1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (213 page)

This sweet-sour fruit is complex, exotic, and tangy, and well worth tracking down. Native to Africa but grown in tropic zones around the world, the large and lovely tamarind tree produces clusters of slim, papery-thin, brown pods; inside are small beans surrounded by a rich, flavorful, mildly acidic pulp.

Across the equatorial band, different parts of the tamarind are prized and put to use in a variety of ways. In Indian and Southeast Asian cooking, the meaty pulp is turned into syrup or mashed before being used as a flavoring agent, contributing a pleasantly sour, citrusy zing to the region’s distinctive soups, curries, and stews. In the West Indies, the fruit is sweetened with sugar and made into patties that are sold as a kind of natural candy in the marketplaces of Jamaica, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic. In Latin America, the syrup is used to flavor soft drinks and juices, most familiarly the popular brand of Mexican soda pop, Jarritos. In China and Indonesia, the seeds of the fruit are roasted as crisp, nutty snacks. And the fruit has been in frequent use in the West for many decades—as an ingredient in Worcestershire sauce, it’s an essential component of the Bloody Mary you enjoy at Sunday morning brunch.

The easiest, most convenient way to employ tamarind is in its paste form, far better than the powdered or bottled versions. Thanks to that signature ripe, sour tang, even a small amount slipped into a stir-fry or sauce can revamp and enliven things exponentially.

The tree and its pods are also the objects of spiritual symbolism; certain African tribes consider it sacred, and some Burmese believe the tree to be home to a rain god. The fruit itself is revered across many cultures for its medicinal properties; its pulp is thought to be a powerful anti-inflammatory, a cure for sunstroke, and a tonic for swollen joints, and tamarind lotions and extracts are used in treating everything from conjunctivitis to dysentery to leprosy.

Mail order:
For tamarind in various forms, Rani’s World Foods, tel 281-440-8080,
ranisworldfoods.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Cracking the Coconut
by Su-mei Yu (2000);
Classic Indian Cooking
by Julie Sahni (1980);
Indian Cooking Unfolded
by Raghavan Iyer (2013);
cookstr.com
(search tamarind chutney suneeta);
foodandwine.com
(search tamarind shrimp soup);
bonappetit.com
(search grilled chicken with tamarind orange glaze).
Tip:
If you can’t find tamarind, you may be able to substitute lemon—although aside from being sour the flavors aren’t really related.

A Balinese pig roast is usually reserved for special occasions.

In his 1937 book
Island of Bali
, artist and ethnographer Miguel Covarrubias describes in detail the preparation of a spit-roasted pig for a banquet, including its slaughter and cleaning with boiling water and a sharp piece of coconut shell. “When it comes to preparing banquet food,” he notes, “it is the men, as is universally the case, who […] prepare the festival dishes of roast suckling pig (
bé guling
, in local dialect) … the cooking of which requires the art of famous specialists.” The beast is stuffed, head to tail, with red chiles, garlic, red onions, turmeric, ginger, salt, black pepper, fish paste, and various aromatic leaves, before being sewn up and basted with turmeric-tinted water for flavor and color, and turned and roasted over a low wood fire. “After a few hours of slow roasting, the juiciest and most tender pork is obtained, flavored by the fragrant spices, inside of a deliciously brittle skin covered with a golden-brown glaze. Few dishes in the world can be compared with a well made bé guling,” the author concludes.

Balinese roast suckling pig, now called
babi guling
, is still a star of the island’s cuisine, generally reserved for weddings and other feast days, although it is also available at restaurants that specialize in the dish. As in Covarrubias’s day, side dishes and garnishes might include bean sprouts with crushed peanuts, pyramids of rice, grated coconut, salted duck eggs, and beverages such as
brem
, a sweet wine made from glutinous rice, or the heady palm wine
tuak.

The Balinese town of Ubud became famous as an artist colony and tourist destination in the 1950s and 1960s, and visitors who were the fortunate guests of the local prince, or
tjokorda
, were served very similar, spice-stuffed pigs that were roasted in deep earthen pits lined with banana leaves. Ubud has been considered a mecca for suckling pig ever since, and its status was ensured when Anthony Bourdain visited the town for an episode of his television show
No Reservations
and declared the babi guling
he found there the best he’d ever tasted. One has to wonder how many others he experienced for that comparison.

Where:
In Ubud, Bali
, Ibu Oka, tel 62/361-976345;
in New York
, Daisy May’s BBQ, tel 212-977-1500,
daisymaysbbq.com
(minimum two days advance notice for half or full pig roasts); Rotisserie Georgette, tel 212-390-8060,
rotisserieg.com
(minimum three days advance notice for whole suckling pig).
Further information and recipes:
gourmet.com
(search whole hog with balinese spices).

