Cradle of Flavor: Home Cooking from the Spice Islands of Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia

No wonder this book was a James Beard winner for 2007. The text is exceptional-you feel like you are there. The photos are perfect. All the food is interesting and the ingredients are available-if you know where to obtain them. Many foods can be bought locally and if you run into a snag, there are internet sites listed. An exceptional book.

I am an Indonesian who moved to the US 2 1/2 years ago. This book has fulfilled my craving for Indonesian food. It has easy to follow recipes, descriptions of ingredients, where to find them and how to store them. I totally recommend it.

`Cradle of Flavor' by culinary journalist and `Saveur' executive editor, James Oseland is easily the best presentation I have yet seen of a minor Far Eastern cuisine (excluding India, China, Thailand, and Japan). It is certainly superior to the two I have recently seen on Filipino and Viet cuisines (even though these were very good indeed) and it is better than the broad brushed effort of writer Naomi Duguid and photographer Jeffrey Alford, the culinary travelogue, `Hot Sour Salty Sweet' covering nearby mainland Southeast Asia. This effort is easily comparable to the very best works on Italian, French, and other Mediterranean regions such as `Saveur' colleague Coleman Andrews' `Catalan Cuisine' and Lynne Rossetto Kaspar's `The Splendid Table' on the cuisine of Emilia-Romagna. One of the most illuminating aspects of the book is that it sparks a moment of clarity in my thinking about the region, when I realize that so many of the world's essential spices come from this part of the world and the outstanding geographical feature of this region is its islands. This is exactly the kind of landscape which modern evolutionary theory says will foster great variations in species. Thus, we get a great diversity of foodstuffs in a relatively small area (compared, for example, to the expanse of north central Asia (the Russian steppes). Another thought illuminated by this book is a comparison with Mediterranean cuisine, where the cornerstones are olives, grapes, wheat, milk, pork, and salt. In this land governed by Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, the cornerstones are coconut, rice, soybeans, chilis, spices, tropical fruits and shellfish. Coconut oil traditionally is used in place of olive oil and coconut milk plus soy milk takes the place of cow, goat, and sheep milk, even so far as to create tempeh and tofu, substitutes for European soft cheeses. Like major Mediterranean cultures and nearby Thai cultures, we also had important royal households leading to large kitchen establishments. While Mr. Oseland is not a native of the region, he has brought over 20 years of experience in the region plus the discriminating eye of a professional culinary journalist (an interest created by his first visit to Java) to his task. This means he makes many important contrasts and comparisons with major European and Chinese cooking methods to help us Yanks to understand the food from this part of the world. Like the Thais, for example, the Indonesians don't use the wok for searingly fast frying. The most interesting discussion contrasting cooking methods is the treatment of the rendang technique that the author describes as `backward braising'. It also happens to be very similar to neighboring Philippines' technique of adobo cooking. Like braising, rendang is a long cooking technique. Unlike braising, the `browning' is done at the end of the method rather than at the beginning. And, unlike braising, the cooking liquids are allowed to evaporate down to a paste rather than

IT'S not entirely clear to me if it's because of the San Francisco Bay Area's great cultural diversity - or in spite of it - but there's no denying that more than a few of us (and not just self-professed foodies) suffer from Jaded Palate Syndrome. The most obvious symptom: A pronounced grumpiness and malaise around lunchtime. We've become so accustomed to finding everything from East Indian to Ethiopian cuisines, all as close as the nearest suburban mini-mall, that the region's signature pairing of whine and food should be: "OK, amuse me. Show me something really new." And into the breach steps the intrepid James Oseland, with a masterful introduction to a rich, intensely vibrant cuisine that has yet to find more than a token presence in the United States. With "Cradle of Flavor: Home Cooking From the Spice Islands of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore," Oseland, the editor-in-chief of Saveur magazine, lays out a vast map of hitherto uncharted culinary territory. The book is not an addition to an existing canon of literature. Rather, for any non-Indonesian chef it will more than suffice as both the first and last word on the subject. How could an area as vast and populous as the Malay Archipelago escape notice for so long? As one Indonesian acquaintance told Oseland on his first trip to the region more than two decades ago, "We're the best-kept secret in Asia. Too few of us are living abroad to share our cuisine." If you've tasted any food from the region at all, it was most likely cosmopolitan, Chinese-influenced fare from the city-state of Singapore and not the home-style cooking typically found in the far provinces of Indonesia. "Cradle of Flavor" is more than the sum of its parts. It is a compendium of exotic recipes, but it is also a short course on how the many cultural streams at play here - Chinese, Thai, Dutch and Indian among them - came to intersect in the kitchens and alley food-stalls of Indonesia. And the book works as what -- for lack of a better term - we'll call anecdotal ethnography. Food is culture. It's impossible to read a chapter without coming away with some understanding of the rhythm of everyday life in Indonesia. While the instructional passages are authoritative and straightforward, they're interwoven with a cultural portrait that's intensely personal. It begins with Oseland's first journey to Indonesia at age 19. His extended stay with an aristocratic Jakarta family would include, among other things, a bout with dengue fever and a portentous meeting with a screen-star-turned-fortune-teller who informs him that he is fated to keep returning to Indonesia for the rest of his life. You've got to love a cookbook author who would begin a chapter titled "Fish and Shellfish" with an eyewitness account of the great exodus of Muslim fundamentalists streaming through the port of Ambon after the Bali bombings of 2002. Oseland is the sensible, streetwise friend any American visitor would want as a guide through the open-air

I am not much of a cook, and certainly not of exotic foods that require many spices and shopping in special markets. But I bought this book because I had heard that, apart from recipes, it offers a travelogue and historical glimpse into the mystery and wonder of the ancient "Spice routes," a subject that has always fascinated me. Oseland too is captivated by this mystique and his adventurous spirit also takes him deep into the hills and paddys and homes of the Spice Islnads. We get not only the whiff of history but also perceptive glimpses of modern Indonesia - its religion, politics, social tensions and customs - all boiled down through the experience of individual families around a dinner table of delicious food. So imagine my surprise when I tried a couple of these recipes and they were actually easy to cook! I'm sure not all the recipes in the book are simple, but even I had success with "Fragrant Fish Stew with Lime and Lemon Basil." Oseland learned these recipes by working alongside the people he met and befriended in his travels in Indonesia. The are real family cooking, and - especially if you brek them in easy with delicious dishes like Celebration Yellow Rice, your family will love them too! It's also a fun adventure to take the kids to your local Indonesian (or other Asian) market, if you have one. Oseland gives instructions on how to find these ingredients in most areas, and also some suggestions for substitutions for harder to find items.