Fire Islands | Eleanor Ford
Fire Islands: Recipes from Indonesia
By Eleanor Ford
Intro: Welcome to the number-one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book, with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City sitting at her dining room table talking to cookbook authors.
Eleanor Ford: I'm Eleanor Ford, and my latest cookbook is called Fire Islands: Recipes From Indonesia.
Suzy Chase: For more Cookery by the Book, you can follow me on Instagram. If you enjoy this podcast, please be sure to share it with a friend. I'm always looking for new people to enjoy Cookery by the Book. Now on with the show.
First off, congratulations on winning two Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. Tell us about these awards.
Eleanor Ford: Well, I'm delighted that Fire Islands has been chosen as a country winner in two categories. One is international cookbook, and the other is spice, which is particularly pleasing as Indonesia is a land of spice.
Suzy Chase: Indonesia is a traveler's paradise with cuisine as vibrant and thrilling as its scenery. You give us a personal, intimate portrait of a country and it's cooking through your unique lens. During your childhood, you went back to Indonesia year after year because your father was an architect and built hotels in Bali and Java. Describe the magic of the Indonesian archipelago.
Eleanor Ford: As a child, it was the most magical place to go because, perhaps, the diversity that comes with such a large and extensive set of islands. I'd spend time on the beaches, of course, but also in palaces belonging to sultans and in temples with amazing festivals and ceremony and gamelan music, and then at night markets eating the incredible food. It was a really exciting place to spend a lot of my childhood.
Suzy Chase: Now, how often did you go back? Did you go back a few times a year or once a year?
Eleanor Ford: Oh, we'd be there quite a lot. I spent about three or four months every year there. Sometimes I took homeschooling with me and, other times, it was during the holidays, but it was a big part of my childhood. I lived this dual life between London and the city and then this amazing tropical idyll of Indonesia.
Suzy Chase: How did your mom like it?
Eleanor Ford: Oh, she loved it. She was immersed fully in the culture. She learned the language. We felt very lucky and be privileged to be there and made a lot of friends. It was a great life for all of us.
Suzy Chase: Then let's fast forward to one particularly gray winter in London when you and your husband decided to move to Indonesia with your young children. Why did you want to make that move, and what was it like coming back now as a mother?
Eleanor Ford: It was this book that spurred our move there. I had grown up eating these incredible flavors of Indonesia. They were just part of my upbringing. I realized that they haven't traveled far outside of the country. People don't tend to know about Indonesian food unless they spend time in the country.
I realized that I wanted to share these flavors that I knew so well. I wanted to share them with my own children in the way that they'd been a part of my childhood. I wanted to share them in my writing as well, so we, yes, made a decision as a family to move there when the children were still young enough not to have started school and we had the freedom to explore and travel.
Suzy Chase: How did the children like it?
Eleanor Ford: Oh, they couldn't have been more excited by this new world that they entered, sort of running barefoot through the grass and on the beaches. They had a completely new outlook on life, and I was very happy, as a mother, to see that for them.
Suzy Chase: Wow, that's so dreamy. Are you living there now?
Eleanor Ford: No, no. We're back in London now. It was a full-month move that was spent intensively researching as much as I could about the food and the recipes. Then I wanted to bring them back and test everything in my London kitchen to make sure that the methods and the ingredients translated to a Western kitchen and that this could be food that anyone could cook, not just ingredients that sound exotic and wonderful but are out of reach.
Suzy Chase: Nearly 18,000 islands make up the world's largest archipelago covering the distance of Britain to Iraq. That boggles my mind that it's one single country.
Eleanor Ford: It's an extraordinary country. Unity in diversity is one of the national mottos because there is such huge diversity. There are certain things that unite people, people of different religions, different races, different languages. Yeah. There's something about the food, I think, that's a unifier. One thing that crosses all of these different islands is a love for chili sambals, the fiery sauces that you put alongside food so you can adjust the heat and spice and sourness of your meal as you eat.
Suzy Chase: First, let's talk about the chapters. How did you choose to divide up this cookbook? I thought it was so very interesting.
Eleanor Ford: Well, what I wanted to do was show the necessity for balance within an Indonesian meal. Rather than having a starter or a main course, that's not really how food is eaten, I've divided the chapters by texture and by flavor.
To put a complete Indonesian meal together, you might want to choose a different dish from different chapters, something that's rich and creamy, maybe a coconut milk curry that's slow cooked and unctuous, and then maybe something that's quickly fried and aromatic, like maybe some grilled chicken satay with some peanut sauce, and then a salad that's fresh and bright with grated coconut and spices. Finally, you might want a sour element, something like prawns cooked in a chili sambal with lime leaves so that you've got different flavors that all balance each other out and compliment each other in one meal.
Suzy Chase: For example, Chapter One, Crunchy Snacks and Street Food on page 24 with ingredients for fragrance on page 38. What are some ingredients to add fragrance?
