Craving for local food in Jakarta

By Aida Greenbury

JAKARTA (JP): Scanning the shelves of imported fruit and vegetables in the supermarket. Who says that you can't find fresh rock melon, Cape gooseberries, artichokes, or even freshly picked field mushrooms in Jakarta? You might have to reach deep into your pocket and spend money equal to the weekly salary of a local government official, but hey, who cares, just so long as you can taste the autumn breeze and smell the wet soil mixed with melted snow in every bite. Just for a moment, you can forget that you're living in a crisis-stricken country.

A lingering bittersweet yet familiar aroma froze my steps. I saw a wooden box piled high with football sized yellowish green spiky fruit in front of me. The sign underneath read "Durian from Bangkok". The sight reminded me of my conversation last night with Tina, an Indonesian lady married to an Australian friend of mine.

"I bought one tray of durian yesterday. I couldn't bring it home without having it triple wrapped by the supermarket attendant. And I had to eat it standing in the backyard in the sun, about 100 meters away from the house. You can imagine, I probably invited the whole blow fly population in the neighborhood by doing that."

"It's my husband, he can't stand the smell of durian," she said after I had asked why.

Yea, yea, that's a classic and it's not only durian. I've heard that Caucasians also can't stand the smell let alone the taste of shrimp paste, jackfruit, salted duck eggs along with a lot of other local food. Ever heard a saying "When in Rome, eat and smell like the Romans do?" Maybe not, I made it up.

But, when I think about it, I can't really blame their attitude. I couldn't imagine eating Caucasian specialties like haggis, black pudding or herring if I was living abroad either.

A lot of Indonesian people who are married to expatriates tend to adjust their tastes. Serving a dinner consisting of cassava crackers, chili sauce and dried shredded meat might be strictly forbidden. Or else, a stack of receipts from Uncle Sam's Burger Paradise is the next thing they might find on their spouses' bedside tables.

My poor friend Tina has to wait until her husband leaves for work to sneak out and buy chicken noodle soup from a street-side foodstall behind her sky-scraping apartment. She likes to eat it with tons of green chilies. Her husband saw her eating chilies once, and he ended up with stomach problem.

What's wrong with local food anyway? Nothing really, except in Tina's situation it's probably the obvious hygiene issue. I said obvious because at a streetside foodstall you can actually see the kitchen preparations. You can enjoy watching the seller wash his or her bowls in a bucket filled with yellowish water where 20 other bowls have been previously cleaned. But trust me, if you turn a blind eye and cross your fingers these streetfoods are quite edible.

I heard somebody say that Indonesians can eat less hygienic food because their stomachs have developed some sort of special bacterium. I have to check with my doctor to see whether it's true or not. But hey, living without such horrible bacterium wouldn't hurt either, would it?

Is it really necessary to stay away from less healthy, traditionally prepared local food? Or is it better to adjust your diet to a western one?

The answer, like the solution to many of the problems in this country, is probably education. Maybe some Indonesians need to be taught about food hygiene. Clean food, without excess fat, germs, carbon monoxide or dust from nearby traffic is a lot healthier and tastes better.

One reason for not eating a 100-percent western diet, aside from sustaining Indonesia's valuable food heritage, is that imported foods are way overpriced here.

I think if you happen to share the same roof with a westerner, the best way out is to compromise. Try to prepare a combination of western and eastern menus: rice porridge with French toast on the side for breakfast, chicken pie with fresh gado-gado salad for lunch, and steak with rendang sauce for dinner. If you have the urge to eat something that revolts your partner, try to have your meal in front of the television. Turn on Oprah as a distraction if you have a female partner, or the World Golf Championship if he's male. I guarantee that your partner won't even twitch, even if you have sizzling chicken intestines on your plate.

A few years ago, I lived in Amsterdam for a couple of months. After weeks of consuming pea-sausage soup, cream cauliflower, Edam cheese sandwiches and, of course, the obligatory mayonnaise covered petat, I was craving for my childhood tastes. I went to a Chinese-Indonesian small supermarket around from my apartment block to find it. After a long search and a lot of Tarzan signals, I finally found what I wanted in between the dusty shelves. It was a canned gudeg (a sweet and spicy young jackfruit dish). I paid almost four dollars for something I would pay no more than 50 cents in my country. It was okay; I needed a can of something tropical to boost my system at the time.

That cold windy night, after enjoying a tropical dinner in an overheated room, I had the worst stomach cramps of my life.

I guess that after consuming Europe's precious water and food everyday for so long my stomach was no longer bacterium proof. I thought: "O no, I'm becoming a stranger to my own food!"