* cababarant *

Friday, June 11, 2004

D. getting ready to knock over some Indonesian marionettes

We went to the huge Indonesian festival here in The Hague today. It's called Pasar Malam Besar, and they dub it "The biggest Eurasian festival in Europe".

Because of the colonial legacy in Indonesia, much of The Hague in our particular neighborhood was built on Dutch wealth attained in Indonesia in the 19th century. Basically a lot of the residential buildings drip with the style of 19th century nouveau wealth. As a result of this colonial past, there is a sizeable Indonesian community in the Netherlands, and I am often approached by Southeast Asians here with "Are you Indonesian?" Granted, I can't tell Filipinos apart from Indonesians, and even the language is incredibly similar. Anyway, Indonesian food is incredibly popular, especially in the face of the meat-and-potatoes blandness of native Dutch food. There is this great colonial invention called the rijsttafel (literally "rice table") in which white rice is served with anywhere between 9-30 little dishes like sate, curries, etc. It's not a true native style of serving the food; it was invented by Dutch colonial landholders stuffing their faces and having barefoot brown servants bringing in the dishes one at a time. But anyway, it's turned into a fun local custom nowadays, of course, sans the barefoot servants. :)

The festival was fun, with an entire tent dedicated to food and the rest dedicated to shops and stages for shows. There were fruit stands selling tropical fruit, even durian. Okay, if you haven't ever smelled durian, try leaving some rotting fruit and vegetables in a bowl on the counter and smell it after a week. That is what durian smells like. It's usually banned in hotels in Thailand. But I digress.

Some of the good treats are like Filipino good treats: basically, a fried feast. Loempia (really similar to Filipino lumpia), this thing we had called pangsit (which was basically ground pork deep-fried in something resembling a wonton wrapper) and pisang goreng, a plaintain dipped in something close to tempura batter and deep-fried. Mmmm mmmm!!

posted by sheryl | 9:53 PM |

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