Sayur Lodeh

An interview with Patricia Tanumihardja and a recipe from her cookbook "Mortar & Pestle"

As of May 2023, I’ve been living in the Netherlands and looking at Indonesian cuisine with fresh eyes. Growing up in Singapore, with its numerous Indonesian eateries and the overlap between Indonesian and Malay cuisines, the cuisine hasn’t been completely foreign to me, but living here has introduced me to dishes I had never encountered before. One of my favourite Indonesian restaurants in the Netherlands, for instance, makes an exceptional kikil, or stewed cow’s trotter. It’s also fascinating to recognise traces of Dutch influence in familiar foods. At a recent dessert exhibition in a museum, I came across moulds for frying kueh pie tee and flat iron that bore an uncanny resemblance to those used to make love letters, the crisp wafers that we typically enjoy during Lunar New Year.

The Dutch East Indies, now the Republic of Indonesia, was a Dutch colony for over 350 years. It was Indonesia’s spices that drew the Dutch in the 17th century, and they stayed for more than three centuries, until after World War II. Many dishes, thus, bear distinct Dutch influences and this legacy is especially evident in Indonesia’s rich baking heritage. Conversely, Indonesian cuisine has also had its impact on Dutch culinary culture. The rijsttafel — which literally means “rice table” and consists of many dishes served separately, alongside rice — is now popular in the Netherlands, most likely having evolved as a European interpretation of Indonesian communal eating practices.

While exploring these culinary intersections, I’ve found the recently published cookbook “Mortar & Pestle: Classic Indonesian Recipes for the Modern Kitchen” an excellent resource. Written by a mother-daughter duo, the book is, above all, a family portrait and the food that binds it through life’s ebbs and flows. The mortar and pestle, which is foundational to much of Indonesian cooking, serves as the grounding feature of the recipes in this book. Whether used to make bumbu bumbu (the spices pastes that lend complex flavours to anything from curries to soups), or to turn stale bread into breadcrumbs, the mortar and pestle takes pride of place in the family’s kitchen and in this cookbook.

Patricia Tanumihardja is the author of five cookbooks and numerous children’s books. I first learnt of her (possibly more than a decade ago) through Singapore’s libraries — her “The Asian Grandmothers Cookbook”, in particular, left an impression. In “Mortar & Pestle”, she serves as storyteller and guide, weaving together threads of her family history and her mother Juliana’s culinary practices.

Juliana (referred to as Julia in the book) and her husband Rudy were born in Indonesia and moved to Singapore in the 1970s. There, they maintained a strong connection to their Indonesian culinary heritage and became known for hosting large parties, replete with lavish spreads. After their children left for college in Seattle, the couple migrated there in 2002 to be closer to their children and grandchildren. In Seattle, Julia found her calling in feeding homesick Indonesian students who missed their native cuisine, and subsequently opened a restaurant, Julia’s Indonesian Kitchen, with her daughter-in-law. Thirteen years after the restaurant changed ownership, Patricia released the cookbook “Mortar & Pestle”, written in collaboration with her mother.

Patricia Tanumihardja (right) and her mother Juliana Evari Suparman

In the book, Patricia writes that part of her motivation was recognising that “even the younger generation of Indonesians today has trouble recreating family recipes, having left the culinary conjuring to mothers, grandmothers, or the domestic help.” While being instructional, a palpable feeling of love permeates the book as Patricia embroiders family anecdotes and memories into each recipe.

A recipe for ongol ongol (chewy tapioca balls), for example, is enriched with the story of her paternal grandmother selling ongol ongol during the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies. While playing with the hot dough, some spattered onto her father’s right eyebrow, narrowly missing his eye. “He still has a scar to remind him of the incident.”

A clear-eyed observer, Patricia is particularly effective in translating her mother’s kitchen expertise to readers, and the recipes and their accompanying notes are as moving to read as they are helpful. A recipe for kinca duren (durian sauce) is accompanied by a recollection of Julia using bland durian that the family didn’t want to eat out of hand. In a lovely way, this provides context to the instruction of adjusting sugar based on the durian’s sweetness.

