Indonesian Rice Table

For some years now, Schatz and I have frequented the Mittelalter Stammtisch in Hamburg-Harburg. One Friday evening a month, people interested in the Middle Ages meet for a meal, a drink and, above all, a good chat. Mind you, we don't mind when Roman gladiators or Napoleonic soldiers stop by, or Larpers, for that matter. More about the Stammtisch in a week or so.

In addition, some of us meet one Sunday a month, for a "Nähtreff". We meet to sew. Or needlebind, or embroider, work on bones, wood or ... I think you get my drift. It's not exactly a Stitch 'n' Bitch session but it comes close (Schatz says bitching should come first in that term...). And we end the day with a meal from Michi's pots and pans. The guy from Trutzhavener Feldküche, you know, that I wrote about before.

Michi

Previously, Schatz and I cooked a pancake breakfast for the December Bitch 'n' Stitch, or made bagels or such. This year I felt the need to cook an Indonesian Rice Table for dinner. Which suited Michi and Birgitt just fine as they had a gamer group in the house from Saturday afternoon to Sunday morning.

With 13 people to cook for, we had the opportunity to put together a real rice table and not just a handful of dishes. Here are some of the spices we brought along:

Sambal Manis, Sambal Udang, Surinamese Sambal, Javanese Sambal,
Sambal Brandis - and a few other spices...

And then there were other ingredients, such as spring roll skins, rice, Indonesian noodles, chilis (rawit, madam jeanette, lomboks etc.), ginger, kroepoek udang, rasped coconut and the like:

no no, I will not tell you what is in the brown plastic bag...

We started with cutting this - beef, fish, pork, chicken, tofu, and shrimps, to start with -, boiling that - eggs, for example - and marinating the rest.

The work bench

Good thing I brought my own commis chef!

In the meantime, while we were working hard and building up a sweat, Birgitt checked the action outside the kitchen where the others... you know... did sensible things:

Martina, Ute, Mara, Svenja, Britta, and Ilka (clockwise) or:
"Ze 'ens are in ze 'en'ouse" (this caption by Schatz)

In between supervising the commis and creating chaos in the kitchen otherwise, I went to entertain our friends with a little show interlude straight from Holland. Okay, 6 months too late, but that is nothing to medieval re-enactors...

The Dutch lion shows its tonsils...

The T-Shirt, by the way, is a leftover from last summer's European Championship. Football, of course. Or Soccer, if you insist. And with all those layers in front, it protects you well against mishaps in the kitchen!

Anyway, we went on cooking, and then cooked some more, and then - more!

Here's the menu (especially for Ute):

• Beef Rendang
• Saté (Chicken, Fish and Shrimp)
• Babi Pangang
• Ikan Boemboe Bali
• Ayam Roedjak
• Sambal Goreng Telor
• Loempia
• Gado Gado
• Dadar Isi
• Pisang Goreng
• Tumis Buncis (with little to no coconut milk!)
• Sambal Goreng Perai
• Sambal Goreng Tofu and Soy Bean Sprouts
• Seroendeng from coconut rasps, kroepoek, miniature french fries, roast onions
• Atjar Tjampoer
• Peanut Butter Sauce
• White Rice
• Bami Goreng

Babi Pangang, Sambal Goreng Perai, Ayam Roedjak,
Bami Goreng, Saté, Beef Rendang,
Seroendeng, Pisang Goreng, Gado Gado

As Birgitt put it "you spend 6 hours in the kitchen and they eat it all in 15 minutes."

before...

Well, it took them closer to 45 minutes... and they were STUFFED afterwards. Except for Arto, who still managed to eat a whole box of ice cream. Serves us right for not putting any dessert on the table!

and after - or:
Stuffed like turkeys on Thanksgiving...(this caption by Schatz)

For recipes, I can recommend Kokkie Blanda´s Indonesian Recipes (Dutch and English) and the Indochef. And if you do not want to mix all the various boemboes yourself (as we did), there are good ready mixes to be had in your local Indonesian toko!

