Take a sip of this drink during rainy season

Image courtesy Royalty Free Images from Getty ImagesI like this traditional drink. It warms you during cold weather or rainy season, also good for the throat.
The recipe is so easy to do.

You will need ginger, brown sugar, sugar, and water. You can decide each portion as your preference.
If you like it hot, add more ginger.


So here's to make it:

• Wash and peel ginger, then slice it, not too thin. Or you can crash the whole ginger then slice it thickly.
• Boil water, put ginger in the boiling water.
• Add some sugar brown and sugar as you like.
• Let it boil for awhile so the ginger essence comes out.

This is the basic recipe. In Java, we have variations of that drink.
In Central Java, we'd add sticky rice balls in the drink. The ball is filled with sweet crushed peanut and it's colored (green, pink, or white).
In Jakarta, we have dried peanuts, soft bread crumbles, boiled green bean, and sweet condensed milk.
In West Java, we add coconut milk in that drink.

Why not try those when weather is not friendly and enjoy your ginger drink in front of the fireplace.

Indonesian Herbal Drink

We call it JAMU (jaah-moo). It's still made traditionally by hand, no machines involved.
The Jamu lady made many kinds of liquid herbal drinks and then she would sell it from house to house, on foot. She would carry all the bottles on her back. The bottles are put in bamboo basket. Nowadays, some of jamu ladies ride a bike when selling the herbal drinks.

Jamu is made from herbal roots, leaves, trunk skin, and fruit. Even a part of animal is added to jamu, but it's not common.

Most of herbal drinks taste bitter, we add honey to make it taste better. There are that taste sweet too.

The function of herbal drinks (depends on ingredients):
a. Daily supplement for health.
b. Eliminate sore muscles
c. Increase eating appetite
d. Refreshment to body system
e. Increase breast milk production
f. Help weight loss
g. Eliminate body odor
h. Reduce cholesterol, etc

Some of herb ingredients are:
Ginger, Tangerine, Cumin, Lime, Nutmeg, Curcuma, (I have difficulties to find English name for Indonesian herbs, so I'll add them later).

Instant jamu is also available in the supermarket in the form of powder (add with warm water), tablets and capsules.
Our big jamu manufacturers are Jamu Air Mancur, Nyonya Meneer atau Djamu Djago.

Ingredients Of Indonesian Dishes

By Hermawan Wan

Indonesia dishes are amongst the most delicious in the world, to make Indonesian dishes we need a lot of ingredients. But sometime we have a problem to find or to know ingredients we need to make Indonesian dishes.

Have the following ingredients on hand in your pantry to make it easier to prepare Indonesian-style dishes. Most ingredients can be found in your local supermarket or greengrocer. Some of the specialized ingredients can be found in Asian Food stores.

These is some of the following ingredients of Indonesian dishes:

- Capsicum: Also known as red or green peppers.

- Capsicum:From the candleberry tree, these nuts look like macadamia nuts and taste like Brazil nuts. Available from Asian Food strores.

- Cardamon: Spice from the ginger family. Seeds are purchased whole, either in or out of their pods, or grounds.

- Chillies: Small red chillies are the hottest. The larger red chillies are milder and green chillies are milder still. Seeds are often discarded as they are the hottest part of the chilli.

- Coconut Cream: Thick white liquid that rises to the surface when coconut milk is left to stand.

- Coconut Milk: This is not the juice from the inside of the fresh coconut but the liquid extracted from the white flesh.

- Coriander: Indonesians use only the seed of the coriander plant, not the leaves or roots.

- Cumin: An aromatic spice with a pungent flavour, seeds are available whole or ground.

- Egg Noodles (fine, dry): looks like fine spaghetti which has been wound into a small bundles.

- Ginger: Fresh ginger root is recommended, rather than dried. Indonesians also use laos and galagal which give a similar flavour and are occasionally available fresh from Asian Food stores.

- Palm Sugar: Dark brown sugar made from the juice of the coconut palm flower. Sold in hard blocks, cut off required amount and crush it. Available from Asian Food stores.

- Peanut Oil: A light oil used extensively in Indonesian cooking. Coconut oil is also used.

- Rice Flour: Is finely ground white or brown rice and often used as a thickener.

- Shrimp Paste(terasi): Extremely pungent, salty paste, sold in jars. Also available in hard blocks, use sparingly.

- Soy Sauce (kecap): Light soy sauce which is thin and salty. Kecap manis is dark soy sauce which is thick and sweet.