Indonesia is 17,000 islands, and the food changes completely between them. Sumatra is heavy with coconut and chilli, Java is sweet and complex, Bali is Hindu and pork-based, and the east is drier and simpler. Nasi goreng is the least interesting thing on the menu — these are the dishes that show what the country actually cooks.
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Beef slow-cooked for hours in coconut milk and spice until the liquid is gone and the meat is dark and dry. From the Minangkabau of West Sumatra.
The cooking is a reduction, not a stew: the coconut milk is stirred until it breaks and the oil separates, and the meat ends up coated rather than swimming. It is made for travel and keeps for days without refrigeration, which is why it spread across the archipelago.
Balinese minced-meat satay wound around lemongrass stalks and grilled — not on a skewer in the usual sense.
The meat is mixed with grated coconut, lime leaf and spice, then wrapped around the thick base of a lemongrass stalk, which perfumes it as it grills. It is a Hindu Balinese dish, which is why it is pork or fish rather than the beef satay of Java.
Rice with a plate of small portions around it — meat, tofu, tempeh, vegetables, sambal. The everyday way to eat.
Campur means mixed, and the format is a buffet of whatever the warung cooked that morning. Balinese nasi campur often includes lawar, a minced meat and coconut salad, and sate lilit. You point at what you want.
Blanched vegetables, tofu and tempeh with a thick peanut sauce, served with lontong rice cake.
The peanut sauce is made from fried peanuts ground with chilli, palm sugar and lime, and it should be thick enough to coat rather than run. It is often called a salad, which undersells it — the sauce is the dish, and it is different from the satay sauce even though they share a base.
Balinese roast suckling pig, stuffed with spice and lemongrass and cooked on a spit. A ceremony food.
Babi guling is cooked for festivals and ceremonies, and the better roadside places sell it from early morning until it runs out — usually before noon. The skin is the point: blistered and crisp, with the meat underneath heavily spiced with turmeric and lemongrass.
Fried rice with sweet soy, shallot and chilli, topped with a fried egg. Indonesia's most exported dish.
The version at home is made with day-old rice and kecap manis rather than soy sauce, which is why it is darker and sweeter than the Chinese original. The best is from a street cart cooked to order, not the hotel buffet version most visitors first meet.
A Jakarta beef soup rich with coconut milk and beef fat, sharpened with lime and chilli.
It is a Betawi (native Jakarta) dish, and the richness comes from coconut milk and fried beef fat rather than long boiling. It is served with potato, tomato and fried shallots, and the lime is essential to cut the fat.
Fermented soybean cake, sold in every market and fried, grilled or cooked in sambal. Java's great contribution.
Tempeh is fermented with a mould that binds the beans into a cake, and the white bloom on the surface is the organism, not mould spoilage. It is high in protein, cheap, and the texture of a good piece grilled with kecap manis is nothing like the frozen versions sold abroad.
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