Eleanor Ford: To add fragrance to the food, there are those typical ingredients from Southeast Asia, like lemongrass and lime leaves. Then there's also the roots, the galangal and turmeric and ginger, so you've got all of the... and then the lime leaves I mentioned earlier as well as the actual kaffir lime fruit. All of these are bringing that kind of bright, aromatic, centered note to the food, and they work so well together. Often, they're combined in a different dish, lots of these different flavors, but they work off each other and each kind of lift the other.
Suzy Chase: Then we move on to Chapter Seven, which is entitled Awakening the Senses. You wrote that Indonesians love to add an element of crunch to food, and the crackling sound as you eat is said to stimulate the appetite. Tell us about that and the family-owned food stalls highlighted in Chapter Seven.
Eleanor Ford: Yes. Well, one of the things I love about Indonesian food is that crunch has such an important element. Every meal, along with the different textures and kind of rich levels of richness and levels of spice that I was talking about earlier, every meal should have something crunchy, something that crackles in the mouth, something that makes your mouth excited. There's a word in Indonesian, enak, which is delicious, but it's more than delicious because it's something that's appealing for all the senses. It could be a music could be enak or a massage or definitely food because it's more than just the taste. It's how it looks, and it's how it feels in the mouth.
Crunchy elements, there's always something on the table which you can sprinkle over your food. It might be a serundeng, which is grated coconut that's been fried with spices until it becomes crunchy and dry, and you can scatter that over. It might be rice crackers, or there are melinjo nut crackers called emping, which are a little bit bitter, but anyone who's eaten them knows how addictive they can be. Yes, adding something, even if it's just a scattering of those fried shallots that you can buy, crisp fried shallots in a tub, it always adds a little extra element to the dish.
Suzy Chase: Is a meal a meal if it doesn't have rice?
Eleanor Ford: Ah, that's an interesting question. Quite a lot of Indonesian... Well, no. An Indonesian will say that they haven't eaten unless they've eaten rice, but then a quite lot of snacks can be very substantial in their own rights. There might be a large dish of noodles, but it's not a meal unless rice is there as the core element. Rice is sort of the center. It's the canvas on which the other flavors are painted, but rice is said to be, yeah, the core part of any meal.
Suzy Chase: Street food makes up about a third of the daily food in Indonesia. Would you say street food is the most authentic depiction of Indonesian dishes?
Eleanor Ford: I don't think I'd necessarily say authentic. I'm a home cook myself. I'm drawn so much to home cooking. I think that it's in the home you often get the sort of simplest dishes that make the most impact. I think street food is hugely important. Everyone loves it. It's very much part of daily life in Indonesia because you can go out, you can grab a snack. There are wonderful different things to try. I think that it's nice in giving you the variety of different things, different flavors, different texture to choose and to eat in a single day, to choose something that someone else has cooked, but I'm always gravitating to what's cooked at home. I think that those are the dishes that I enjoy the most.
Suzy Chase: Would you say that home cooking and street food are two different types of cuisines?
Eleanor Ford: I think that there's a difference in how people cook at home as opposed to a street stall. A street stall vendor tends to have one dish that they've perfected. They've been cooking that same dish in the same way for years. They've got their own methods. Often, it might be something a little more technically demanding. It might involve deep frying. There might be a hot grill where you've got satay smoking and being turned with flames crackling at the satay sticks. It might be something where a lot of different sauces and ingredients are added to noodles and adjusted according to the person buying its taste.
I think that home cooking tends to be a little slower perhaps. It doesn't have that same drama of a street food theater. It's something that is made for a family. It's made with time and attention, so kind of slower in it's cooking that's not that fast stir-frying. Indonesian stir-frying's different to Chinese in that you don't have that blazing-hot wok where you've got to move quickly. Things are done more slowly, more measured, and there's more food in the wok so that flavors have time to develop.
Suzy Chase: Describe the sights and sounds of the street food scene.
Eleanor Ford: Yes, sounds is an important thing because when you have roving street vendors with their perambulating carts, they often are making a sound to draw customers out from the houses, out from their places of work. They might be banging a piece of bamboo, which might signal one dish or clanging a bell for another.
The carts that they're pushing are called kaki lima, meaning five-footed. That's from the three wheels of the cart and the two of the vendor that are pushing them. Each vendor will have that own wares that they're selling. So often, that will come with this cacophony of noise and smells. It's a very exciting place to eat.
Suzy Chase: It all starts with bumbu. For us home cooks, describe the spice pastes that are the foundation of most of the recipes.
Eleanor Ford: Well, what's interesting about Indonesian cooking is it relies so much on fresh spices rather than dried, particularly this coming from the original spice islands where so many of our dried spices come from. Indonesia, after all, was the only place where cloves and nutmeg once grew.
In the daily cooking, it tends to be the fresh spices that are ground together to form a spice paste. This typically will start with shallots and garlic, the red and white sisters they're called as they come together, ginger, perhaps galangal, chili, and often, lemongrass or lime leaves are in there. These will be ground up, and different adjustments, different additions can really change the foundation of a dish, but it's a similar palette of ingredients. This is ground up together, either in a food processor or a pestle and mortar, and then fried to release the fragrance into the dish before other ingredients are added. This really is the kind of foundation of so much of the cooking.
