Tuesday, September 12, 2017

Indonesian Day Festival, Cape Town

We love Indonesian food. We have a friend in Holland who has Indonesian heritage. He  has taken the trouble to make a proper Rijsttafel for us several times so, when we saw an invitation from the Indonesian Ambassador on Facebook to come to their open day on Saturday, we made plans to be there
The Festival was held at the Indonesian Consulate in Rosmead Avenue, Kenilworth. There was no entry fee. We were given numbers which were 617 and 619 and that was only at 12.30
It was very popular with locals who have Indonesian connections or heritage. A significant number of Capetonians is descended from slaves who were brought here from Indonesia by the Dutch who controlled the Cape from 1652 to 1805
There were traditional dancers
And a very good food tent, which was why we were there. We wandered around deciding what we would have for lunch. There were so many choices that it turned out to be our main meal of the day as we shared four main dishes, a soup and a dessert
We had to buy some of these light-as-air small pancake-like cakes, made green with pandan extract. They are made with a yeast-based pancake batter, poured into the special tin which sits on the gas flame. The Dutch chef who was making them said that the batter was similar to poffertjes, a Dutch speciality. When they are nearly ready he put disks of rich milk chocolate in each one and it melted beautifully
Coooking
The end product. Delicious
This stand was also selling large thick and light pancakes which were spread with melted butter, sprinkled with chocolate hagelslag or muisjes (sprinkles to thee and me), chopped nuts and then - yes, this is weird, grated cheese. They are then folded so that the cheese melts
Oh we forgot, they also pour over condensed milk
ready to fold over
Folded over, the pancake is cut into squares
The finished pancake. They were very popular
Loempia or spring rolls
Batavian soup looked interesting
Happy cooks
This dish had salt beef or chicken in it

Deep fried Tofu with some noodles , peanuts and cucumber
Deep fried dumplings
Sate on the grill - lamb or chicken
Another interesting looking dish, mostly tofu and rice with some vegetables
Gado Gado salad
Small sausages
We had one of each of these
They are dressed with chilli sauce, not as hot as we were expecting, and some Ketjap Manis, sweet sticky soy
One serving of Batagor
Their descriptions
Quite long queues for some of the food
And we had a Rendang and a Nasi Kuning . The Rendang is beef cooked in coconut and spices and looked dry but it was most and beautifully tender, especially as it came with Jackfruit broth to pour over the food - best dish of the day. We bought one of each.It was a feast

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