Australia and the Indonesian Table

Australia lies closer to Indonesia than any other Western country, and the two share a sea border across the Timor and Arafura Seas. The Indonesian table reached Australia in the later twentieth century through study, travel to Bali and the settlement of a small Indonesian-Australian community. Its older history belongs to the northern coast, where Makassan trepangers had sailed to Arnhem Land for sea cucumber before the colonial period.

The Indonesian table in Australia has been shaped by three groups of people. The first is the Indonesian students, for whom Australia is the most common destination for tertiary study abroad. Students who cook for themselves and for one another create a steady demand for the ingredients of home: shallots, galangal, kencur, candlenut, tamarind, sweet soy sauce and shrimp paste. The second is the Australians who came to know Indonesian food in Bali, and who return wanting the dishes they ate there, among them nasi goreng, sate, gado-gado and sambal. The third is the small but committed Indonesian-Australian community, which keeps regional cooking alive in home kitchens and at community gatherings. The cooking that travels best is the cooking built on a few durable components. A bumbu of shallot, garlic, chilli, turmeric and galangal can be pounded and fried in any kitchen with a mortar or a processor. Rice, coconut milk and a good sambal then carry the meal. Sambal in particular has found a following among cooks of Indonesian descent in Australia, and Lara Lee, an Australian-raised writer of Indonesian heritage, takes it as the organising idea of her book Coconut & Sambal. Her work shows a diaspora cook returning to the family table of Java and its neighbours and rewriting it for kitchens abroad. Substitution is the practical question for every cook outside the archipelago. Fresh galangal, makrut lime leaf and lemongrass are now widely sold, while salam leaf, torch ginger bud and keluak are harder to find. Cooks adjust with what the market offers, and the dish that results is an honest translation. Bird's-eye chilli, shrimp paste and palm sugar remain the points on which an Indonesian palate judges the plate. The Balinese table has had an outsize influence on how Australians picture Indonesian food, because Bali is where most of them first eat it. Vivienne Kruger, in Balinese Food, records the range of that cooking, from the ceremonial pig to the everyday sambal matah, which is far wider than the tourist menu suggests. Sri Owen and William Wongso, in their books on the cooking of the whole archipelago, point the curious cook towards the dishes of Sumatra, Java and the eastern islands, which the Bali-centred view leaves out.

The Indonesian table abroad rests on a few flavours that the palate of origin uses to judge the plate: the sweetness of palm sugar and sweet soy sauce, the sourness of tamarind and lime, the savour of shrimp paste and the heat of bird's-eye chilli Capsicum frutescens. A bumbu of shallot, garlic, chilli, turmeric Curcuma longa and galangal Alpinia galanga, pounded and fried until the raw edge leaves it, gives the base of many dishes, and rice, coconut milk and a sambal complete the meal. In an Australian kitchen the balance is kept by substitution. Fresh galangal, lemongrass Cymbopogon citratus and makrut lime Citrus hystrix leaf can be bought and are used as at home, while salam leaf, torch ginger bud and keluak are replaced with what the market offers. Sambal, whether a cooked sambal or a raw one in the manner of sambal matah, is where the cook's hand shows, since the proportion of chilli, salt, acid and sweetness is judged by taste and not by measure.