Cooking: Stories, Problems, Opinion, and Filosophies

I like to Eat Pic ^_*

I like to eat and I love delicious food better than beautiful jewelry. Maybe it’s because I have great chefs in my home, my mum and dad. Yeah, both of them have a good skill in cooking, my father makes a cuisine and my mum makes a cake. Although they are teacher but they often get chattering order from their friend or our neighbor.  That’s way I always fat (as long as I can remember :D).

When I stayed with my parent, I never care enough how to make a good food. What I had to do just ask my parent to make it for me. Sometimes my parent asked me to cook but all ingredients was prepared by them or I made it under their instruction.  But after I lived far from home, everything was changed. During my college, I learned how to cook in the forest. Cooking in the forest is different from cooking in the kitchen. We never have complete utensils and good ingredient but still we must make a tasty food or all your friend will be blame you as a bad chef. Oh, don’t think badly to your friends because in the forest or remote areas we will be more sensitive to everything especially stomach problem.

The Healthy Tasty Tinutuan

I have bad experience that I never forget and maybe my friends too. When I stayed in the small village in the Halimun Salak National Park (NP), I already woke up at 4 am to made breakfast for more than 15 people that would be tracking to the forest in the morning. At that time, our groceries were running out so we decided to make green bean porridge for breakfast because it contains a lot of sugar that produce energy. But, you must never forget one thing, Indonesian always think that eating mean eat rice, other than rice mean snack. And what happen after that? Most of them said that when they climbed the hill, their stomach suddenly made alarm sound, it implied that they starved. Because of that green bean incident, I have new nickname ‘stepmom’ (maybe because stepmom always cruel to her stepchild in the folklore). Anyway, this stepmom still have a power to decide the menu until now although sometime they tell our junior about that green bean incident.  

Maybe, the main problem of cooking in the forest is groceries. If you’re not really sure to practice jungle survival purely like eating wild animal or plant, you must make sure that your groceries is enough in quantity and variation for your trip. Once, I and three of my friends went to Ratu crater on Salak Mountain. We already brought enough groceries for our trip but the problem was the kinds of our groceries just rice, and instant noodles. In the beginning, we could survive with that food. Sometimes we searched wild berries for snack and wild vegetables like fern and what sundanese people call ‘poh-pohan’ or we thought that was ‘poh-pohan’.  But at final day, we run to the hiking track where there was one and only stall for hiker to buy ‘gorengan’ (fried snack made from flour that mixed with vegetable, banana, or crops). The second problem of cooking in the forest is fire. Your ability to make and control fire is important if you don’t have proper portable stove. It just my opinion or maybe it’s a fact, smoker have better ability to make and control fire than non smoker and local people always be a natural fire bender. If you can’t control the fire, you may face many problems such as your rice is not completely cooked but at the bottom is already burnt, and you need more times just to cook one menu.

Coconut Grater

Compared with bad experience, I have more good experiences while cooking in the forest. My favorite camp place is beach or watershed area. That places have a lot of food resource especially from water, like fish, scallop, ell, shrimp, crap, even octopus. My heavenly cooking place was Pancur beach in Alas Purwo NP, at that place I cooked many kind of reef living thing (vertebrate and invertebrate) every night. Thank to my friend, Irsyad and his chopper who become our fish hunter. Second was Karang Ranjang beach at Ujung Kulon NP, that was my first time cook and eat sea urchin (yummy, thank to Irsyad (again) who had revenge again sea urchin that made him got fever and the thick sell rock crab. Third place was Tangkoko Nature Reserve at North Sulawesi. I was blessed to conduct my research there because there have many kind of delicious food and my favorite menu is dabu-dabu chili sauce, fried fish and spicy papaya leaf (I am hungry now). At that place I learnt how to grate coconut using traditional grating board which different from Java grating board and one year later in 2010, I found the same grating board at Siberut Island in Mentawai Archipelago, West Sumatra. 

Learning to Cook Sago

My favorite watershed area was in Pungut watershed, northern part of Siberut Island. That was my first time fishing at the river in the night. Six of us searched fresh water shrimp and fresh water scallop along the river to the upper course. Time goes fast when we fished and we almost got lost when we went home because we used different way. However, we arrived at camp safely at midnight and ready to bake our shrimp.  At that place I also had experience to cook in the cocoa field house of our guide. We cooked rice using a coconut and baked fresh water fish. And the special food that I found at Siberut was sago. I like sago very much and the best way to cook sago for me is using bamboo. You can eat sago with many kinds of food and my favorite is sago with boiled fish (using bamboo too) and coconut cream soup.

Cooking in The Middle of Nowhere

Even not in the beach or watershed, sometimes you can find the good place to cook in the middle of nowhere.  I called it jackpot and I ever found that place in Bukit Barisan Selatan NP. I and my college friends were following RPU (Rhino Protection Unit) to held rhino routine patrol. It was our forth day and we almost ran out of food. After climbed and down the hill, suddenly our team found an open area in the forest. That open area was new encroachment and the owner of the field was there when we arrived. We, the college student, didn’t aware with the situation and talked loudly. The owner who shocked with our arrival was escape. They afraid of our partner who brought a gun (we called his gun mosquito spray because it was similar). For us, that place like a market because they have a vegetable garden there. We found many kinds of vegetable to cook, such us eggplant, peas, tomatoes, and red pepper. It was harvest time! Regardless from the encroachment problem, we should thank to the owner for that delicious and healthy food from that field. From my little experience of cooking in the forest, I have a quote ‘If you already have great fresh food, you only need simple spices to make delicious food’.

Rice cooker Tuna Pizza

How if you never have chance to cook in the forest? You don’t have to worry, even in your boarding house you still can increase your cooking skill. My friend, Maika, taught me how to cook many kind of food using rice cooker. Before that, I just used rice cooker to cook rice, boil water and noodle  because I used kerosene stove to cook. But since the government kerosene to LPG conversion program, it was difficult to find kerosene. After that, all of my boarding house member only use our rice cooker to boil, to fry, to bake, to steam all kind of food.  Have you ever think to make your own pizza using rice cooker? Well, I and my friends did.Cooking is also fun when you do it with your family or your friend. If you have gathering party, why don't you cook together with your friend instead of dinner in the restaurant. I think it will be make a good impression to all of you. 

BBQ time with old friends

But still, Cooking is like experiment for me. I always on trial and error mode while cooking. Sometime I make a delicious food but often I make a strange flavor food. Now, in my boarding house at Palangka Raya, there is a portable stove that is very useful for me. Because the food price in here is expensive, I prefer to cook by myself than buy a food. I like to try many recipes from internet or just try to make a food that I ever eat before. Cooking it not my hobby, but I can’t said that I don’t like to cook. I have a good lesson from cooking, patient in the process to make a delicious food, open up your selves to receive suggestion, and free your imagination to create a new recipe. i think that can be implemented in our daily live. Have a good cooking time and bon apetit!!!! ^_^