Avigayil Damm

When I still worked with the Red Cross, a colleague of mine introduced me to a small restaurant in Tebet, Mamink Daeng Tata, which sells food from Makassar (South Sulawesi) such as Konro Bakar (grilled ribs), Sop Konro (beef ribs soup), and Coto Makassar (beef soup). I really like the food and I still keep going there once in a while with friends. Later on, when I was driving around in Pejaten, I discovered that this restaurant that I usually go to in Tebet has opened a branch in Pejaten Raya street.

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My mom makes a ‘mean’ oxtail soup. The oxtail is so tender and the soup is very tasty and rich, unlike the normal oxtail soup which is normally very clear and thin. Once, my hubby and I went to my parents and we were served with the oxtail soup. My hubby was so impressed with it that I just had to learn how to make it on my own. So I asked my mom for the recipe and one day I decided to try it myself.

The key to tender oxtail is the length of cooking time. If you have a pressure cooker then it’s even better because the length of cooking time would be reduced considerably.

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I managed to complete a large part of my big plan for today. I cooked sausage and leek soup with Irish soda bread, and carrot cake. The bread was to accompany the soup, obviously, while the carrot cake was baked to be served in two different meetings on Tuesday. One in my hubby’s office, and the other in mine. All recipes are from epicurious.com which is a site I very often turn to for ideas on what to cook.

For the sausage and leek soup, I actually substituted leek with spring onions because I wasn’t really crazy about leek. For the sausage, I used Rookworst by Unox, because I could not find smoked kielbasa.

There is a video on how to make Irish soda bread here. I didn’t use raisins and caraway but I used sunflower seeds instead because I intended to serve it with soup and didn’t think that raisins would go with it. What I should have also done was reduce the amount of sugar used, because the bread still ended up a little too sweet to go well with the soup.

As for the carrot cake, you can find the recipe here, and it was a big success in both the meetings in which it was served When I made the icing, I used less icing sugar because with the amount of maple syrup in the recipe, the icing became much too sweet. Unfortunately the reduction of icing sugar also resulted in the icing being too soft and ending up too creamy. I still have some leftover of the icing and it really goes well with toast.

Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the soup and the bread when it was served together. This picture was taken the day after (we had some leftover of the soup but not the bread). Try it out yourself!

Today I am back to the office in Jakarta. I arrived last night very late, at almost midnight due to the slight delay of the flight (when is it ever not delayed?). The office boy who usually makes a round to take lunch order was out groceries shopping today for office supplies. Therefore, my colleague and I ordered some food from one of the drivers who happened to be out of the office anyway.

My colleague ordered grilled chicken and I opted for soto ayam. Soto ayam is a (chicken) soup with a mix of different ingredients, depending on the type of soto. This one, a clear soto or soto bening, consists of glass noodles, chopped white cabbage, tomato slices and of course shredded chicken. The soup is usually made of the chicken broth, spiced up with some galangal, spring onions, lemon grass, onion, garlic, some ginger and coriander. Personally I like the Batavia version, soto Betawi, which has uses similar spices, minus the coriander, plus candle nuts, turmeric and coconut milk. But this soto was not bad at all!

I left for Medan earlier today, to attend a meeting which will take place tomorrow. For some reason, when I hopped into the taxi to go to the airport, my mind wandered off to a small stall at the airport’s food court which serves some traditional small meals such as meatball soup (bakso) and siomay (some balls made of fish and some vegetables served with peanut sauce – an Australian friend of mine calls it the ‘unidentifiable fishy object’). I had a sudden crave for bakso, and it didn’t really help that I left the house with an empty stomach.

When I checked in at the counter, I was informed that my flight was delayed for half an hour so I decided to go to the food court and order that meatball soup, since with the delay I had more time to spend. 

So after I got my boarding pass, I went straight to the stall in the food court – named ‘Bowl’ – and ordered a bowl of bakso. I was a little disappointed. Although the soup itself was good but unfortunately the meatballs did not taste much. It seems it has been overcooked so that the taste has left the meatballs and is now residing in the soup. Well the good news is that the meatballs were served in that soup so it was not too bad.