, April 11, 2007

By 

Manerly Flodeilla "Tikus & Gajah" (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cradle of Flavor: Home Cooking from the Spice Islands of Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia (Hardcover)

I am an Indonesian who moved to the US 2 1/2 years ago. This book has fulfilled my craving for Indonesian food. It has easy to follow recipes, descriptions of ingredients, where to find them and how to store them. I totally recommend it.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Delicious Journey along the Ancient Spice Routes, October 1, 2006

By 

Mary Donovan "Spice Freak" (Bakersfield, California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cradle of Flavor: Home Cooking from the Spice Islands of Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia (Hardcover)

I am not much of a cook, and certainly not of exotic foods that require many spices and shopping in special markets. But I bought this book because I had heard that, apart from recipes, it offers a travelogue and historical glimpse into the mystery and wonder of the ancient "Spice routes," a subject that has always fascinated me. Oseland too is captivated by this mystique and his adventurous spirit also takes him deep into the hills and paddys and homes of the Spice Islnads. We get not only the whiff of history but also perceptive glimpses of modern Indonesia - its religion, politics, social tensions and customs - all boiled down through the experience of individual families around a dinner table of delicious food.

So imagine my surprise when I tried a couple of these recipes and they were actually easy to cook! I'm sure not all the recipes in the book are simple, but even I had success with "Fragrant Fish Stew with Lime and Lemon Basil."

Oseland learned these recipes by working alongside the people he met and befriended in his travels in Indonesia. The are real family cooking, and - especially if you brek them in easy with delicious dishes like Celebration Yellow Rice, your family will love them too! It's also a fun adventure to take the kids to your local Indonesian (or other Asian) market, if you have one. Oseland gives instructions on how to find these ingredients in most areas, and also some suggestions for substitutions for harder to find items.