De Bijbel van de Indonesische Keuken is all about delicious Indonesian food. I received this cookbook as a gift on my 43th birthday and have prepared several recipes since then. And loved them all. There are well known Indonesian dishes in it, but also less known recipes. The last cookbook I reviewed is Strooigoed.
Data De Bijbel van de Indonesische Keuken
The chef behind the cookbook is Maureen Tan. She gives food workshops, and is a recipe developer based in Amsterdam. She has published two cookbooks and has her own website. Maureen promotes her workshops on the website and there are some recipes on her website. She bases all her recipes and workshops on the recipes her Indonesian mother left her.
Carrera Culinair, which is part of Overamstel uitgevers bv, is the publisher. The book is written in Dutch. ISBN-number if the book is 978 90 488 5381 6.
De Bijbel-series
The word bijbel translates as bible in English. It’s a series of books with each a different cuisine. There’s one on the Thai kitchen, the Dutch kitchen, the Italian kitchen and so on. The Indonesian kitchen bible was first published in 2020.
Contents
The book has 496 pages and is originally written in Dutch. A lot of the recipes come with a photo, however not all of them and some have a photo of ingredients, not the dish.
The cookbook has 11 chapters with recipes. The chapters are as follows: Basic recipes, Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, West-Java, Midden(middle)-Java, Oost(East)-Java, Bali, Kleine (small) Soenda-eilanden (islands), Molukken and Papoea. All, except for the first, named after islands the Indonesian archipelago contains. Each chapter starts with a page with the island(s) drawn on it with the most important cities, then a page with the title and a recipe index. Third a page with a photo of a fabric typical of the island. And 4th an introduction to that island and its cuisine. The basic recipes chapter only has the second page.
Further there’s an introduction, 5 small chapters on how to use this cookbook, a short history on the Indonesian kitchen, Indonesian ingredients, kitchen utensils and how-to’s. At the back is a thank you chapter and 3 different indexes.
Recipes
There are 227 recipes in total in the cookbook. Most recipes fit on one page, some have 2 pages. If there comes a photo with the recipe, it has a separate page. Each recipe has the title printed large, underneath the Indonesian name of the recipe. Then a short intro to the recipe. Under the intro is the ingredients list. Underneath the ingredients are the instructions.
Above the title in small print is whether it’s a sweet recipe, snack, beverage and so on. Then how many serving and the preparation time.
What I’ve Prepared and My Experience
So far I’ve prepared 11 recipes, from corn cookies to mixed vegetables with spicy peanut sauce. For some examples see week 3 2022 and week 4 2022. The first recipe I tried out were potato kroketjes, which we loved.
Our favorites so far are the Indonesian flatbread, nasi goreng (fried rice) and baked banana. We also loved the bami goreng.
That’s All On De Bijbel van de Indonesische Keuken
Hope you’re as enthusiastic on this cookbook as I am!