Nasi padang originates from Padang in Sumatra, one of Indonesia's archipelagos, and is less a dish, more an experience. It has humble beginnings. You get a huge plate, or tray - basically, you want a receptacle that can hold a copious amount of food - of rice, preferably lined with a frond of banana leaf. At a typical nasi padang stall, you would then do this little dance in front of the long steam table of curries, stews, stir-fries, deep-fries and condiments simmering in cauldrons, heaps and layers, as you dart from dish to dish pointing excitedly at which ones you want scooped or plopped onto the rice. After this mountain of love has been completed with a generous serving of belacan, a hot chili sauce made of fermented ground shrimp, trickled with a twist of kalamansi lime, walk it as you balance it with sturdy hands, head held high, and sit it down at a table of friends or perfect strangers, and dig in. Yes, with hands. Using your right hand, scoop a bit of rice, then the nasi padang item of choice, and press it all firmly into a makeshift ball. Lift to mouth and using thumb, shovel it all in. Play it cool as steam blows out of your ears, blood rushes to your brain and fuzzy warmth invades your abdomen; feel free to drop the facade as you finally cannot stand it any longer and expostulate, "Sedap!!!!" (Delicious, in Malay or Bahasa Indonesia.)
In this exercise of choosing whatever your heart desires and eating to its content, there is no room for the brown smog mushroom lingering over Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia. When we ducked into Natrabu, a 43-year-old plain, family-style nasi padang restaurant whose comely, spartan environs belie its gastronomy awards, after a 45-minute van ride over no more than three miles, sitting in gridlocked traffic completely stalled on the wrong side of the street lent itself to some great culinary karma. We hadn't even sat down before we were swarmed by waiters bearing plates and plates and plates and plates (and plates and plates and plates and plates) of various nasi padang dishes, which they professionally dispensed down the length of the table, covering every inch so some had to be doubly stacked.
Get in line.
We each received a plate of rice, and a second serving for good measure, which were balanced on the little tin cups of water used for washing our hands between servings, as we please. Padang literally means "field," so it would be more than accurate to describe the scene as a field of dreams - if the minangkabau (people of Padang) build it, they will come. We didn't just arrive. We swooped into the 16 dishes that stretched over yonder in front of us - we didn't use our hands, but our fork and spoons were great stand-ins for talons. Don't get me wrong - it was a precise operation that was filled with the necessary sense of urgency and perhaps emergency (great food must be attended to - NOW), yet the procedure was precise, exact and filled with honorable intentions to preserve life as it must be - independent, blissful, light of heart and spontaneous. Not forced to always stay indoors because the streets are not safe in a country where corruption is the ruling party and your best national monument is a fading, crumbling obelisk. We were cooped up in that van (not to mention the harrowing hour-long drive from the airport on highways where lanes don't mean anything) and we have been released to live free or die hard from too many amazing spices and flavors. We were going to yippy kai yay it up.
The Horn of Plenty.
This is a roll call of how we rolled: beef rendang (slow-cooked meat in coconut milk and spices, a ceremonial dish of the minangkabau), crispy silver fish with petai, chicken curry, squid curry, deep-fried slivers of fish (fried so hard they curl up), fried chicken, potato croquettes, curried collards, curried loofah, beef jerky with cress, cow brain curry, a really weird chicken dish that I could discern nothing of and therefore is not of note, fried pomfret topped with chili, fried cod topped with chili, and a side dish of crudites for dipping in belacan.
Just the facts, ma'am - a selection.
Your sensibilities should have been perked up by "cow brain curry". Don't rub your eyes - that belacan will sting. You didn't read wrong. I was determined to have a bite of everything, so when I stuck my fork into what looked like a big piece of liver in a floridly orange gravy and a nibble-sized nugget emerged, I bit into it and wondered, how did foie gras come to be in curry? I mean, I am a huge fan of the Le Fooding movement and I am mildly intrigued by molecular gastronomy, but I am quite absolutely sure neither Alain Ducasse nor Grant Achatz would have ever thought of pairing pate with coconut milk. It was very, very rich and I am sure my likelihood to contracting gout shot up by about 300 percent, but like the beautiful treat from le canard, this gastronomical glory is not to be gobbled. I was done after a few nibbles - that was enough to linger me through the rest of lunch, although the euphoria lasted through dinner. Then we were informed that it was brain, and my doctor-to-be brother then proceeded to dissect the discourse with scientific explanations of why it tasted so smooth, why its consistency flowed so neatly into the boorish barrage of the curry's Aries personality. Well, I am glad there will be a doctor in the family when gout finally sets into my system.
The other highlight for me was the rendang, and I am not just playing favorites because it is by far my most-preferred nasi padang dish. Before you could even put it into your mouth, a rush of flavor aromatizes the chunk of meat - cooked to dryness so it absorbs every spice and herb it has been simmering in - and gushes into your mouth, ionizing your taste buds for an incoming assault of hearty, juicy chomps. Put it this way - if this rendang had been around during the days of the Wild Wild West, jerky would never have been invented. The rendang and the cow brain curry were the only two dishes that received encores at lunch. Like sincere performers who plied their craft with a passion, they received the applause and humbly allowed their work to be eagerly swallowed up by adoring audiences.
A movable feast.
As the curtain began to fall over lunch, the stacks of cleaned-out plates began to pile up on an adjacent table. This is how nasi padang usually works in restaurants in Indonesia - you don't have to eat everything they lay out. Oh, you think I am joking but I am not (but you might be kidding yourself if you think there would be even one dish you're not going to taste or pick at). You don't have to analyze the sanitation of this practice, even as untouched glasses of sweet tea sit amid a smoker's paradise, then brought in to be taken out again when the next set of diners come in. It's just not worth your effort - you have better scores to settle. Whatever you touch is considered sold, and at the end of the day, you pay up based on the number of plates set aside. At this point, dessert is rather an afterthought but to demonstrate what I mean, a plate of gula melaka (brown palm sugar) paste with glutinous rice was set down once room was made on the table (and forcibly so in our digestive tracts), and so we ate it - very Pavlov. Then, platters of freshly sliced watermelon, papaya, pineapple and cantaloupe arrived, and we ate that, too. Ring ring! Salivate!
I would not be surprised if this was what inspired the Stones' "Brown Sugar". If not, it should have.
Nasi padang restaurants are identified by the stacks of plates in the window, which seen from the street remind me of Chinese acrobatic acts with spinning dishes in mid-air. It's magical, really, the concept of liberation. And when we packed ourselves into the van to venture back into the gridlock, the drive back to the hotel through rush hour didn't seem to take too long at all.
How high can you go?
0 comments:
Post a Comment