Each anecdote, however brief, evokes nostalgia for a time and place in the family’s past, while simultaneously offering a solid footing in the present and an opportunity to look ahead. In her recipe for chicken and potato croquettes, Pat shares a memory from when the family was living in Singapore, where Julia would sun stale pieces of bread in the garden and pound them with a mortar and pestle until they developed the texture of sand. Patricia, however, admits to preferring panko for its light delicate texture. Her unflinching honesty is something that I’ve also noticed and appreciated as we sat down one morning to talk about her experience of writing such a personal cookbook. (The interview below has been edited for clarity and brevity.)

Excerpted from “Mortar & Pestle” by Patricia Tanumihardja and Juliana Evari Suparman

Pamelia: You have written four cookbooks so far. How did you get started on this journey?
Patricia: I've always had a dream about writing cookbooks but, as the child of Asian parents who don't necessarily encourage you to pursue creative pursuits, writing was never on my radar even though I've always enjoyed cooking with my mom and eating good food. My first foray into food writing was during a summer vacation. I went to college in Seattle, Washington and would go home for the summers to Singapore — I got a job writing for the food paper run by Violet Oon during my sophomore or junior year. That was the first time that I thought to myself, “Oh wow, I can write about food, something that I really enjoy.”

I eventually pursued freelance writing about food, travel, and lifestyle and I got to interview the Asian American editorial director for a local boutique publishing house called Sasquatch Books. He told me that he's always wanted to publish a cookbook about Asian grandmothers, their recipes and stories, and I got really excited because the intersection of history, food, and culture was something that I'd always been very interested in. I asked him if I could send him a book proposal, and that's how my first cookbook came about. After publishing that cookbook, I was hooked and wanted to publish more. Publishing, in general, is a little bit of everything — hard work, being in the right place at the right time, and having a bit of luck.

Pamelia: How did “Mortar & Pestle” come about?
Patricia: I've always wanted to publish a cookbook about my family's recipes, so this was a cookbook that I've always wanted to publish. I definitely consider it the passion project of my heart. After my very first cookbook was published, I put together a proposal for Mortar & Pestle. My agent shopped it around but there was just no interest in a cookbook about Indonesian recipes because few people know what Indonesian cuisine is in the U.S. There were so few Indonesian restaurants and not many Americans travel to Indonesia other than Bali. I went on to publish other cookbooks and my agent and I got to a point where we decided to put this project aside. A few months after that, however, she emailed me and said, “You know how we always talk about how shopping cookbooks around is kind of like dating? Well, your other half has finally appeared. Somebody has finally decided they want to publish this cookbook.”

I credit this to the changing climate of the publishing industry here in the US. Mainstream publishers used to say, “Nobody's going to want to read that,” or “We published a Lunar New Year story last year, we're not going to publish another one for another 10 years.” That was the prevalent attitude, but it's definitely changed in the last decade or so, which benefits all of us — not just underrepresented voices but society as a whole, because everyone benefits from having a more open mind and being exposed to other points of view.

Pamelia: Your books are such a great platform for a group of people who are underrepresented in the cookbook space: grandmothers and mothers. How has that process of working on this cookbook with your mom been?
Patricia: My mom used to own a restaurant with my sister in Seattle around 2007 to 2010, and because they had that restaurant, she actually wrote down all the recipes. I cooked all the dishes from that recipe book that she gave me and I also cooked with her, but she had multiple recipes for the same dish in her notebook, and every time she cooked the dish, it was different, so I just used her recipes as a foundation and tweaked it here and there. Her tastes and mine have evolved over the years. My mom makes everything super super sweet, so I cut down on a lot of the sugar and fat because I know that the American audiences would be like, “Oh my gosh, that's too much sugar/ fat.”

