Building Blocks From The Archipelago

For the smorgasbord of dishes found in Indonesian cuisine, it is a little known secret that the modest bumbu, in all its variants, is the bedrock of such flavourful fare.

- Andre Fois

“Endowing Indonesian cuisine with its irreplicable, nuanced complexity and filling the hearts of its diners, the herbs and spices that go into bumbu have also charted the course of world history for thousands of years.”

You might have heard of this term thrown about by connoisseurs of Indonesian cuisine: bumbu. Translating to ‘flavour’ or ‘seasoning’, bumbu is the central pillar of Indonesia’s epicurean landscape and is not to be confused with rempah meaning ‘spices’. Getting a type of bumbu correct is hardly as simple as following a recipe from an Indonesian chef or off the Internet.

Arini, a domestic worker working in Singapore, fondly recalls learning how to prepare different kinds of bumbu in her mother’s kitchen. “I was taught to make the bumbu of popular local dishes, which mostly require turmeric, lemongrass, candlenut and so on,” describes the native of Indramayu, a city in West Java that is steeped in history. She shares that Indonesia’s famous dishes like soto ayam and mie goreng are beloved across all of the archipelago’s islands, but the recipes for their bumbu vary from region to region.

“Good chefs mix their own bumbu and don’t rely on instant mixes,” remarks Arini, who opts for grinding spices with a pestle and mortar to make her own, instead of turning to a blender.

Endowing Indonesian cuisine with its irreplicable, nuanced complexity and filling the hearts of its diners, the herbs and spices that go into bumbu have also charted the course of world history for thousands of years.

The Spice War