PS: Nils, Gisela and Arto were there, too, and of course Birgitt, but only a "slice" of Nils survived on one of the photos. Better luck next time!

PPS: thanks to Birgitt for taking most of the pictures, and to Schatz for the gimp-magic. And the captions.

Rhein Spotting

After a hard days work in Mainz, I returned home. The fairly recently built (okay, less than a decade ago) ICE route from Cologne to Frankfurt was built at a considerable distance from the River Rhein (or Rhine for the English) as no track inside the river valley would have allowed the high speed required for this service. It reduces travel time to Frankfurt considerably but at the cost of not being able to see the River between Bingen and Koblenz, a trip I always used to enjoy.

Returning from Mainz, I had the choice between the two trains and since it didn't make any difference as far as catching my connection in Cologne, I chose to take a slower EC train and maybe even get some photographs this time.

Of course it rained for the first 15 minutes or so, which means that taking pictures was not easy. Though I tried...

Castle Pfalzgrafenstein in Kaub

Somewhere after a couple of bends, the rain stopped and the sky slowly started to clear up.


There are castles on just about every peak and promontory along the valley. Best way to protect yourself, of course, against marauding forces throughout history. At least before people were able to take to the skies...

The other thing the River Rhein is known for is, of course, its wine. The vinyards are steep and made of slate which stores the sunshine in the daytime and keeps passing its warmth on to the roots of the vines.
Another reason why the wines from these areas are very special is the steepness of the hills which basically prohibits the use of any kind of machinery. I'm trying to remember what I learned during the wine tastings I interpreted in the Eighties, I think they said that you had to walk around each vine 17 times in a year - and that sounds like a lot of hard work in these hills.


Only one thing is missing in the above picture, i.e. a campground right on the river banks. They get flooded every other year or so, sometimes more than once in a year, but people still like to park their caravans there. Which is understandable, with that view!


At places like this, high water sometimes not only covers the road, but in cases of really bad spring floods, even the rail tracks...

Boppard

By the way, it was the Romans who brought the wine to the area, and quite a few of the towns there can trace their roots back to that era.

Earliest traces of human settlement in the Boppard area, however, date back to about 11,000 BC. The Romans later founded Vicus Baudobriga (Bodobriga, Bontobrica). Since the name seems to be of Celtic origin, an (earlier) Celtic settlement is assumed. Under the Merovingians it became a royal residence, and over time moved back and forth between counts, bishops or electors (Kurfürsten) of the German Emperor.

Father Rhine

The river gets wider and wider south of Koblenz. Approaching the city is quite impressive too - too bad the view is so obscured by trees and houses that taking pictures from the train didn't work this time.

Only 2.5 hrs to go until the European Cup semi-finals

It was the day of the semi-final match between Germany and Turkey, and people were getting ready to go to the public viewing areas in some of Germany's bigger cities. No viewing area on the train, however...

After Koblenz, the tracks did no longer follow the river and the trip became somewhat prosaic.


Then about 10 to 15 minutes before Cologne, I saw this mountain of an apartment building rising out of the middle of nowhere. What a sight - though the people living there won't mind, probably, since noone will be able to block their view...

Cologne Cathedral - well, its towers anyway

In Cologne, I changed trains. Nothing much to report about that, other than that I was sharing a table with a German who was going to the Netherlands for a conference the next day. And was an avid football fan. And I was curious, too, how the match went. Modern as the trains are, there are no live football games...

To make a long story short, ICE trains offer in some carriages local radio programs to be accessed by headphones, and as I started to listen, I saw the longing in the eyes of the guy at my table.
First time I interpreted a football match commentary! It wasn't that difficult though as the Dutch commentators were not really experts in what they were doing unlike the Germans or the British - and so I was able to leave out most of their innate chatter and focus on the main parts.

By the time I got home, the match was over, of course. The last three goals were made when I was standing at a tram stop opposite a pub - I guess there were a lot of Turkish people in there...