Padang Food

Friday, February 24, 2012

Padang food is the cuisine of the Minangkabau people of West Sumatra, Indonesia. It is among the most popular food in Maritime Southeast Asia. It is known across Indonesia as Masakan Padang (Padang cuisine, in English usually the simpler Padang food) after the city of Padang the capital city of West Sumatra province , it is served in restaurants opened by Minangkabau people in Indonesian cities. Padang food is ubiquitous in Indonesian cities, and is also popular in neighboring Malaysia and Singapore. The term "Padang food" is often used to designate the whole culinary traditions of Minangkabau people, however this term is seldom used in Minangkabau inland cities such as Bukittinggi that is also a culinary hotspot in West Sumatra and refer to it as Masakan Minang or Minangkabau food instead, since there is differences between Nasi Padang of Padang and Nasi Kapau of Bukittinggi.
Padang food is famous for its rich taste of succulent coconut milk and spicy chili. Among various cooking traditions within Indonesian cuisine, Minangkabau cuisine and most of Sumatran cuisine, demonstrate Indian and Middle Eastern influences, which is various dishes cooked in curry sauce with coconut milk, also the heavy use of spices mixture.
Because most of Minangkabau people are muslims, Minangkabau cuisine follows halal dietary law rigorously. Protein intake are mostly taken from beef, water buffalo, goat, and lamb meat, and also includes poultry and fishes. Minangkabau people are known for their fondness of cattle meat products including offal. Almost the whole parts of a cattle, such as meat, ribs, tongue, tail, liver, tripe, brain, bone marrow, spleen, intestine, cartilage, tendon, and even skin, are made to be Minangkabau delicacies. Seafood is popular in coastal West Sumatran cities, and most are grilled or fried with spicy chilli sauce or in curry gravy. Various of fishes, shrimp, and cuttlefish in also cooked in similar fashion. Most of Minangkabau food is eaten with hot steamed rice or compressed rice such as katupek (ketupat). Vegetables are mostly boiled such as boiled cassava leaf, or simmered in thin curry as side dishes, such as gulai (some kind of curry) of young jackfruit or cabbages.

Continue Reading | comments

Javanese people

Notable Javanese people; from top to bottom:
top row: Raden Wijaya, Tribhuwana Tunggadewi, Gajah Mada, Diponegoro, Raden Saleh.
middle row: Pakubuwono X, Kartini, Sukarno, Suharto, Sudirman.
bottom row: Anggun C. Sasmi, Sri Mulyani Indrawati, Abdurrahman Wahid, Megawati Sukarnoputri, Dian Sastrowardoyo.

The Javanese people (Javanese Ngoko: Wong Jawa, Krama: Tiyang Jawi;^[3] Indonesian: suku Jawa)^[4] is an ethnic group native to the Indonesian island of Java. At approximately 85 million people (as of 2009), it is the largest ethnic group on the island and also in Indonesia. They are predominantly located in the central to eastern parts of the island. Following centuries of migrations they can now be found in most Provinces of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and also Suriname in South America.
Today, majority of the Javanese people identify themselves as Muslims. Because the Javanese civilization has been influenced for more than a millennia of interactions between the native animism and the Indian Hindu—Buddhist culture, there are traces of their influences in the Javanese history, culture, traditions and artforms.

Continue Reading | comments

Javanese cuisine

Javanese cuisine is the cuisine of Javanese people. In wider sense, Javanese cuisine might also refer to the cuisine of the whole people of Java Island, Indonesia; which also include Sundanese in West Java, Betawi people in Jakarta and Madurese on Madura Island off East Java. These ethnic groups have their own distinctive cuisines.
Javanese cuisine is largely divided into three major groups:

• Central Javanese cuisine (masakan Jawa Tengah)
• East Javanese cuisine (masakan Jawa Timur)
• Common Javanese dishes

There are similarities in the cuisines but the main differences lie in the flavors. Central Javanese cuisine is sweeter and less spicy, while East Javanese cuisine uses less sugar and more chili, possibly influenced by Madurese cuisine.
Rice is the common staple food, and served with every meal. Gaplek, or dried cassava, is sometimes mixed into rice or replaces rice. Bread and grains other than rice are uncommon, although noodles and potatoes are often served as accompaniment to rice.
Almost 90% of Javanese are Muslim, and consequently, much of Javanese cuisine omits pork. Few ethnic groups in Indonesia use pork (and other sources of protein considered haram under Muslim dietary laws) in their cuisine, most prominently Balinese cuisine, Indonesian Chinese cuisine, and Manado cuisine.

Continue Reading | comments

Traditional Batak medicine

In traditional Batak society datuk (animist priests) as well as gurus practiced traditional medicine, although the former were exclusively male. Both professions were attributed with supernatural powers and the ability to predict the future. Treatments and healing rituals bear some resemblance to those practiced by dukuns in other parts of Indonesia. Following the Christianization of the Toba and Karo Batak in the late 19th century, missionaries discouraged traditional healing and divination and they became largely clandestine activities.^[35]
Both datuk and guru healers also practiced divination by consulting a pustaha, a handwritten book made of wood and bark in which were inscribed recipes for healing remedies, incantations and songs, predictive calendars, and other notes on magic, healing and divination written in poda, an archaic Batak shorthand. According to Winkler, there were three categories of Pustaha based on the purpose of their usage:

1. Protective Magic, which includes diagnosis, therapy, medicinal mixes which have magical properties, such as amulets, parmanisan (love charms), etc.

