Indonesian food culture

Indonesian cuisine is extremely diverse and plays an important role in its culture. It has a myriad of influences: Indigenous techniques for preparing food largely came from India, China and the Middle East. The Dutch popularized bread and cheese in Indonesia.

Food is also shaped by the regional availability of spices and the widespread availability of rice. Known for its famous 'Spice Islands,' Indonesia produces foods that are commonly highly spiced, while rice is considered a staple.

In some parts of Indonesia, it is most common to eat with one's hands. In others, people prefer using a spoon with a fork to push food onto the spoon with.

Considering the huge Muslim population in Indonesia, there usually isn't a lot of pork to be found. Instead, seafood and chicken are plentiful.

I have family and family friends in Jakarta. Whenever I visit, they are always offering food and chances to go out to restaurants. Most of our socializing is done over a meal. Refusing food is basically considered rude because you're essentially saying that their food isn't good enough for you.

Indonesia has a few national dishes. The first is sate, grilled skewered meat or tofu. I like it with spicy peanut sauce drizzled on top.

The second is nasi goreng, which means fried rice. It's spiced with kecap manis, a brown sweet soy sauce, which gives it its color and sweetness, and can be accompanied by egg, meat, and vegetables.

The third is gado-gado, boiled vegetable salad with peanut sauce dressing (we love peanut sauce).

And the last one is soto, a yellow soup of broth, meat, vegetables, and sometimes, vermicelli noodles.

Is your mouth watering yet? I'm getting hungry looking at these pictures myself. We can see the Chinese influence on Indonesian cuisine when we look at such dishes that contain noodles as bakmi (noodles) with bakso (fish balls). These you can find anywhere from the mall to the street vendors.

My personal favorites, which I sadly don't have pictures for, are rendang, a spicy beef and potato dish served on rice, and pempek, fish and tapioca cakes swimming in a dark, sweet and sour sauce.

People are always asking me what Indonesian food is like and it's hard to find the answer to that because you can't really categorize it all under one kind of food. I usually say something like, it's really flavorful - Indonesians love all the spices. But that really varies from region to region as well.

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