Soya Bean

Glycine maximus; kacang kedelé. Though Indonesia is justly proud of being self-sufficient in rice, she still has to import large quantities of soya beans, mainly from North America. Soya beans can be simply boiled and eaten – we used to nibble them on our way to school when I was a small girl – but much of their food value is then lost because humans do not have the right enzymes to digest these beans properly. In any case, the interest of soya beans lies in what they become when fermented, particularly as SOY SAUCE and TÉMPÉ, or when the ‘milk’ is extracted and made into TOFU (Indonesian, tahu).