Spiciest Fare of the Spice Islands
LEAD: WHEN Neil Armstrong stepped on to the moon, an Indonesian illustrator commemorated the event with a cartoon that still has his countrymen laughing: ''Wonder if he'll find a Padang restaurant?'' one Indonesian was shown saying to another.
WHEN Neil Armstrong stepped on to the moon, an Indonesian illustrator commemorated the event with a cartoon that still has his countrymen laughing: ''Wonder if he'll find a Padang restaurant?'' one Indonesian was shown saying to another.
Most Americans are still unacquainted with Padang cooking, the spiciest food from an archipelago renowned as the Spice Islands. But sail to the smallest fishing village on the remote eastern island of Roti, visit a river town in the jungles of Irian Jaya or Kalimantan, and if there is a restaurant, it is sure to be Padang-style.
Rumah makan Padang are Indonesia's fast-food restaurants. No one knows for sure how many of these culinary hot spots are spread throughout the archipelago, but educated guesses range in the tens of thousands. Even the smallest establishment will have more than a dozen dishes; larger ones offer 30 or more. These dishes, prepared early every morning, are stacked in a pyramid display in the front window, a lace curtain shielding them from flies and dust.
In a country where it might take an hour or more to get served in a restaurant, the speed with which a meal appears is almost as searing as the food itself. As soon as a customer sits down, a waiter sets up the table, balancing as many as 22 dishes on his left arm, carrying three in his right hand (this Barnum & Bailey act alone requires years of practice and shops full of broken plates). Essentially it is a banquet on demand: curries and spicy stews of beef, chicken and goat plus chili-encrusted prawns and fish, side dishes of boiled eggs in chili sauce, mountain-fern tips called pakis, young jackfruit (from the mulberry family), leaves of the cassava, sambal lado (a hot condiment of green chilies and shallots) and, as in all Indonesian meals, rice.
There is no problem calculating the bill: customers are simply charged for what they eat - about 25 cents to $1.15 for each dish, depending on the size and type; the untouched portions are served to other patrons. No doubt the practice would provoke American departments of health into steamy storms of denunciations, but in fact Padang restaurants tend to be the nation's cleanest and the food is delicious, as long as tongues and stomachs can withstand the chili-fired cooking.
Padang restaurants take their name from a port on the west coast of Sumatra, the northwestern-most island of the Indonesian archipelago. One of the closest harbors to the ancient trading centers of China, India and Europe, for centuries ships have anchored in this equatorial port to load up with the treasures of the nearby mountains and high plains: pepper, nutmeg, coffee, copra and gold. In fact, it was the pepper trade from this and other Sumatran ports that fueled the treasury of the young American republic. At the end of the 1700's, Yankee schooners from Salem and New York braved wild seas and even pirates for valuable cargoes of Sumatran pepper and spices. Today the harbor is still filled with ships bound for Singapore, the Netherlands, Japan and the United States. Pony carts and Toyota pickups bring forests of cinnamon to warehouses where men cut the branches and bark into manageable sizes with chain saws, filling the air with red, eye-tingling, nose-tickling dust.
For all their availability, pepper and cinnamon are used sparingly in the local cuisine. Instead, chilies - handfuls of them, mounds of them - give Padang food its fire, and influences from Indian and Arab cuisines abound. There is a special word in Indonesian for the hot-spicy taste - pedas - and there is not one Padang dish that it does not describe.
Chilies are almost an addiction with the people of the area, the Minangkabau; for snacks they are fond of eating the tongue-searing tiny cabe rawit (bird's eye chili) by the handful, with just a little salt, just like popcorn. Ever the good businessmen, West Sumatrans modify their recipes for their clients. Ahmad Faozan, who owns a Padang restaurant in Bali, says he uses 20 hot chilies to two pounds of beef in preparing a stew called rendang for his own family. He cuts the number in half for his restaurant, frequented by Balinese (who also like their food pedas) and West Sumatran expatriates. ''For Westerners,'' he shrugs his shoulders and smiles, ''I cut by 50 percent again, if I know they're coming.''
One of the reasons for the proliferation of Padang restaurants is the peripatetic nature of Minangkabau men. For centuries, men in their late teens left their villages in search of their fortune, while the women remained at home and tended the family's rice fields.
