From the old into the new with tasty fare

Suryatini N. Ganie, Contributor/Jakarta

Though we Indonesians actually have no special traditional celebrations for New Year's Eve and the first day of the new year, many people here have the custom of gathering with friends, family or close relatives.

Gatherings can be in the intimacy of their homes, or by following the trend of celebrating it in restaurants or hotels offering special menus to pass the evening until midnight.

Long forgotten in urban areas are the evenings when there was no TV, and those wanting to experience the excitement of going into a new year had to pass the evening with some special traditional games. One of those games -- next to playing cards -- was the traditional dakon in Javanese or congklak (a board game with receptacles) in other local languages.

The dakon is a piece of wood, about half a meter in length and mostly taken from an easy to carve wood variety, like from the stem of the sawo (sapodilla) tree.

To make a piece of wood into a dakon, one has to carve two lines of seven small wells and two larger ones at the end of each line. Playing the dakon was done with the dried pits of the tamarind fruit in the inland, and with small shells in the coastal areas.

In each well there will be an uneven amount of pits or shells to begin the game with. It will be mostly five, seven or nine pieces. The player who begins the game is mostly the eldest one or chosen by manner of when, at the count of three, the players put out one of the fingers of the right hand.

Traditionally, the winner is the one with the small little finger if the other has shown his thumb and looses when one of both players shows his forefinger. The winner of thumb versus forefinger is the thumb! Ringfinger and middle finger are never used!

Then the winner has to move the pits or shells along the wells, leaving one pit or shell in each well. After both had their turns the winner will be the one who was able to put all the shells or pits into his bigger well. Some families have several dakons and then a dakon match was organized! The games were mostly done after dinner.

But playing makes one hungry and traditional snacks were kacang bawang or salty garlic-flavored fried peanuts, and kue semprong wijen, sesame covered sweet "oublies". So hopefully the New Year will be sweet and savory.

As a beverage, strong kopi tubruk will be preferred, just some spoons of ground coffee, sugar to taste and boiling water. For the novice, wait until the sediment settles and then drink it! Or, a ginger drink is preferred by the female audience.

Today the artistically carved family dakon is only available in antique shops or sold by a dakon maker from the inland of Central Java. Those dakon are still in the original state, roughly made and not yet painted, mostly bought by villagers.

Back to hunger pangs; old dishes and snacks enjoyed are also forgotten and new creations are taking the place of often more "solid" ones.

A dish on New Year's Eve in the middle of last century was the nasi goreng bumbu, spicy fried rice with chicken stock which was spicier than the nasi goreng of today.

For those tender palates avoiding chili, this culinary veteran makes for easy cooking for New Year's Eve, providing you have a rice cooker on hand, because the authentic method comes with a real able cook!

But because we are going from old to new, why not change the preparation methods of authentic recipes into more contemporary ones?

Another forgotten dish is the famous besengek, which can be made either simple or opulent, according to the ingredients used.

For vegetarians, it could be made from soybean products like tofu or tempeh or both, egg for ovovegetarians and for those preferring chicken, it will be also delicious. Beef is of course the optimum! The dish prefers to be a renown one in foreign countries because when eating in a restaurant in the Netherlands it will be nearly always on the menus.

Time never stops and tastes are also changing in Indonesia's kitchen because so many foreign produce are planted with good results here. Take the potato, formerly a "European" vegetable but now omnipresent: dishes like sambal goreng, for example, or semur (stew), you name it! Even some traditional gado-gado (steamed vegetables served with peanut sauce), like gado-gado Padang has Mr. Potato among its ingredients.

To finish the old, going into the new awakens nostalgic moments. Many of us serve their most favorite snacks which now are available in many a bread or patisserie outlet, like "Amsterdammer oliebollen", "Mutzemandeln" or "Berliner" for my family. Serving them on many New Year's Eves, they are an indelible part of going from the old into the new.

Wishing everybody a Selamat Tahun Baru, Happy New Year, and hopefully tomorrow will be better than today!