Excerpted from “Mortar & Pestle” by Patricia Tanumihardja and Juliana Evari Suparman

Pamelia: Were there any disagreements? Speaking firsthand, I know that cookbook authors always grapple with the tension of staying true to a dish and making something accessible to a wider audience. How did you navigate that?
Patricia: When I wrote my first cookbook, I really struggled with that because I felt like each recipe that I collected was special to the person who gave it to me, and that it wasn't my place to change them. Sometimes, that backfired on me when I received feedback from my recipe testers. One got really mad at me and said, “My god, this recipe is terrible, how could you give this to me?” But, you know, that's the recipe that I received. With my mom’s recipes, because these are all dishes that I grew up eating, I feel like they belong to me in a way as well, so I felt comfortable making the executive decision to tweak things when disagreements arose in the kitchen.

Pamelia: When it comes to recipe curation, how did you go about selecting which dishes made it into the book, given that Indonesian food is so diverse and there are so many regional cuisines within Indonesia?
Patricia: All the recipes in my cookbook are recipes that I grew up eating. Both my parents were born on the island of Java, so the recipes are mostly Javanese. That's how I managed to keep it manageable and I’m upfront about it because Indonesia has close to 18,000 islands and there're so many regional cuisines. It's so hard to give all of these cuisines the right representation that they deserve and there are other Indonesian cookbook authors who are trying to do that job; this is not what I was trying to achieve with Mortar & Pestle. This is a family cookbook at its heart.

Pamelia: How has your relationship with your mom changed since you worked on this book together?
Patricia: My mom and I have never really been very close — our relationship is a little bit fraught — and I think cooking together has definitely brought us closer. The funny thing is, when I say that we cooked together, it’s not exactly the case. When I go visit her, she's the one who takes the lead and I'm like her sous chef, and when she comes and visits me, I tend to make non-Indonesian food. But even then, I don’t think she’s ever said, “Wow, this is good.” She'll just eat it in silence.

Pamelia: I can relate to a lot of that. I suppose for many Asian parents, their love languages are neither of the five love languages, so cooking can be a form of healing for people with fraught relationships with their parents, because at least you’re doing something together and working towards a common goal. How did your mom react upon seeing the cookbook when it was released?
Patricia: Let’s put it this way, my mom was not exactly full of praise. And I was really upset because I put so much of my heart and soul into it. To be honest, I put mom's name on the book because in the end, it is an homage to her. Without her, I would not have this cookbook. I would not have the background or the wherewithal to write this book and I wouldn't know how to make all these recipes.

That said, I used to live in Seattle and my dad would pop by the house in the middle of the day and ask, “How come you’re home? Aren’t you working?” I’d say, “Um, dad, yes I am working. I’m working from home.” This was pre-pandemic when working from home was a new concept, so for the longest time, my parents just thought that I wasn’t working because I worked from home. It was only after my cookbooks were released that they finally realised, “Oh wow, my daughter actually has a job and she's doing well. People like her.”

Pamelia: I’m sure it means a lot to you to hear them say that! Seeing that Lunar New Year is coming up, how are you celebrating it this year?
Patricia: I’m going back to Seattle to spend it with my parents. The last time we spent it together was 12 years ago. But, Lunar New Year (or “Imlek”) for Chinese Indonesians can be complicated. In the 1960s, because the government was threatened by communism, all Chinese had to assimilate into Indonesian culture and our names had to be changed. My family could not celebrate the festival openly, so my mother would celebrate it at home in private. When we moved to Singapore, however, we celebrated it each year with the Indonesian Chinese community. Every year, the numbers would change because Indonesian families came and went, but we’d always celebrate it either at our house or somebody else's house. My mom would make all the elements of the lontong cap go meh.

