Papua — Recipes

I went to Festival Indonesia Timur and had Papua food for the first time. Since my father has lived in Sorong, in what is now Western New Guinea, I was always curious about the food. My father never ate local food, or he doesn't remember. What he remembers is that the Papua called him “white cockroach” and the Indonesians “blue monkeys”. Yet, in his free time he went into the Papua villages equipped with a stainless steel box containing medical scalpels. He was inspired by Albert Schweitzer, trying to perform minor medical procedures. My father was not a doctor but later in life he was licensed to be the first medical responder on board Shell tankers after completing an internship in a hospital.

For carbohydrates the Papua were depended on sago instead of rice. Sago is the starch extracted from the core tissue of Metroxylon sagu, the true sago palm. One palm can provide up to 300 kilogram of starch, but the extraction proces is laborious. You have to split the stem lengthwise.

A Sago palm is "harvested" so that the starch can be used for Sago production, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea. Photo credit: I, Toksave

You can make papeda from the starch, a congee, but also make solid cakes, called sagu. The fried cakes tasted a little sweet, so I guess the palm starch was mixed with a sweetener. Otherwise the meal consisted of stewed cassave leaf and stewed chicken. I would have ordered babi but I was with a friend who cannot eat pork, so I went with ayam instead.

Masakan Padang

There were also plenty of Padang food stalls. Masakan Padang is the food of West Sumatra and it is distinct from the usual Javanese food you will eat in The Netherlands. I am not an expert on Masakan Padang, but it seems they use more spices. It was amazingly tasteful.

I wanted to eat more but there is only so much you can eat in half a day. Below is a popular snack made from fishcake, cabbage, tofu, potato and peanut sauce. The name gives away its origins 燒賣; siomay. This Chinese snack has been incorporated into Indonesian food culture.