Customer Reviews

Food of Indonesia: Authentic Recipes from the Spice Islands (Food of the World Cookbooks)

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If you are after good Indonesian food this book is one of the easier ones you will find, devoid of the complex spice pastes in many other books, including The Food of Bali which is also found in this series and does contain some complex pastes where some ingredients may be unobtainable.

in this book most importantly, they got the nasi goreng right, a basic dish found evrywhere in Indonesia but always gotten wrong when printed in books.

There is an even spread of delicious recipes for seafood, meat, vegetarian, soups, rice and deserts. The sambals and accompaniments section is terrific with over 20 to be found here.

Some standout recipes are the beef soup with tamarind and chilies, nasi goreng, beef satay an the spiced beef with coconut. All ingredients can be found in an asian grocers, the only one hard to find is kencur root (a type of aromatic ginger) but it is used maybe 2-3 times in the book.

The only drawback is some of the recipes are fairly ordinary and would have been better replaced by some of the mouth watering curries from padang.

I started with the Food of Asia, which I think is excellent. I decided to check into some specific cuisines, such as Indonesia, of the seven cuisines that are presented in the Food of Asia. I am a little torn.

The individual books in the "Food of" series by Periplus have extensive introductions. There are not as many recipes as I had hoped for. The ingredients list, along with the accompanying commentaries, are about the same, with an equivalent number of photos, as the Food of Asia. The Food of Asia contains many of the recipes, however, some do not have a photo.

The variety of main ingredients is pretty good, with recipes such as: Tempeh Stew, Hot Spicy Fried Tempeh, Water Spinach with Spicy Sauce, Vegetables with Spicy Coconut, Fern Tips (or Asparagus) in Coconut Milk, Stewed Eggplant, Lobster in Yellow Sauce, Simmered River Fish, Spicy Fried Sardines, Eggs in Fragrant Sauce and Pandan-style Eggs, plenty of chicken recipes, Duck Curry, several satays, Ginger Pork, Porked Cooked with Tomatoes and Seasoned Fried Beef Slices.

However, the Food of Asia contains some recipes, such as Balinese Squid, that do not appear in the Food of Indonesia. Also, the substitute of asparagus for fern tips is found only in the Food of Asia.

The ingredients list is thourough, with substitutions for (or omission of) many hard-to-find ingredients, but is a little more stringent than other books I have read. For example, shallot or onion was offered as a substitute for asofoetida in a different book, whereas here no substitute is given. On the contrary, macadamia nuts are suggested as a substitute, or even almonds or cashews, for candlenuts. The books on separate cuisines do not have such substitutions.

A word of caution, many of the ingredients are difficult to find even online. There are also several "fresh" ingredients, such as kaffir lime leaves, salam leaves, duan kasum, etc, that have to be shipped fresh and stay for only a short while. Most of the recipes in Food of Indonesia require many of the hard-to-find ingredients. Other cuisines, like Thai and India, have more availability of authentic ingredients as well as spice mixes that really help save time.

I think that the Food of Asia may be a better starting point. Make sure that you can find the hard-to-find ingredients from some Indonesian store or many of the recipes will be lacking. I have been able to make most of the recipes that I was really interested in, such as the tempeh, sardines and asparagus, but with a bit of difficulty coming up with all the ingredients.

Hope this helps.