Leids Ontzet

Hutspot with beef rendang. (Thanks to this site for the suggestion.)

Buncis and Rendang

We used James Oseland's wonderful cook book again. I am convinced there must be a shorthand system for his recipes, so that every recipe is about 20 characters instead of several pages.

Smuggling

Even though there are severe restrictions on taking plant products into China, we brought some lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, galangal and fresh turmeric from Malaysia, so we could make some Indonesian foodz.

(I would like to add that we were very goody two-shoes about the smuggling --we had the lemongrass conspicuously sticking out of a bag and we asked the customs guy if it was OK if we smuggled in some Malaysian ingredients. They looked a bit suspicious at first, but when we told them it was just for our own cooking, they waved us through.)

Sadly our meatz was not fatty enough, so the beef rendang was a little dry and not as brown as I would have liked. The fried boiled eggs were great though, as was the acar.

Sambal

After having our fill of German food, beer and Glühwein, we went to Sambal, an Indonesian restaurant. The place has been here for a while, and we were wondering when they will get around to decorating it.

We had gado gado:

beef randang:

and some more dishes, which sadly are not pictured, because our everlasting batteries finally died.

Rijsttafel, Redux

We heated up some leftover buncis and rendang. Yum-o.

Rijsttafel, part I

We are following the advice of Frans's former Indonesian neighbor, and we have started cooking today for a rijsttafel that will hopefully take place next week.

We made eggs in a spicy tomato sauce (prep photos only):



And we made our favorite: Beef Rendang. As our cookbook author says, "the meat, coconut milk, and flavoring paste will [...] go on a fascinating journey":