Once upon a time in Bandung, when Indonesia was just starting to get hit by monetary crisis, (i was still a student in one of the best law faculties in the country, yay!), and when i thought that i had met my Mr. Right (turned out to be mr. Right at that time only), we love to go cruising Bandung with my red car, to find a new place to dine in with cheap budget. We would try any places with the following criterias : new exotic food (exotic for us can mean foreign as far as european), cheap, good.
Due to the crisis, a lot of restaurateurs, caterers had to close their expensive and good looking cafés and restaurants because there were not enough clients who owned a lot of money to dine at their place. At that time, a lot of people (including people in the banking industry of course) lost their job, and many of them then decided to open a street hawker cafés alike, with their low budget and more affordable food rate in the horizon to keep their personal kitchens steamy, so that their kids can continue studying, etc etc. As a consequence, there are many small cafés formed under a tent (café tenda), alongside Dago street, the main street of Bandung. The idea is to move the expensive cafés which were always frequented by white colars, to the bord of the street of Dago. Thus, they are using tent to protect them from sun and rain, and by the end of the day, they will have to get the tables and chair flustered, yet they still tried keeping the versatile ambience and café décorations (complicated? It's Indonesia, anything is possible!).
The food are various, normally they are international cuisines such as steak and pasta, just like all the cuisine served in their previously expensive restaurants in more fixed and fancy locations. (we consider steak, pasta things are expensive and versatile... fug, i now prefer asian food really, especially when they cooked it in a
n'importe quoi' way). They used candles to gleam their tent, and to give a romantic ambiance. It kinda worked.
In the end, the amount of the café installed, alongside Dago area was getting too many and out of hand, as they caused traffic jam (especially weekends), and pissed the local residents, because they could not sleep anymore during night (the tents closed very late, of course). And Darwin's theory prevailed, because amongst those tent restaurants, only a pretty plenty that really served good food. One by one, they closed down caused by the previously mentionned reason and, among other, is because Indonesian people as usual, got bored with things that are too banal, and always crave (searching) for a new trend.
As always, as anything else in Indonesia, tent cafés were an instant phenomenon, where everybody was doing it, and by the end of the day, it sounded just like a cliché: we just didn't want to be seen in those tent cafés anymore. Yes, we used shade or hiding under the table if necessary, though we were there because we are hungry not because we wanted to be seen just like the begining of the tent café trend. Branded as “Dago kid” was not a flattering anymore, you know.
One tent café that we really liked was a café situated in the heart of Dago Street, just in front of Aquarius, (an Indonesian leading cassette/CDs store). The café sold rice, cooked in claypot as their commodity. I love the form of the claypot itself, and I got amused chewing the dried and almost burnt rice cooked inside it, especially the crust of rice in the bottom of the claypot. I think it was the first time i ate something from a claypot. Okay, maybe long time before in the 70's, but i hardly remember that...
Unfortunately, the price of a portion (one pot) is quite expensive for a student's pocket. It was from Rp. 5000 to Rp. 7000 depends on the companion of the rice. Accordingly, if it is seafood or meat, it is more expensive (huh, how come that shrimp is expensive in Indonesia, don't we produce them abundantly?). Okay, it is still less than one Euro, but come on, we were jobless at that time, but we are not living with European standard with European salary hey!
Anyway, not long after the café was opened, it got closed again, I guess due to lacking of customers. I remember that I went there for like twice or three times only.
Now that I love to cook very much (sometimes I think I am losing my mind because that is what I think about almost every hour), I do think that it is expensive. Chicken rice claypot, for example, it is very easy to make it, and for European standard, the ingredients are cheap, though they are imported from Asia. Now how come they sold it for a price which is probably equal to more than 2 Euro nowadays (my own false calculation of course), which is still expensive for Indonesian standard?
Anyway, I just bought a fire diffuser, which diffuses evenly the heat of my gaz stove to my claypot, prevent it from cracking easily. I already have several fractured on the cheap claypot (which I bought for only 3 Euro in an Asian store in Paris). And yesterday, Mr. Gorilla the
plongeur told me that there is a thing which can prevent my kitchen pottery utensils (such as tajin, claypot,
poêlen à escargot) if they are exposed directly to fire.Huh, how come that he did not tell me that this thing exist, because I almost cried when I saw the first fracture, and it was enough to make me stop using it, because before I used it almost everyday, hehe. Well, it is also my fault that I almost never soak the claypot before using it as it is supposed to be.
Tonight, I made the chicken rice claypot. For the ingredients of the recipe, I followed
this site (I used the cider instead of rice vinegar and I let the shitakes rested in one piece, not sauced hoping that it keeps the natural flavor) In addition to that, i did not use the real chicken stock, i used chicken stock powder. But on directions, I went with
another site. And if the chicken in the end was not yet done, I added a little bit of water just to give more steam effect to my claypot, to help my chicken cooked, and avoid the rice went too dry. And of course, i opted out for the chinese sausage, i don't have it. I think next time, i will add fish sauce and cilantro.
