It’s very common for Indonesian people to serve fried meat with fresh basil leaves. Eating fried chicken or fried catfish seems to be much tastier with basil leaves. Ayam kemangi, or chicken basil, is one of my favorite cuisines. It’s such an exotic taste and aroma. Thai basil which has slightly wider leaves is another type of this herb. This basil is used mostly in Thai curry. Green curry and fish red curry are my favorites among any other amazing tastes of Thai foods. The aroma of fresh basil really can make me mouth-watery, hmmm...
Some people don’t like the smell of coriander leaf although some considers it nice. Most of my Japanese friends can not take coriander leaf. But for Chinese people, coriander leaf is very common to use for cooking. I remember my first experience having mixed sea cucumber and duck meat cooked with soy sauce. This Chinese delicacy food was sprinkled with fresh coriander leaves hence the coriander scent dominated every single bite of the dish. My aunty and I also love to put lots of fresh coriander leaves on Vietnamese spring roll. Among Asian food; Chinese, Vietnamese, and Thai cooking use lots of coriander leaves. That is why I like them very much.
My first experience tasting food with Chinese prickly ash (花椒) was when my aunty from China brought this spice to Indonesia and made sautéed dried tofu with it. It was really good! Furthermore, I had more encounter with this spice when I was in China. This spice is the main ingredient in Sichuan foods. Once, I was invited to attend dinner by a Chinese family in a Sichuan restaurant. I was astonished with the taste of the boiled carp (水煮鱼) and the small box fried chicken (炸鸡丁). They use a huge quantity of this spice! Numb in my lips...that’s the effect of this spice. Then I started sweating, and felt burning sensation in my mouth. But I enjoyed this experience. My friend told me that the Chinese prickly ash has a kind of opium effect. I guess I must agree with him as I’ve been addicted. Whenever I order Chinese noodle (米线), I also put lots of prickly ash oil... Hmmm, mouth watery again I am.
The name of this spice has been familiar to my ears since I was a little kid. But I didn’t know how cumin looked like and smelled. Cumin is widely used in Indian and Indonesian cooking, goat curry particularly. I knew that goat curry was very delicious, but I didn’t know what spices that made it so. Cooking experts like my mum and my aunties used to tell me that cumin matched well with mutton or goat meat. Moreover, I started to enjoy the unique aroma of this spice when eating Xinjiang goat satay. Xinjiang is a province in China where majority of the people there are Muslim. Goat meat seems to be part of their food culture, and they are really good in processing goat meat. That’s why Xinjiang area is very popular with their goat satay. "Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr", if you hear that, that’s the specific tone of Xinjiang goat satay sellers. The first time I ate this satay, I didn’t know what the dominant spice was which characterized this satay. Until I found it out, it was cumin! Then I started to enjoy more on any cooking that had this cumin aroma.
Coriander seeds are also widely used in Indonesian cooking. Mentioning about coriander, the tasty "ayam ketumbar" or coriander fried chicken instantly pops up in my mind. Chicken meat is boiled with coriander seed powder and other ingredient for couple minutes. Then after that, simply fry it, mmmm mamma mia... the smell of fried meat combined with the aroma of coriander really boosts everyone’s appetite. Coriander seed is also a perfect match for pork satay and beef jerky.
I like the clove smell in sup buntut, Indonesian ox tail soup. The best ox tail soup I’ve ever had was the one in Tegal (thanks to Budi Ortega for taking me there). The meat was so tender and the composition of the ingredient there was so perfect! You have to be very careful to put clove as an aroma sharpener as its strong aroma might ruin the whole spice composition. Some cooking, like ox tail soup, if there is no clove, it will taste that there is something missing on the flavor. Too much clove will outweigh the scent of other aromatic herbs or spices hence spoiling the food. My aunty told me just to put 2 to 3 cloves when boiling the sauce for spaghetti Bolognese. Amazingly, the taste overall was improved becoming very punchy compared to the previous sauce I made without cloves. But learning from my experience, I thought the more cloves I put, the punchier the flavor would be. I put more than the usual amount when cooking red spaghetti sauce. As a result, the whole sauce was dominated with clove scent; other aroma of oregano, bay leaves, and other spices were gone. So, be careful with clove in your cooking.
Cinnamon is my favorite spice for sweet dessert. I like the strong smell of cinnamon in the apple pie. I always add cinnamon in my chocolate milk and cappuccino. Sometimes, I just boiled ginger, brown sugar and added a little piece of cinnamon bark. It is such a nice drink in a cold rainy day. I used to pass a cinnamon tree when walking back home from a friend’s house. Then I picked a small twig from the tree. I squeezed it and inhaled the cinnamon scent along the way home. It was really refreshing for me, such a nice natural aroma therapy after a whole tiring day.
Ginger is strongly related to Chinese cuisine. My aunty always uses ginger to make stir fried vegetables. A combination of ginger and other herbs also creates such a distinctive oriental sauce, such as the sauce for Chinese style steam fresh grouper. Boiled chicken with chopped ginger dipping is another marvelous dish which I can’t resist. However, not only for main dishes, sweet dessert like ginger cookies is also a nice pleasure during Christmas times. The ginger ice cream! I found this incredible taste in
Frosty Mango, on the highway 1 from Townsville to Orpheus Island. This ice cream is so cooling but it makes our throat warm. Hmm, I’ve been craving for ginger ice cream so badly. I couldn’t find it in other place so far.
Black pepper seems to be well-suited with meaty stuff. Barbeque, steak, and gongbao jiding (one of my favorite Chinese dish) are also dominated by the aroma of black pepper. Not to mention the beef black pepper of Ambun’s recipe (thanks Ambun), normally I put more coarse black pepper when I make it. KFC, the fried chicken, also has a strong aroma of black pepper. I love this fast food... yeah yeah I know…miserable. I take it very rarely though. Once, my Philippino house mate made a "raisin kambing", I love this Philippino dish. It was goat meat with sweet raisin sauce and ungrounded seeds of black pepper. Wow, it really made my body warm.
I love to put white pepper powder in a bowl of hot soup. Chinese, Western, creamy, soury, or any style of soup won't taste so good without white pepper. I always put it a lot in my chicken soup, veggies soup, chicken porridge, or boiled noodle. I also enjoy my mixed stir fried vegetables with strong white pepper aroma. Omelet, steam eggs, and other egg-based cooking are very suitable with white pepper. Hence, I take white pepper as my favorite spice as well.
A nice flower petal drew my attention during my evening walk around Wilis Hill. A lady told me, it is called Rosella (Hibiscus sabdariffa). Then she told me about making Rosella tea. So, I tried it according to her direction.
