Ajam Roedjak

The first time I understood the Indo-Dutch table properly, it was not in a restaurant with a silver rijsttafel, the rice table of many small dishes. It was in a Dutch kitchen where the windows ran with rain and the whole room smelled of trassi, fermented shrimp paste, blooming in oil. A Dutch child knows that smell before he knows the politics behind it. Later, with books open, he learns the rest.

The name already tells you the journey. Ajam is the old Dutch colonial spelling for ayam, Indonesian for chicken, and roedjak is rujak, the sharp-sweet fruit and vegetable salad dressed with chili, palm sugar, tamarind, and shrimp paste. In this dish the idea of rujak becomes a sauce: sour enough to wake the tongue, sweet enough to round the chili, salty and deep from trassi, softened by coconut milk. But let me tell you a secret: the balance is the recipe. Not the number of chilies. Not the prettiness of the garnish. Balance.

This is the kind of cooking that came home with Indo families and colonial households after empire began to unmake itself at the dinner table. History and cookery, they cannot be separated, though many people try when the sauce is good enough. We won't. We will cook it plainly: brown the chicken, fry the bumbu, the spice paste, until it smells cooked rather than raw, then braise until the coconut milk turns glossy and clings to the meat. Hou het altijd simpel, always keep it simple. Rice on the side, cucumber for coolness, and the pan brought to the table without apology.