The Minangkabau, who are strict Muslims, are perhaps the world's largest matriarchal society: after marriage, a man moves to his mother-in-law's house, where as many as 30 people live. Land is passed from mother to daughter. Other Indonesian males like to joke about this: No wonder, they say, the Minangkabau men leave: they're so henpecked. West Sumatran men remain sanguine. ''It's right that we should leave and return home with money, a success,'' explained one well-to-do Minangkabau hotel manager in Jakarta. ''It's easier for men to go out in the world alone. And if the women didn't own the land, what would happen to them if the man died?''
Catering to these itinerant men, most Padang restaurants are open 24 hours, a boon in a country where restaurants often close by 10 P.M. and most small food stalls roll down their awnings by 11 P.M.
IN the past five years there have been big changes in the traditional rumah makan Padang, according to Suryatini Ganie, editor of Selera, Indonesia's equivalent to Gourmet magazine. She points to Salero Bagindo (Taste of Kings), a successful chain of Padang restaurants in Jakarta, with branches in Jogjakarta and Singapore. In these sparkling clean, fluorescent-bright establishments, dishes are pushed around on stainless-steel steam trolleys, keeping the food hot as is the Western custom. Food is prepared in a central kitchen and whizzed by motorcycle to sites around the city; there are even waitresses rather than waiters, a break with tradition for the Minangkabau.
But some things have not changed. Most Padang restaurants are decorated with drawings of the family longhouse, its peaked roof resembling buffalo horns. Paintings of Mecca, sometimes outlined in neon, hang next to notices that no dog or pig is served - two meats proscribed by Islamic law.
Most important, all dishes are made with santan, or coconut milk, the foundation for virtually all Padang cooking, which acts as a thickening agent in addition to imparting flavor. ''If there is no coconut, it is not Padang,'' said Ms. Ganie.
Buffalo (or, as modern cattle ranches grow in number and sophistication, beef) is also a staple of West Sumatran cooking. Indeed, so important is the buffalo to the society that residents are quick to tell visitors that the derivation of their name comes from menang, victory, and kerbau, water buffalo, a reference to a small calf that saved the region's freedom. The tale, more myth than fact, nonetheless gives one a sense of how wit and cleverness are valued by the society.
Long ago, the story goes, a powerful Javanese king decided to conquer West Sumatra. Realizing that his reputation as a fierce warlord was often threat enough to bring regions to their knees, he sent a delegation to demand total surrender. Mindful of the Javanese's military might, but loath to lose his land's independence, the head of the Minangkabau council proposed an alternative to war: each side would pit a buffalo against the other's, and the outcome of the contest would determine the Minangkabaus' fate.
The Javanese sultan, a gambling man, agreed to the wager and sent his men off to find the most ferocious buffalo in all Java. Meantime, the council chief told the others his idea: to take a young calf away from its mother for three days before the contest, and then let it into the arena. The others shook their heads, not understanding his plan.
When the day of the contest arrived, the Javanese king laughed and the Minangkabau people sighed in despair when they saw a tiny calf, its horns filed to sharp points, enter the arena where the giant Javanese buffalo stood pawing the earth. Even the bull hesitated. But the calf, seeing a buffalo on the other side of the ring, had no such hesitation. In a frantic search for milk, the calf ran under the huge buffalo, goring it with his razor-sharp horns. The Javanese sultan left without his buffalo or any new lands, and the Minangkabau celebrated their victory with a feast.
Such a feast inevitably includes rendang, the beef stew with chili and coconut milk. Dating back to days when only meat from the oldest, toughest buffaloes was used (the younger buffaloes were spared for work in the rice fields), rendang is cooked for hours over a low flame until all the sauce is absorbed. Ms. Ganie and others say rendang can be kept in air-tight jars for months without spoiling, because of the slow cooking and abundance of spices. ''It is the perfect food for the Minangkabau male,'' said Mr. Faozan in his restaurant. ''The wife cooks it for him before he leaves to seek his fortune. Weeks later, many miles away, he can still eat and think of home.''
WHERE TO SAMPLE
Following is a selection of Padang restaurants:
In Jakarta (Java), the main branch of Salero Bagindo, 76 Jalan Hos Cokrominoto, telephone 336-671. Natrabu, a well-established Padang restaurant, 29A Jalan H. Agus Salim; 335-668. In Padang, Sumatra, Pagi Sore, 143 Jalan Pondok. In Bukittinggi, Sumatra, Simpang Raya, across from the clock tower (Jam Gadang) in the town square; 22858.
In Bali, Bundo Kanduang, 112A Jalan Diponegoro; 28551. - S. M. C.
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