Terong Balado

With school six days a week – though it’s only a half-day on Saturdays – Sundays are the one day that we have entirely free in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.  During the week my host aunt, a chef who has her own catering service, brings homemade dishes in the afternoons that we heat up again for dinner and then, if there are leftovers, again for breakfast the next morning. Cooked foods sit in the center of the kitchen table underneath a large basket-like cover that keeps the bugs out and then at mealtimes we serve ourselves rice from the rice cooker on the counter - always the central part of the meal - and top it with the dishes on the table as we sit down to eat. We often fry tofu or tempeh, or steam vegetables and set them out on a plate to go along with the other dishes; and if there aren’t enough leftovers from the night before we might make a fried egg with vegetables for breakfast. But on Sundays my host sisters make the main dishes for the day.

At 5:30am last Sunday morning Mbak Ayu, my oldest host sister, poked her head into my bedroom to wake me up to get ready to head to the morning pasar, or traditional outdoor market, to buy ingredients for cooking that morning.  I groggily pulled myself out of bed, the promise of bubur kacang hijau, a sweet mung bean porridge that you can often find at the market, the only thing keeping me from laying my head back down on the soft pillow and falling back asleep for a few more hours.

The market is within walking distance of our house so we set out on foot, me trying to contain my yawns. I always have trouble getting up early but the mornings really are a wonderful time to be outside; while the air is still cool and fresh, before the roads become crowded with traffic and the air becomes hot and polluted. The colors, the sounds, the sweet smells of cooking foods - everything is so vibrant and beautiful in the morning. We passed a man sitting beside a heap of green coconuts as he scooped white flesh from the shells; warm aromas wafted from storefronts selling gorengan, assorted fried snacks like battered tempeh, and cassava fritters filled with palm sugar; and pedicab drivers slowly biked past on their morning routes. 

We turned down a long narrow street off of the main road we walked past fields of rice and grasses, brilliant shades of green glowing in the warm sunlight. The street was dotted with trees bearing every type of tropical fruit imaginable - massive spiky jackfruit tugging down on their flexible branches, bunches of bright pink rambutan with their soft spiky hair, and dark maroon cacao pods hanging nobly from their high branches.

The road was quiet and still; it wasn't until we got closer that you could begin hear the soft grumble of motorcycles and the whistle of voices, that grew louder as we came to the bustling morning market. Immediately when we arrived we were hit by the pungent smell of fresh fish - the first row of stands we passed were piled with fish, flies buzzing around excitedly as the vendors chopped the meat and chatted with customers. The market covers two intersecting streets with small storefronts, stands, flat wide baskets heaped with produce, and hand pushed food carts filling every corner. It's nothing if not an exotic potpourri - with so many different kinds of fruits and vegetables, prepared foods wrapped up in banana leaves and cheap plastic toys in plastic bags, even a wide bucket filled with baby turtles. You can find small pieces of handmade tempeh, still warm wrapped inside a layer of newspaper and banana leaf; and large plastic wrapped slabs of tempeh just like the kind you can buy at the SuperIndo, but usually for a cheaper price. We stopped at a stand where a woman stood cutting up whole chickens - even the heads and the feet are kept and sold - to ask if she knew where we might be able to find mushrooms. Sometimes you’ll see the same kind of cucumbers at five different stalls and then not be able to find a single person selling the ingredient you’re looking for - and it just so happened that no one had mushrooms that day.

So we scratched our plans to make a mushroom saute and decided instead on eggplants, stopping along the way to buy a small heap of chili peppers - you can never have too many for Indonesian cooking.

When all of the ingredients had been successfully bargained for there was nothing left to do but set out in search of bubur kacang hijau. 

We did a loop around the central area of the market with no luck, and I began to worry that my hopes for a sweet breakfast of porridge might meet the same fate as our mushroom saute. But, my dreams were realized as we reached the end of a line of fruit stalls where a man stood behind a small wooden food cart serving out the earthy green porridge to a waiting customer. We asked for the combination of mung bean porridge and sweet black sticky rice porridge to bring home, and with admirable grace the man swiftly ladled the porridge out of two large metal pots into individual plastic bags closing each off with a tight knot and then prepared little bags of coconut milk to serve on top of the porridge when we got home.

We were too tired to walk back any faster than at a casual stroll but the porridge was still pretty warm when we cut open the bags and poured it into bowls with the coconut milk. And only after our spoons were licked clean and our bellies happily filled with the sweet, hearty porridge did we begin to cook.

At our AFS orientation in Kaliurang the hotel served this dish on the buffet and, having always been a person to pick the eggplant out of my lasagna, I remember thinking when I tried it that it was the best eggplant I had ever tasted. So creamy and so flavorful - this eggplant-avoider even went back for seconds!

I told myself after that that I would have to find out how to make eggplant like this. And well, here it is.

Terong Balado

Traditional cooking is very instinctual here, without precise recipes or any kind of measuring equipment; instead, ingredients are just added proportionally and seasonings calculated by taste. But I was hoping to record the recipe to share here, so as we cooked I diligently counted out the number of each ingredient that went into the pan and took note of the approximate measurements we used. The good news is it's a very simple dish that can easily be adjusted to serve fewer or more people, made more or less spicy, and seasoned to your own taste preferences.

Also, a note about the eggplants: the ones you find here are a smaller and thinner variety compared to the globe eggplants in the states - and, in my opinion, much more delicious! The skin is thinner, the taste isn't quite so bitter and they have an incredibly creamy texture. After some extensive eggplant research (read: a quick google search) I've decided that the terong, or eggplants, most like the ones we have here can probably be found by the name "chinese eggplants" in America and other English-speaking countries. An alternative would be any other small-sized eggplants or even one large globe eggplant - though you would be missing out on the profound silky smoothness of this smaller more delicate variety.

Makes enough for 4-6 servings.

1 medium shallot, diced

12 cloves garlic, chopped into smaller pieces (but no need to dice finely)

8-15 long, red cayenne chili peppers (depending on desired spiciness - we used 15 but be warned this is pretty spicy, I might suggest starting with 9 or 10)

4 Chinese eggplants (or small Italian eggplants)

3 plum tomatoes, quartered

vegetable oil for frying

1/4 tsp salt

1 tbsp sugar

2 cups water

sugar and soy sauce to taste

Prepare the chili peppers, cutting of the stems and scoring the skin crosswise in a few places. Then half the eggplants and cut into large pieces (about 2-inches long). Heat about 1/3 cup of oil in a large stir fry pan over medium heat and fry the shallot and garlic just until aromatic. Remove the shallot and garlic with a slotted spoon and put into the bowl of food processor (or to prepare it as we did - into the bowl of a large mortar and pestle, provided it's large enough to hold a few cups of sauce). Without turning the heat off, fry the chili peppers in the same oil for a minute or two, as you puree the garlic and shallot in the food processor (or with the mortar and pestle). Then remove the chili peppers from the oil and add to the puree. Add the eggplant to the pan and saute over medium-low heat, stirring often, until tender and browned slightly then remove from the pan and set aside. Add about 1/4 cup more oil to the pan, and then fry the tomatoes until tender, just for a minute or two. Add the lightly fried tomatoes into the food processor and puree just until everything is combined.

Pour the tomato puree into the frying pan and add the sugar and salt while stirring constantly, cooking over medium heat. As the sauce becomes a little dryer stir in about 1 cup of water, and then add more as needed. Continuing to stir the sauce, add sugar, to balance out the spiciness, and soy sauce to taste. Stir in the eggplant and cook for a minute or two more just until the sauce has cooked down a bit more and is well intermingled with the eggplants. Remove from heat and serve on top of rice.