Essential Ingredients

In this section I have gathered together some notes on ingredients which you are likely to use often—some of them you will need almost every time you prepare Indonesian food. There is nothing difficult or mysterious about the techniques that they call for, and they should all be quite easily obtainable in Chinese or other Asian foodstores in most cities. An Indonesian cook, however, regards a coconut or a bottle of soya sauce rather differently from a cook in Europe or America, so that what this section really deals with is some of the more important differences between the basic processes of Indonesian and western cooking. The section which begins on is devoted to the general run of spices, fruits and vegetables.