A lesson in the history of colonialism (along with one of its more benign consequences) can be found in the fact that recipes for Indonesian food are still considered essential in Dutch cookbooks. During the 350 years that the Dutch controlled Indonesia through the Dutch East India Company, planters and traders developed a taste for the spicy, tropical local fare that was in such sharp and colorful contrast to their own wintry soups and stews. With their palates beguiled by such delicacies as salted, curried duck eggs, satays of meat or chicken dipped into spicy peanut sauces, the rainbow of pickled vegetables that is
gado-gado
, and the sustaining spiced fried rice dish known as
nasi goreng
, they attempted meals based on all of those favorites, all at once. The repasts the Dutch named
rijsttafel
, or rice table feasts, centered on rice mounded on shiny green banana leaves, accompanied by a parade of dishes, sauces, and condiments called
sambals
.

Returning the compliment, Indonesians began to offer their own version of the meal, preparing more authentically seasoned versions of dishes that the Dutch liked, and calling the menu
nasi padang
:
nasi
for rice,
padang
for meal. To this day, no self-respecting food buff would go to any large Dutch city—most especially Amsterdam—without seeking out at least one restaurant featuring rijsttafel. Invariably, the meal would include some of these classic offerings:

Acar timun.
Fresh and crunchy saltwater-pickled cucumbers with minced red chiles.

Ajam roedjak.
Tender stewed chicken in a sauce of hot chiles and coconut cream.

Gado-gado.
Cold, colorful mixed vegetables tossed together for a refreshing salad dressed with a vinegar-and garlic-accented peanut sauce.

Ikan pepesan.
Silvery steamed mackerel in an incendiary chile sauce.

Kroepoek.
Glassily crisp shrimp puffs that look like big, snowy potato chips.

Loempiah.
Soft-skinned, Chinese-style egg rolls with fillings of chives, roast pork, and chicken.

Nasi goreng.
Javanese fried rice tossed with bits of roast pork, garlic, and chile, all bound with eggs scrambled into the frying rice.

Oedang piendang koening.
Charcoal-grilled jumbo shrimp in a lemongrass-scented sweet-and-sour sauce.

Otak-otak.
Grilled fish cakes with chile-peanut sauce.

Pisang goreng.
Sweet and meaty bananas baked in butter with salt and lemon or lime juice.

Redang.
Beef stewed in a pungent curry sauce.

Sambal goreng.
A hotly spiced side dish that may be based on shrimp, green beans, soy cakes, or cheese.

Satay.
Pork, chicken, beef, or goat cubes charcoal-grilled on tiny bamboo skewers and dipped in a pungent chile-peanut sauce.

Seroendeng.
A condiment of crisply fried coconut flakes tossed with roasted peanuts.

Soto ajam.
A heady and slightly sour chicken soup enriched with coconut milk.

Where:
In Amsterdam
, Tempo Doeloe, tel 31/20-625-6718,
tempodoeloerestaurant.nl
; Restaurant Blauw, tel 31/206-755-000,
restaurantblauw.nl
;
in Jakarta
, Kunstkring Paleis, tel 62/21-390-0-899,
tuguhotels.com
(click Tugu Kunstkring Paleis, then Indonesia Cultural Dining);
in New York
, Bali Nusa Indah, tel 212-265-2200,
balinusaindah.net
;
in Brookline, MA
, Java Indonesian Restaurant, tel 718-832-4583; Selamat Pagi, tel 718-701-4333,
selamatpagibrooklyn.com
;
in Miami
, The Indomania Restaurant, tel 305-535-6332,
indomaniarestaurant.com
;
in Houston
, Rice Bowl Chinese and Indonesian Restaurant, tel 281-988-9912,
ricebowlhouston.com
;
in San Francisco
, Borobudur, tel 415-775-1512,
borobudursf.com
.
Mail order:
indofoodstore.com
(search limes; kecap soy sauce; shrimp crackers; ibu sambal; sambal chili sauce; palm sugar).
Further information and recipes:
Authentic Recipes from Indonesia
by Heinz Von Holzen, Lother Arsana, and Wendy Hutton (2006);
The Art of Dutch Cooking
by C. Countess van Limburg Stirum (1962);
foodandwine.com
(search gado gado);
epicurious.com
(search indonesian fried rice);
saveur.com
(search rijstaffel; acar timun; gulai sayur);
nytimes.com
(search soto ayam);
dutchcommunity.com
(search how to prepare a typical indonesian rijsttafel).