RECIPE—meatballs

I usually make these meatballs rather small, say the size of a big marble. And rather than roasting them in the oven, I cook them in the sugo of the previous post.

Ingredients:

·         500 g of minced beef

·         1 onion finely chopped

·         parsley, dried 2 tsp, or fresh – a fair amount but not too much, remember it is not supposed to be a vegetarian patty

·         50 g of crumbs for tempura batter, or bread crumbs

·         1 egg lightly beaten

·         3 tbsp (heaped) of cream cheese – the rather wet variety

·         2 tbsp olive oil for mixing into the meat

·         salt and coarsely ground black pepper to taste

·         red chilli pepper flakes to taste (optional)

Preparation:

In a large mixing bowl mix together all of the above ingredients. Mix well, using your hands to mash and squeeze the mixture.

Roll into balls the size of big marbles.

Cook in the sugo of my previous post, and serve with spaghetti or any other pasta.

RECIPE—sugo

Sugo means juice in Italian, as well as sauce. More precisely, sugo is a meat sauce of chopped vegetables and ground meat, or larger pieces, pan-fried in butter or fat or oil and thereafter braised in liquid… slowly! The nice thing about sugos is that they get better one or two days after cooking. Close your eyes and imagine the smell of those beautiful aromas merging into an ever improving total flavour.

And sugo keeps for quite some time—frozen or cold—which makes it perfect for quick pasta meals for those with busy professional lives and limited kitchen time. Moreover, the same sugo would not necessarily induce a feeling of ...oh no, not again… if each subsequent meal were to be made unique with additional ingredients. The original sugo would then fuse the pasta—or rice, or Hong Kong noodles, or mashed potatoes, or polenta—to the new ingredient, which could be anything: a stir-fried vegetable or meat dish, or mushrooms sautéed with bacon strips, or sausages.

My favourite sugo is prepared the following way.

Ingredients:

Fresh tomatoes                500 g (canned whole or chopped tomatoes may be substituted).
Stewing steak                   250 g, cut into cubes of 2 cm or smaller
Onion                                  one large, chopped small
Garlic                                   3-5 cloves, peeled and crushed
Back bacon                        6 slices, chopped
Olive oil                              30 ml (2 tbsp)
Salt                                       to taste
Ground black pepper     to taste
Dried chilli flakes             5 ml (1 tsp)
Oregano (dried)              5 ml (1 tsp)

Preparation:

Using a suitably sized casserole, or Dutch oven, fry the onion in the oil, medium heat.

When golden add the meat, let simmer for 5 minutes or till evenly browned.

Halve and quarter the tomatoes and add to the casserole, and add the chopped bacon.

Simmer for 5 minutes stirring occasionally.

Add the salt, the pepper and the chilli flakes.

Simmer on smallest heat using a heat-diffuser for 2-3 hours. Stir regularly and check the consistency—remember it is a sauce we are preparing and when too dry add water. The meat (depending on cut and quality) should have become an integral part of the sauce… if not: simmer longer!

Oregano is best added towards the end as its flavour is gradually lost during the cooking process.

BALI –changes

The only constant is change. No wonder therefore that the island described by von Faber in his Guidebook and Souvenir of BALI is quite different from the one that modern-day visitors will encounter.

The disappearance of the tiger, and consequently the hunting parties to the western part of the island, is the result of population pressure and competition for the shared environment with wildlife loosing out, while the unspoiled tranquillity of Kuta has disappeared due to lively entrepreneurial resourcefulness and commercial acumen.

Increasing exposure to the outside world has then inevitably led to changes in the outlook of the population itself. I believe it was in Karl Martin's Reisen in den Molukken, in Ambon, den Uliassern, Seran (Ceram) und Buru, Eine Schilderung von Land und Leuten, that I read how sailors dreaded to be becalmed off Bali because its wild long-haired inhabitants would come out in their canoes grappling hooks at the ready to board. Apparently many a ship's crew and supplies were lost during these attacks. Most likely Martin relates stories of yore. His voyage to the Moluccas took place in 1891/92 and it seems highly unlikely that these attacks still occurred in his days. But then, who knows, today piracy is still rampant off the south-western Philippines, in the Strait of Malacca, and of course around Somalia.

Outside influence is almost immediately noticeable in the way of dressing. When von Faber wrote the guidebook Balinese men still wore their hair long. And while the main cities like Denpasar and Singaraja had already changed to a "modern" dress, the countryside was still largely traditional.

Men were wearing a single piece of cloth—kamben—reaching from the waist to the knees and tied in the front, held in place by a cloth belt. Dressed for official or religious occasions they wear a large sarong—saput—over the kamben. Depending on the wealth of the wearer this saput was of greater or lesser quality.

Women wore a sarong tied at the waist and held in place by a sash—bulang. The breasts were uncovered except when appearing in front of a superior or entering the temple. Although the Balinese are accustomed to go nude above the waist, for both men and women, etiquette dictates that the breast must be covered for formal dress.

The priests are dressed in white only, still.

Reference: Het Land der Duizend Tempels (The Land of the Thousand Temples) A Guidebook and Souvenir of BALI.

BALI and JAVA –a bit of history

When Hinduism spread to Java and the two powerful kingdoms—Pajajaran in the western and Mojopait in the eastern part of the island—were firmly established, Bali became a vassal state of the latter. Around middle of the 15^th century, however, Islam came to be the main religion on Java, and Bali, once again independent, provided a safe haven for many religious refugees from the Mojopait kingdom.

Since then the Hindu-Javanese and their descendants lived there undisturbed… that is, till the arrival of the Dutch and their VOC—the Dutch East India Company. For Bali that was the year 1597, and the first Hollanders visiting Bali described the island as overflowing with milk and honey. In 1620 the Company established its first trading post in Buleleng from where its representatives traded with the island's kings. The more specific task of these representatives was to enter into trade agreements with the kings for the supply of… slaves!

Herman Willem Daendels, the 36^th Governor-General of the Netherlands Indies (1808-1811) assigned a Lieutenant-Quartermaster with the title of Resident to the island for the specific purpose of procuring as many slaves as the kings would release.

These slaves were presumably needed to replenish the ones working on the Great Post Road linking Anyer (west of Jakarta) with Panarukan (east of Surabaya) as the death toll was horrendous. This road with a length of 1000 km was completed in one year using forced labour, a truly astonishing feat, but at the cost of tens of thousands lives. Regional heads along the route were obliged to provide labour and construct their relevant road section within a specified time. Those who did not achieve their target were killed together with their labourers, and their heads strung from the trees along the route. Daendels, who by that time was called the Iron Marshall, never showed mercy, but the road was completed within one year.



Great Post Road at Pasuruan - 1890

                           Great Post Road

In the early fifties of last century, when I attended primary school in Holland, we were taught about our national hero Daendels and the great things he had accomplished!

Indonesian history books do, of course, hold a different opinion.

Interestingly, Raffles (A History of Java, Volume 1 and Volume 2) held the bunch of administrators he had sent fleeing to Bandung in contempt. The landing of the British forces at Tanjung Priok had been completely unopposed—the only casualty suffered by the landing forces was a marine accidentally shooting himself in the foot when scrambling overboard.

And ironically the Great Post Road had been built to be able to quickly mobilise defenders when, as foreseen many years before the fact, the British would attack.

References:  Wikipedia and Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam