Tom Pepinsky

Author: tompepinsky

  • Ikan Santan Kare

    This is the East Balinese spicy fish curry that we made while we were in Manggis.  It is really just incredible, and you would probably be able to find all of these ingredients in the US.  For fish, try to use a medium-firm but non-oily white fish.  They called the fish that we used “snapper,” but we all agreed that this was not what we think of as snapper.  Maybe swordfish, but it might be a bit too firm.  Oh well, just experiment, it will taste good, it’s just that the fish may fall apart.  The recipe name means “Coconut Fish Curry.”

    Fish and Marinade
    1/2 lb firm non-oily white fish, cut into chunks
    2 tsp. sesame oil
    zest of one lime, grated
    Splash of orange juice
    1 pinch ground cumin
    1 pinch ground coriander
    5 basil leaves (lemon basil if you can find it), julienned
    salt and pepper

    Sauce
    1 recipe sambal pasih
    2 red chilies
    1 clove garlic
    1/4 cup coconut milk
    2 Tbsp water
    2 lime leaves
    1 cinnamon stick
    salt and pepper
    2 Tbsp cashews, chopped

    Mix fish with the marinade ingredients and set aside.  Mash the chilies and the garlic to make a paste.  Place a skillet over medium-high heat; when hot, add the fish and quickly saute just until done, remove to plate.  In that pan, add sambal pasih and spice paste, and saute (add a little more oil if needed).  Saute until fragrant, add lime leaves and cinnamon stick.  Saute for three minutes; add coconut milk and water and reduce.  Return fish to the pan and heat through, then add cashews and season with salt and pepper.  Serve with rice.

  • Crazy Jakarta Traffic

    We don’t understand much about Jakarta, and one thing that we have really come to realize is that we completely don’t understand Jakarta traffic.  Traffic is usually better on the weekends, which kind of makes sense.  The other thing that we can count on is that it’s hard to find a taxi when it’s raining.  Other than that, we’re clueless–and we’ve had some experience with strange traffic patterns around New York, LA, and Boston.  Sometimes there will be dozens upon dozens of taxis waiting outside of our apartment to catch fares.  Sometimes there aren’t.  This morning, for no reason at all, the first 10 taxis we saw didn’t want to pick us up.  They just drove right past us, and then stopped and waited for something.  Just now, TP took a taxi across town that took forever for no discernable reason.  This morning, SBY (the president) drove past us, so we had lots of traffic then.  Sometimes there will be cops around "directing traffic," and sometimes at the same intersection there won’t be, and in either situation the traffic is the same: bad.  Sometimes our commute home is worse early in the afternoon than during rush hour.  Some morning at 8:20 the Catholic/Chinese school near us is full of parents dropping off kids, sometimes it isn’t.  We almost always travel the exact same route here and back every day, and it never takes a predictable amount of time.  We’ve had 8 minutes, we’ve had 45.

    In other travel-related news, we’ve been stressing out for the past two weeks trying to figure out how to change our plane tickets from February 18 to February 15.  This is hard: the tickets are from Jakarta to Singapore on Thai Airways, then from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur on Malaysian Airlines.  Both of the tickets are parts of round-trip tickets, and both of them are paper tickets, and we bought them both in Madison, WI, and we bought them through a travel agent, a student ticket service for which our cards have now, conveniently, expired.  Not an easy process.  Then yesterday JM looked at the tickets–it turns out that we forgot that the tickets already fly on February 15.  D’oh.