Suzy Chase: In the cookbook, you give us an in-depth look at an Indonesian kitchen.
Eleanor Ford: Well, I wouldn't say that there's one particular kitchen. I saw a huge variety. I tried to go to as many as I could to learn from as many people as I could how to cook the food. Traditional kitchens tended to be outside the main house in a separate building so that they could become smoky from the cooking fires, and then people would sit outside them on the floors or a terrace chopping and preparing the food.
I think that one unifier across every kitchen, regardless of how modern and gleaming or how traditional, is the use of an ulek, which is the pestle and mortar used in Indonesia. They're a lovely looking thing. They have a sort of wider shallow bowl, and they're made of volcanic rock, which is a little textured and gritty. If you are using it to make a bumbu, the texture really helps break down the ingredients quickly to a paste, and you do it in a kind of pleasing rocking movement. That you'll find in every kitchen.
Suzy Chase: Indonesia is the third-largest producer in the world of rice, yet it's still imports rice. How come?
Eleanor Ford: It's just such an important part of the diet. There are some islands that eat rice more than others, those that tend to grow rice themselves. As you move further east, less rice is grown, and there's a more of a reliance on starches, sweet potatoes or cassavas, corns, but still people love rice. It's a foundation of the cuisine and, despite these beautiful rice-terraced islands, there's not enough to meet with the demand.
Suzy Chase: Cooking is said to awaken the spirit omerta. Is that how you pronounce it?
Eleanor Ford: Yes. I think this is in Balinese and some Javanese culture.
Suzy Chase: Which the omerta is held in grains. Apparently, chatter disturbs the omerta, and children learn about eating without talking. That's a really good parenting tip. That made me laugh.
Eleanor Ford: Yes, some people told me about nursery rhymes they'd learned as young children where it was talking about respecting the rice and not talking when you're eating. I think there are lots of different, of course, different ways of eating in Indonesia. Sometimes it's a big communal event, huge festivals with amazing spreads of foods where people gather. Other times, perhaps on a more day to day, where someone will just take the little food that's been prepared earlier in the day and sit somewhere quietly without talking, without reading, without being distracted by something else and really concentrate on the food that they're eating. I like that.
Suzy Chase: What's your favorite Indonesian dish in this cookbook that takes you back?
Eleanor Ford: Oh, goodness. What takes me back, it would then have to be the pancakes. They're stained green by pandan leaves, lovely crepes, very easy to make. Inside, there is a filling of palm sugar and fresh-grated coconut. It's so addictive. That is just the taste of my childhood.
Suzy Chase: How are the leaves worked into the pancake?
Eleanor Ford: Well, you can do one of two things. You can whiz up a couple of fresh pandan leaves, which have got the most lovely scent. They're sort of often described as a vanilla of southeast Asian cooking because they're usually used in sweet cooking. Sometimes they're added to rice as well. If you can get the fresh leaves, you can whiz them up with the liquid, and then you strain that lovely dark green liquid and add it to the batter for the pancakes. Alternatively, you can buy pandan essence rather like vanilla essence. It's got a lovely flavor that it brings, very subtle but distinctive.
Suzy Chase: The other day, I made your recipe for Turmeric Jamu on page 224. Describe this.
Eleanor Ford: Ah, so Jamus are a tonic, ancient tonics originated in Java over 1,000 years ago. Princesses were said to drink Jamus to keep them young and vital. It's something that's continued.
Suzy Chase: That's why I made it.
Eleanor Ford: Did you feel young and vital?
Suzy Chase: I'm feeling so young and vital.
Eleanor Ford: The turmeric one is lovely because it's very fresh. It's that bright orange, and then it's mixed with... is it with ginger, I think it's got in that one?
Suzy Chase: Yes.
Eleanor Ford: As well and lime juice.
Suzy Chase: And honey.
Eleanor Ford: And honey. There are lots of different variants all using leaves or herbs. There's one I make quite often with tamarind, which is sweet because of palm sugar that's added, and that's got the pandan leaves as well. Just something about it rather than reminds me of Coca-Cola, that sort of spices infused with a sweet liquid. There's something like an early cola about it.
Some of the Jamus can be very taxing. They can be very bitter and green, particularly those with extra health-giving qualities, but they can be delightful to drink as well. I've gone for the less excruciating versions in the book, the ones that are a real pleasure.
Suzy Chase: Now to my segment called My Favorite Cookbook. Aside from this cookbook, what's your all-time favorite cookbook and why?
Eleanor Ford: Oh, this is such a difficult choice because I'm an avid collector of cookbooks. I've got far too many. I think a really favorite author of mine is Gill Meller who writes about English ingredients in a very beautiful way. He's a real master class in using flavors and seasonal cooking.
Suzy Chase: What's the name of the cookbook?
Eleanor Ford: His first cookbook's called Gather. That's a favorite of mine.
Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web and social media?
Eleanor Ford: I am on Instagram, EleanorFordFood.
Suzy Chase: Thank you so much, Eleanor, for coming on Cookery by the Book podcast.
Eleanor Ford: Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's been a delight talking to you.
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