Asian in a Strange Land

Happy family

Actual date: October 19, 2008

Rewind is back!  More specifically Indonesia Trip 2008 is back!

Happy Labor Day 2010, everybody.  Denise has been nudging me to resume posting about our trip in 2008, so here I am doing some of that while enjoying Labor Day.  I’ve decided to start putting the “Actual date” info in red so as to minimize confusion for future posts about the trip.  Hopefully when you see the line of red text you’ll immediately know it’s a Rewind post, especially since I’ve also got some stuff from earlier this year that I’m behind on that will be making its way here soon.  Rewind-splosion.  No, we didn’t go to Indonesia again.  Yes, this stuff is from 2 years ago.  But it’s still way cool and I’m not gonna let good blogging material go to waste.  Again, when reading this blog just ignore the accepted rules of time and space and go with the flow.  Time travel is a common occurrence in the Pamudji-verse.

We had lunch with our extended family a day before heading out of Surabaya.  This is my mom’s side of the family.  We’ve probably got about 1/2 of mom’s siblings and their kids here, some of whom I’ve only seen a handful of times or not at all.  They had gathered for the celebration in Malang and regrouped in Surabaya where some of them live, so we met up with them while everybody was still in one place.

Giving of hard time

For example, here is an uncle and his daughter giving Susie a hard time about something or another.  The uncle is mom’s sibling who we probably know the best since he lived nearby while we were in Indonesia, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never met this daughter of his.  Last time I saw him and his family I’m almost positive they still only had 1 daughter, and this one wasn’t born yet.  Wow.  Talking about hammering home the fact that you’re old.

This is one of 2 things I regret about living in the U.S.–being so far away from family.  It would be nice for Sofia and Penelope to know their dad’s side of the family better, but it looks nigh on impossible for that to happen.

But enough crying in my beer.  The other thing I regret about living here is missing the food from Indonesia, so let’s get right to that!

Wanna Fanta?

Fanta is huge in Indonesia.  Mmm… red Fanta.

Roast duck

This was a Chinese restaurant.  Naturally we had to get roast duck.  Oh, roast duck–how I miss you!  Whenever we go anywhere with real Chinese restaurants we make it a point to get duck.  Actually, you can get proper roast duck in Jackson now at Ding How; perhaps more on that in a future post.  Anyway, this duck was easily better than any we’ve had in the States, although admittedly I haven’t had it in Chinese food meccas like San Francisco, New York, etc.

Stir fried string beans

These string beans are a departure from typical stir-fried Chinese vegetables in that the vegetables aren’t just given a quick sear and taken off the wok.  These guys are cooked a little longer to shrivel them up a little, which gives them a bit of a crunchy and chewy texture.

Beef with spicy sauce

I’ll admit it–I’m just making up labels for these dishes at this point.  You’ll recall I wasn’t food blogging in 2008 and had no plan to, so I didn’t take any notes.  Anyway, beef in a spicy soy sauce based sauce.

Deep fried squid

If you’ve had fried calamari you get the idea here.  Maybe a bit more fluffy breading on these though, with the squid cooked to a nice tender consistency.  This is a dish that should be widely available here in the States at decent Chinese joints.

Sweet and sour fried ribs

Think sweet and sour pork, except 100 times better because it isn’t doused in that blech sauce that passes as sweet and sour sauce around here.  Great contrast of flavors and texture with the crunchy exterior and soft interior, plus gnawing meat off the bone is fun.

I’d tell you the name of the restaurant, but a) I don’t remember and didn’t take notes, and b) you’re not gonna be in Surabaya anytime soon anyway.  But if you are planning a trip to Indonesia just hit me up in the comments and I’d be happy to do the research and tell you exactly where we ate.