Pamelia: I’ve never heard of this dish, but from what I gathered from “Mortar & Pestle”, it’s a collection of several dishes?
Patricia: When we were growing up, we'd have these Indonesian community parties. All the different dishes would be set out like a buffet style, and you would pick and choose whichever dish you want and compile it all into one bowl or plate. My mom still does it every year. She will send me a photo of her lontong cap go meh and and all the dishes are kind of fixed every year — there’s the lontong, opor ayam, sambal goreng, and sayur lodeh. It’s so scrumptious because you’ve got a little bit of everything. And there’s a way to make it vegetarian. The sayur lodeh is already vegetarian — some people put shrimp in it but you can always omit that. For the opor ayam, you can substitute the chicken with potatoes, eggs, nangka (young jackfruit), or eggplant. If you look at the ingredients and the flavours, it’s quite similar to a Thai green curry; so anything that you would find in a Thai green curry, you can put in there to make it vegetarian.

Julia’s lontong cap go meh spread from a few years ago.

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Excerpted from “Mortar & Pestle” by Patricia Tanumihardja and Juliana Evari Suparman

Sayur Lodeh (Vegetables in Coconut Milk)
Excerpted from “Mortar & Pestle” by Patricia Tanumihardja and Juliana Evari Suparman

Sayur lodeh is one dish that easily flits between everyday and festive occasions. Some people may enjoy it for breakfast, while others serve it at big celebrations like weddings and birthdays. Julia serves it as a side dish for dinner or as part of a festive meal to celebrate the fifteenth day of the Lunar New Year. The spread is collectively dubbed Lontong Cap Go Meh.

Makes 4 servings as a main or 6–8 servings as a side

For the spice paste:
3 candlenuts or unsalted macadamias
1 teaspoon coriander seeds or ground coriander
6 Asian shallots or 3 European shallots, chopped
3 cloves garlic, smashed
2 medium-hot finger-length red chilies, such as Fresno, cayenne, or serrano, seeded (optional) and chopped, or 1 tablespoon sambal oelek
1 tablespoon dried shrimp, soaked in water for 10 minutes and patted dry (optional)
1 tablespoon vegetable oil

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 cups (475 ml) unsweetened coconut milk
1 chayote, peeled, seeded, and cut into bite-size pieces
1 Chinese or Japanese eggplant, cut into bite-size pieces
¼ lb (115 g) green beans, trimmed and cut into 2-inch (5-cm) lengths
¼ lb (115 g) firm tofu or tempeh, cut into 1-inch (2.5-cm) cubes
4 salam leaves or makrut lime leaves
2 (½-inch/12-mm) slices galangal or fresh ginger
1 stalk lemongrass, trimmed and bruised
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
¼ teaspoon ground pepper
½ teaspoon sugar
Fried shallots for serving

To make the spice paste, toast the candlenuts and coriander seeds separately in a small, dry skillet over medium heat until fragrant and browned, 5–6 minutes each. Smash the candlenuts with the flat part of a knife’s blade. Grind the coriander into a coarse powder with a spice grinder or mortar and pestle.

In a small food processor or blender, pulse the candlenuts, coriander, shallots, garlic, chilies, and dried shrimp (if using) with 1 tablespoon of oil until the texture of oatmeal, about 1 minute. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as necessary. Or use a mortar and pestle.

Heat the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil in a wok or large, heavy pot over medium heat until shimmering hot. Add the spice paste and stir and cook until it is very fragrant and has turned a few shades darker (this indicates the shallots are caramelizing), 5–7 minutes. Reduce the heat if the paste is browning too fast; you don’t want the paste to burn. Once the moisture has evaporated, the ingredients will separate from the oil. The paste is now ready for the next step.

Stir in the coconut milk and 2 cups (475 ml) water. Add the chayote, eggplant, green beans, and tofu and bring to a boil, adding more water to cover the vegetables if necessary. Add the salam leaves, galangal, and lemongrass. Reduce the heat to low and simmer, covered, until the chayote and eggplant are tender, 10–12 minutes. Stir in the salt, white pepper, and sugar. Taste and adjust the seasonings if desired. Set the soup aside for 1–2 hours so the flavors can meld.

Sprinkle with fried shallots and serve with steamed rice.

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