Cooking Abroad

Mewahnya Rawon Di Dapur Kiwi

mewahnya-rawon-di-dapur-kiwi

Onewhero is a farming district in Waikato, about 55 km from the center of the City of Sails, Auckland, New Zealand. Like the other hamlets in rural regions in the land of the Kiwi, Onewhero is set amid a landscape of green hills populated by cattle and sheep, and the squares of rice fields, with the Waikato River winding through and passing underneath the Tukau Bridge as it flows into the distance. My husband and I make a living from tilling the soil and raising livestock on a micro-business scale, while bringing up our children in a healthy environment full of valuable experiences with nature.

Even here, I attempt to nurture and maintain the culture of Indonesia by introducing “exotic” foods to my extended family here, and my Pakeha, Maori, friends, as well as to the other immigrants from various countries, on a daily basis and at special events. The foods I have introduced jenang grendul, rempeyek, empek-empek, semprit sagu, nastar, bika ambon, sayur asem, ikan pindang, and rendang Padang, as well as nasi uduk, nasi goreng, and even bubur ayam. I have done this because of my intense, often painful, longing for the dishes of my country of origin: Indonesia.

This hasn’t been easy because Asian food shops that sell Indonesian ingredients are rare in our area. Gula Jawa, for instance; I can only get a dry, rough textured version of this palm sugar produced and imported from a country other than Indonesia. As well, the only pandan leaves, cassava, turmeric, galingale, and banana leaves I can find are frozen, not fresh. Yet, I am plenty happy just to be able to get those ingredients at all.

Not to mention tempeh, which is an inexpensive staple food in Indonesia, is rare and very expensive when one can find it. I finally resorted to making my own tempeh for our kitchen at home.

Then, out of the blue, I started craving rawon (a soup with a rich black broth and specific flavor).

That meant that I would have to find keluak, a spice that comes from the fruit of the kepayang tree. I went to every Asian food store in Pukekohe, which is about 20 km from our home. Not one of the shopkeepers even knew what it was, and did not even recognize it from the picture I showed them on my mobile phone. Disappointed to almost the point of despair, I went home with the idea of trying to make rawon from sweet soy sauce. That was a disaster! What I ended up with was a mix between semur daging (a kind of stew) and a soto (beef broth) with sweet soy sauce.

Thank goodness, a friend in Auckland sent news that a store called the Tofu Shop in Northcote suburb, to the north of Waitemata Harbour in Auckland, sold a wide variety of food products from Indonesia. The real thing! Original! By chance, they had keluak in stock at that time.

I immediately called that shop, and I nearly cried when the owner said they would set aside the last two bags of keluak they had just for me. The very thing I really needed.

However, I was a bit taken aback at the price: One bag containing only eight pieces of keluak cost around five dollars, or Rp400,000, while in Indonesia, traditional markets sold it for Rp10,00 per kilogram.

Yet, given that keluak was rarely available here in New Zealand, I could understand why the price was that high.

To make a long story short: Just imagine, for the next two months I was able to make three batches of rawon. That resolved my craving!