How else can you cook rice besides steaming, stir-frying, boiling, or roasting? We thought we knew all the ways…until we found Kenta in Central Kalimantan. Watch this short video to learn how freshly-harvested rice is celebrated among the Dayak Ngaju tribe.
Subscribe to our Youtube channel to watch new videos first!
Slow Food Bali hosted Crystal to present and demonstrate her findings from Central Kalimantan. In this presentation, she shares her experience traveling through the world’s 3rd largest island and its remaining biodiversity. Crystal also makes Kopu and Kenta, two traditional recipes from the Dayak Ngaju that are close to vanishing.
Subscribe to our Youtube channel to watch new videos first!
I hate rice.
Ever since I was a child, I had no desire to eat this blank page of a starch that I was forced to ingest at every meal. My appetite was more eager for the side dishes my mother cooked than this bland, white mound that was meant to make me feel satiated.
My family became so accustomed to my disdain of rice that every time they reached into the steaming rice cooker to scoop a portion into our individual bowls, they would show me and ask, “Enough?”
I noted with satisfaction that it was always much less than everyone else’s serving.
“Enough.”
Did you know homemade cheese can be found in Indonesia? We didn’t until our research trip! Watch this short how-to video to see how the only village in the country is making cheese. The process will surprise you.
Subscribe to our Youtube channel to watch new videos first!
Asians and cheese do not pair well.
While conducting research and development at Room4Dessert in Bali for a new dessert menu, I aged a wheel of camembert with house-made amaretto distilled from salak seeds.
The office above the kitchen was the only space to store my project in a “cave-like” temperature, since this was the only room with an air-conditioner.
The camembert ripened quickly. The rind developed a light-orange tint and the interior was fast approaching a liquid state. And the smell.
Being raised in a Western country helped me develop a palate and nose that didn’t discriminate against barnyard ripeness, so every time I opened the box, I inhaled deeply and began to long for cheeses I could never find in Indonesia.
My staff, on the other hand, did not have as much of a mature reaction.
The moment the door swung open, sleepy eyes from the previous night’s service would widen in shock once their olfactory senses were alert to the smell. Hands to nose in less than a second. A muffled scream in less than three. I could have timed it with a stopwatch.
Needless to say, the office — usually a traffic jam of bodies and movement — was undisturbed when I was working with cheese.
So when I heard there was a village in South Sulawesi voluntarily making cheese, and had been for generations, I had to see for myself.
ASLI FOOD PROJECT 