Life is full of unexpected twists.
When he was a 19-year-old film student at the San Francisco Art Insitute, James Oseland was waiting for a bus one rainy afternoon when he ran into Tanya Alwi, a fellow classmate. Over coffee he learned that she lived in Jakarta. Her father, Des Alwi, was a “descendant of an aristocratic Muslim family of nutmeg and pearl traders from Banda…” and a celebrated freedom fighter against the Dutch in the 1940's. After a probing conversation, she invited him to visit her family during summer vacation.
A few weeks later, the California boy who had grown up in a suburban tract house watching The Brady Bunch and eating frozen potpies found himself on a plane to Indonesia. Shortly after his arrival, Tanya took him to meet Bebe Huwei, a film star-turned-psychic: Drawing mystical circles on a piece of paper, Huwei told him that his life had changed for good: “You came here for three months, but you will stay for one year. Then you will keep coming back for the rest of your life….A revolution has begun inside of you. You must accept it.”
With this stroke of fate, Oseland conceived an all-consuming passion for the people and the cuisines of the legendary tropical islands that have lured spice hunters for two millenia. An award winning food writer and cooking teacher, he is currently executive editor of Saveur and author of an enthralling new cookbook, Cradle of Flavor: Home Cooking from the Spice Islands of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. It is a beguiling tale of two decades of travel through these fabled, turbulent lands and of the extraordinary cooks who opened their kitchens and their hearts to him.
My own copy is already spattered with flecks of the Malaysian sambal belcan, a fiery chili, lime and toasted shrimp paste that Oseland recommends serving with dishes like Pan-Seared Tamarind Tuna. I found it good enough to eat with just about everything, from a grilled pork tenderloin from our local farmers market to grocery store roast chicken. In all, the book offers 100 recipes which will likely bring tears of joy to anyone who has ever been seduced by the vibrant, flavorful foods of the region. In 25 trips over two decades, Oseland has foraged in wet markets, waded through rice paddies, learned to speak Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Malaysia, hung out in the kitchens of countless superb cooks learning to make dishes like Black Pepper Crab (go here for another version of this Singapore favorite) and Javanese Chicken Curry with cinnamon and lemon grass--and then relentlessly worked on the recipes until his taste memory tells him that he’s got it right.
The intelligence behind Oseland's passion for the region lends authenticity not only to the recipes, but also to the advice he tenders to cooks who are new to the ingredients and techniques used in this part of the world. If, for instance, you know nothing about kecap manis, the Indonesian sweet soy sauce, Oseland is your man. I’ve spent hours in Asian markets. bewildered by shelves of unfamiliar jars and bottles, trying to pick the "right" one. Now I know to look for Cap Bango brand (with a picture of pelican on the label) because it has no preservatives and “delivers a richer, more complex taste with hints of smoke and honey.” (Kecap manis, by the way, combined with hoisin, soy and rice vinegar, makes a delectable marinade for spareribs.) His pages on unfamiliar seasonings, such as fresh turmeric root, galangal and shrimp paste are worth the price of the book—as are his sections on making curries and spice pastes, the merits of food processors vs. mortars and pestles, and eating with Allah's silverware (the fingers of your right hand).
But I really fell for this book because of Oseland’s serendiptious encounters with fantastic cooks. In West Sumatra, a seatmate on a bus ominously loads a pistol. then insists that author spend the night at his home. Oseland awakes at 4 AM to the fragrance of stir fried garlic: Breakfast by candlelight is a feast of lemon grass fried chicken, a sweet-and-sour pickle, and garlic-laden fried rice topped with fried egg, cucumber and shrimp chips, made by Siti, the mother of his new friend. On the northeast coast of Malaysia, a Chinese woman, closing her tea shop for the night, whips up a divine herbal rice salad, fragrant with finely chopped basil, mint and lemongrass. A wild ride through Eastern Sumatra with Gatot, a vegetable vendor, leads to the Achson, the "Soto King," who sells the world's best spicy chicken soup from a pushcart. Are these encounters random, or, as the soothsayer implied, ordained by fate?
Who knows? Oseland’s first foray into Indonesian cuisine sets the tone for the book: Recovering from a bout of dengue fever, he wanders into the Alwis’ kitchen looking for lime juice. There he finds Inam, the family cook, crushing red chiles in a mortar, making bumbu bumbu, a flavoring paste for green beans in coconut milk. He begins to spend long hours in the kitchen with Inam, watching her make Indonesian fried chicken one day, gado gado (Javanese chopped vegetable salad with peanut sauce) the next, and always writing down the recipes. “You’re strange,” she tells him, “but it’s good for a man to learn to cook.”
Yes, indeed.
For more on James Oseland, see www.jamesoseland.com. Cradle of Flavor, Home Cooking from the Spice Islands of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore (W.W. Norton & Company, 2006) may be ordered from www.amazon.com.