Stir Fryin’ in Indonesia

Though I generally like to cook whenever I am craving a certain dish, I sometimes am unwilling to cook when the weather is hot and humid, or if I have to do something else that takes a lot of time. These are the times I usually turn to my favorite cooking style, menumis, or stir-frying. The Indonesian word for the result is tumis as gastronome and epicurean el supremo Suryatini N. Ganie explains.

Just put some cooking oil or butter or whatever you want to stir-fry with in a pan, add some seasonings and stir the whole thing until crispy to your liking.

My style of stir-frying at such times is, of course, “home stir-frying at the wok”, not the technique they use when working at a professional establishment where they cook the ingredients separately so that the meat glistens and is juicy, the vegetables green and crunchy. That requires more than just stirring!

The technique of formal stir-frying is said to have its origin in China and is the most definitive of Chinese cooking styles. It is not to be confused with the French saut‚ing (Margaret Chan, Lembaga Gastronomi Indonesia, 1992).

Evidence shows that the Chinese have been stir-frying for at least a thousand years. The Chinese known as the Hans, whose civilization originated in the basis of the Yellow River, the Hwang Ho.

The river is notorious for its periods of drought, alternating with disastrous floods. Continually plagued by hardships, the people learned to cook using a minimum of fuel and to create delicious dishes out of scraps.

Stir-frying is the fastest cooking technique and it makes the most efficient use of heat. Meat or fish of a different texture can be stretched with chopped vegetables and also noodles.

And when stir-frying different kinds of vegetables, the dish becomes all the more interesting by choosing various colors. Red and green peppers, yellow tender corn, black mushrooms, white tofu.

The stir-frying technique came to Indonesia long ago with the Chinese immigrants, and is up to know still the easiest method of cooking.

In many parts of the archipelago, though, people do not consider the precise art of stir-frying, which includes cutting pieces of the same ingredient into the same size so that cooking is even and thorough. Otherwise the smaller pieces will burn and the larger ones will be undercooked.

Many regional dishes in Indonesia include in their name the cooking technique used.

For example, there is tumis ujau from Central Kalimantan. Ujau are bamboo shoots in local dialect. From West Kalimantan is tumis cempedak. Cempedak is a variety of jackfruit but it is smaller and its peel is not as rough as the normal jackfruit. Its fruit flesh has the same golden color of the normal jackfruit, but has a much more distinctive aroma.

From the northern part of Sulawesi, especially in Manado, tumis bunga pepaya (papaya flowers), very hot and spicy, is a must when receiving the extended family.

Many ingredients like vegetables, meat, chicken, fruits and flowers can be stir-fried.

Vegetables include sawi hijau (green flowering cabbage), sawi putih (Chinese cabbage), kol (cabbage), tauge (mung bean sprouts), tofu, tempe, kacang panjang (long beans) and kangkung (water convolvulus).

Meats are goat, mutton or lamb, pork, beef and all kinds of seafood like shrimp and teri (anchovies). A mixture of ingredients can also be stir-fried.

Actually, stir-frying has many variations. For example, some people who like to avoid oil in high heat woks put washed and drained vegetables in the heated wok and, when sizzling but still crisp, put the oil over it and stir.

Basically, to stir-fry well one has to cut all ingredients into the same size. Heat the wok until smoking then pour in oil. Then stir-fry in aromatic flavorings like garlic, shallots and ginger, and last add the main ingredients, starting with the ones that will require the most cooking time.

Have a nice stir-fry!

Suryatini N. Ganie