Reddit reviews Cradle of Flavor: Home Cooking from the Spice Islands of Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia

Cooked this more or less following the recipe from The Cradle of Flavor. Ingredients and basic technique in the photo album.

Absolutely one of my favorite dishes. I used to order it at a favorite takeout that unfortunately closed a few years ago and finally made a mission of recreating it (with most of my shopping done in NYC's chinatown). The dish is incredibly aromatic, spicy, sweet and complex deep flavor. Texture is kind of soft and crusty (but not crispy) on the outside with a tender braised beef center.

For this week’s theme, I wanted to make a Malaysian feast for some of my law school friends. I started with this chicken curry recipe because I liked the fact that it had a ton of different and interesting ingredients (coconut, curry leaves, lemongrass, etc). This was delicious and intense, but the lemongrass chunks got scattered throughout the dish and made it a little hard to eat. I would definitely tie them into knots (like in the rice dish) next time. To go with that, I had to make nasi lemak, a coconut and lemongrass flavored rice. I found the recipe for this in Cradle of Flavor, an Indonesian, Malaysian, and Singaporean cookbook I borrowed from my parents for Week 34 (Indonesian) inspiration. It was a little undercooked, but it is the closest I have come to successful rice on the stove so far. I liked the coconut and ginger and lemongrass flavors that were subtle but persistent in the dish. From my reading, nasi lemak is usually served with, among other things, fried peanuts and some kind of pickle. I made these fried peanuts because they were simple but delicious looking. They turned out really well, though some got a little over-fried. I also made pickled cucumbers, carrots, fresno chilies and shallots with a turmeric-ginger flavoring (also from Cradle of Flavor). These were delicious and a refreshing counterpoint to the richness of the curry and the rice.

For my MetaTheme, I made this Malaysian Negroni. I’m not normally a huge Negroni fan (a little too bitter for my tastes) but I didn’t have a ton of choices available to me. Malaysia is 80% muslim and buddhist so the cocktail culture is pretty limited. I liked that the recipe incorporated some classic Malaysian ingredients in an interesting way. I infused the chili into the Campari for about 4 hours and the lemongrass into the vermout for 3 days. When I tasted the Campari straight, the spice wasn’t super prominent but it really came through in the final drink. I think the Campari was too bitter for me to taste the spice. The lemongrass added a really interesting herbaceous note to the cocktail that I liked a lot.