2. Destructive Magic, which encompasses the art of making poison, the art of controlling or utilizing the power of certain spirits, calling the pangulubalang, and the art of making dorma (magical formulas for causing a person to fall in love).

3. Divination, which involves oracles (words of the gods), the wishes of the spirits, commands from the gods and from the spirits of the ancestors, and an almanac or calendrical system (porhalaan), and astrology to determine auspicious days and months to accomplish certain actions or goals.^[37]

The datu or guru consulted the pustaha when presented with a difficult problem, and in time this became in itself a ritual. When missionaries began to discourage traditional healing and augury the Bible may have been adopted by some gurus in place of the pustaha.
Among the most important healing ceremonies performed in Toba and Karo communities is that of recalling the jinujung, or personal guardian spirit. According to Toba and Karo cosmology, each person receives a jinujung in childhood or at puberty and they keep it for life unless they are unfortunate enough to lose it, in which case they will fall ill. In order to call the jinujung back, a female guru (guru sibaso in Karo) goes into a trance and the jinujung will enter into her and speak through her mouth. At this time the sick person or the family can negotiate ritual payment to entice it to return.^[38]
Traditional healers are not powerful enough to cure illness due to the loss of a person's tendi (this falls under the jurisdiction of the datuk), however they do play a role in communicating with begu and influencing their behavior.

Continue Reading | comments

Batak

Batak is a collective term used to identify a number of ethnic groups predominantly found in North Sumatra, Indonesia. The term is used to include the Toba, Karo, Pakpak, Simalungun, Angkola and Mandailing, each of which are distinct but related groups with distinct, albeit related, languages and customs (adat). Occasionally it is also used to include the Alas people of Central/Southern Aceh, but usually only as relates to language groups.
In North Sumatra, Toba people typically assert their identity as 'Batak', while other 'Bataks' may explicitly reject that label, preferring instead to identify as specifically 'Simalungun', 'Karo', etc

Continue Reading | comments

Danau Toba

Lake Toba (Indonesian: Danau Toba) is a lake and supervolcano. The lake is 100 kilometres long and 30 kilometres wide, and 505 metres (1,666 ft) at its deepest point. Located in the middle of the northern part of the Indonesian island of Sumatra with a surface elevation of about 900 metres (2,953 ft), the lake stretches from 2.88°N 98.52°E to 2.35°N 99.1°E. It is the largest lake in Indonesia and the largest volcanic lake in the world.
Lake Toba is the site of a supervolcanic eruption that occurred an estimated 69,000 to 77,000 years ago a massive, climate-changing event. The eruption is believed to have had a VEI intensity of 8. It is the largest known explosive eruption anywhere on Earth in the last 25 million years. According to the Toba catastrophe theory, it had global consequences, killing most humans then alive and creating a population bottleneck in Central Eastern Africa and India that affected the genetic inheritance of all humans today. However, this theory is not widely accepted due to lack of evidence for any other animal decline or extinction, even in environmentally sensitive species. However, it has been accepted that the eruption of Toba led to a volcanic winter with a worldwide decline in temperatures between 3 to 5 °C (5 to 9 °F), and up to 15 °C (27.0 °F) in higher latitudes.

Continue Reading | comments

The Hindu-Buddhist Era

With the advent of Dharmic religions in Indonesia, Hinduism and Buddhism were celebrated in ritual and in art. They incorporated stories of the Ramayana, Mahabharata and also Panji cycles into dance-drama, which is called "Sendratari" (dance-drama) or sometimes simply translated as "ballet". Highly stylized methods of dances were developed and are still obvious nowadays, especially in the islands of Java and Bali. The Javanese Ramayana dance-drama is regularly staged and performed in 9th century Prambanan temple compound, Yogyakarta; while its Balinese counterpart is also performed in various Balinese temples throughout the island. The Javanese wayang wong dance-drama took stories from the episodes of Ramayana or Mahabharata Hindu epic. However, the dances are distinct to those of Indian. While hand gestures are still very important, Indonesian dancers do not have the Indian attention to mudra: instead the dances incorporated local forms. Javanese court dances stressed on graceful and slow movements while the dances of Balinese court are more dynamic and very expressive. The Javanese sacred ritual dance of Bedhaya is believed to have its root in 14th century Majapahit court or probably earlier, which originated as ritual dance performed by virgins to worship Indic deities such as Shiva, Brahma, and Vishnu.
In Bali, dances has become the integral part of Hindu Balinese rituals. Experts believed that balinese dance derived from older dance tradition of Java. Friezes on East Javanese temples built during the 14th century show headdresses almost identical to those still being used for dances in Bali today. These represent a remarkable unbroken continuity of form at least 600 years old. Certain sacred dances are reserved and only performed during certain religious ceremony. Each Balinese dances have special functions, from sacred ritual dances performed only in Balinese temples such as sacred sanghyang dedari and Barong dance that involved trance, dance drama that retold the legends and popular stories such as legong and kecak, to the dance for welcoming guests such as pendet or social youth dance such as joged. The topeng dance also popular in Java and Bali, it often took story from Panji tales, originated from 12th century Kediri kingdom. The notable topeng dances are topeng Cirebon dance and topeng Bali dance.

Continue Reading | comments