The second leg of my trip was a little longer than my one day in Shanghai. My first impression of Jakarta, Indonesia: Hot & Ridiculous Traffic!
The 4 days in Indonesia also means a very long post. Really it is a post action packed with photos. So hold on to your seat, and enjoy the crazy abundance of food photos!!
By the time I arrived in Jakarta, jetleg was starting to set in, and I needed a few meals of room service to get back into the swing of things.
Rough life!
On my first afternoon we had Korean for lunch, which was fantastic. I am normally up for trying new things and this lunch was no different. Anchovies. And I really liked them! Something new for me was wrapping seaweed paper around sticky rice and anchovies then eating it. I know this sounds like a sushi roll, and it is very similar, however the seaweed paper is saltier and the roll is not prerolled for you. The Boy eats this seaweed paper at home normally as a snack alone, but looks like I found a new way for us to eat them. Yum!
Dinner was also Korean, but Korean BBQ this time. And I love Korean BBQ.
I have never had a Clam soup before, Clam Chowder, yes, but Clam soup was something new. Yum, yum, yum! The clams were way to small to actually eat, but full of delicious flavor.
If you have ever had Korean BBQ you know it is served with what seems like a million small bowls of all sorts of goodies. Bean sprouts, seaweed, bamboo salad, kimchee, tofu, cold pickled broccoli, shredded potatoes, etc.
We had a few other side dishes of fish, and an egg with veggie omelet type dish.
This meal made me so ridiculously full! The beer was also a great addition to the dinner 🙂 Sorry for the crazy blurry picture. I was having a hard time switching between stuffing my face and taking photos. Everything seemed to look like an action shot!
I went back to the hotel and passed out until the morning after this meal. Morning being 5:30am. My body never did seem to get used to the time change. I was wide awake at 5:30am each day of my trip. It was nice because I could get up and spend a few hours watching the news and catching up on work emails, or talking to The Boy via Facetime. Facetime is my new friend, it was a great way to chat anywhere I had web access. The Boy joined me several days during breakfast!
My second day in Indonesia was when I finally had traditional Indonesian food. The meal was fantastic! I actually even enjoyed tofu! Tofu and I normally are mortal enemies, but when you fry it, like all things, it becomes very edible! They looked like little donuts, but covered in spicy peppers rather than sugar. Slight disappointment…
And then there were these 2 delicious platters of grilled skewers of shrimp and chicken, with a great peanut dipping sauce. There is also another type of fried tofu in the back of the photo. That was pretty good too. Tofu+Fried= Love!
We were also served a traditional stew with beef, greens, and quail eggs. I had to refrain from picking out all the quail eggs and hoarding them all for myself. I LOVE quail eggs. I think the love comes from the fact that they are bite size and the proportion of yolk to egg white is much higher. You can just pop one of these little guys in your mouth and it explodes with goodness. Ok- time to move on from my declaration of love for these little eggies.
Last dish to highlight out of the 10 that were on the table, would be the grilled bbq fish. The fish just fell off the bone and was seasoned perfectly.
My small town upbringing would tell me that fillets should be be cleaned from the fish, battered and fried up. Never would you see a whole fish at a table in my family. Most people would be a little freaked out by the sight of the head still attached. However, in a lot of Asian dishes, the fish is served whole, and I have come to really enjoy it. Someday I will have to try to introduce my family to this dish. It could be an interesting experience.
Finally on my last night in Jakarta we had Italian once again. Not at all a bad thing, but my trip did have several meals of Italian, 3 actually. This meal was #2, as you remember #1 was in Shanghai. I ordered the ravioli, and it was to die for. Spinach ravioli with creamy goat cheese filling, and a white truffle butter sauce. Please forgive the “mood lighting”, the restaurant was very dark. Which also made me want to fall asleep after eating this dish.
However, I could not sleep through dessert. Molten Chocolate Cake served with Raisin Ice Cream. Never before had I heard of Raisin Ice Cream, but were I ever offered it again, I would 100% jump at the chance to eat it. These were the perfect compliments to each other. I wanted a whole bowl, instead I settled for the small scoop…..
They are really lucky I didn’t sneak into the kitchen and steal the whole tub.
Or did I?
I joke, but I really wanted to.
To wrap up this journey through Indonesia, I wanted to share one weird food find as well. Before I left for the airport, I stopped at this little shop for lunch and ordered a bowl of soup and a crepe. Nothing special about the crepe, but the soup, that was where things got weird. I thought I was ordering a basic cup of tomato soup, and everything seemed fine when it arrived at the table. Tomato soup with a large lump of mozzarella cheese drizzled with olive oil. I was pumped by the unexpected addition of the cheese. I dove right in for a bite of cheese and a spoonful of soup. Delicious, but the cheese really wasn’t that strong. One chunk of cheese later, I found a yolk. Yup, that wasn’t a lump of mozzarella cheese, it was a poached egg.
Man….disappointment….
Thank you for following me through Indonesia via my food.
One last thought before I go: Did you know rubber comes from Trees?
I had no idea, but Indonesia’s #2 export is rubber. Tapped from trees, just like maple syrup. Strange…
Blurry photo of us speeding past a newly planted field of rubber trees. There were miles and miles of these field, mature and new trees everywhere.
