fish fry – indonesian style

sunday, some friends decided to have a fish cookout, and they invited me along! it was an all day process that started at 5 am when aswan went to market to buy the fish. he and i are both opposed to lake fish, so i strongly encouraged him to lick each fish before purchasing it to make sure it didn’t taste like rawa pening, the sewage catching swamp lake outside of town where most of salatiga’s fish are caught, and the number one reason why i don’t eat fish in salatiga.

i asked him about the fish when i saw him at church, and he assured me that he only bought ikan laut (sea fish). but he said that even though he got there at 5, there were only small ones left, so he bought several.

dinner time came, and i arrived across town at the house aswan (as of 2 weeks ago) shares with two new friends in salatiga – a newlywed couple, mas brili and tante (i don’t actually know her real name because everyone just calls her tante, which means aunt!) from manado. everyone was already there, hard at work. the women were in the kitchen making the sauce, rice, and veggies, and the men were on the front porch cooking the fish. everything was under control, so they put me on photography detail!

the prime ingredient for the fish sauce was cabe – hot peppers! i was also designated taste tester... a dangerous job in this kitchen!

tante also added hot onions, garlic, and salt to the sauce, then ground it all up happily! btw, STANDING too close to this made my eyes water and my throat burn.

veggies – for a well balanced meal. i don’t actually know which leaf this is. we eat a lot of different kids here, and once they’re boiled, they all look the same to me.

sylva was in charge of washing the rice to get all the stones, dirt, and bugs out! and ya, this is a normal thing to do.

the biggest fish, ready to be eaten!

mas brili was in charge of keeping the coals live and flipping the fish over. he’s also the expert at knowing when they’re cooked all the way through. not a single one of those fish were undercooked!

arai and sylva getting more fish ready to be cooked.

the finished product.

but wait! – don’t forget to add a healthy dose of the hotter-than-hades sauce! i’m amazed this stuff doesn’t leave acid burns on the fish.

something else important to remember is to always ALWAYS pose with the food before eating it. this is a MUST.

now THIS is the finished product! you’ll be happy to hear i made it through my fish with only 3 glasses of water! and one of those was because sylva ran out, so she drank my glass while i wasn’t looking.

enjoying our fish together! oh, see those tissues in the foreground? they got those out specifically so people could wipe the sweat off their faces due to the spicyness of the fish. no joke.

something i love about my friends and about indonesia in general is the unity in diversity. each person sitting around our makeshift table represents a different tribe. but it doesn’t matter... because we’re all indonesian.

: )