Another year, another birthday.  NO, it’s not my birthday.  It’s company’s birthday.  Each year when the time comes around, we order an assortment of local cakes for the staff.  This way everybody gets in on the yummy celebration.  No sing-alongs or drinks after work, but this is good enough to release some stress, especially for the administrative ladies who tend to go oohs and ahs over sweet delicacies.

And so this year this is what we got…

These are various traditional Indonesian cakes, mostly Chinese influenced, apart from one.  We always try to get a mix of sweet and savory choices to satisfy everyone’s craving.  Plus they are great accompaniments to hot tea and coffee.

First up are the sweet kinds, because those what make the whole platter really matters

Kue Koci

Steamed ketan hitam (glutinous black rice) flour, stuffed with shredded coconut that has been sweetened with palm sugar.  This triangle shaped cake is steamed while wrapped inside banana leaf.  It is purposely shaped this way to achieve a triangle shaped cake when cooked.  I’ve always thought of this as an Indonesian style of stuffed mochi.  Just as chewy and sticky as a mochi would, but with a complementing soft crunch in the middle from the shredded coconut.  Now this cake is often mistaken for Kue Bugis, which is pretty much the same cake, except that it is a round shaped one, and often comes in a green color, instead of purple.

Kue Talam Singkong

Steamed cake made with two layers of opposing flavors.  The white-colored top layer is made with rice flour and salted coconut milk.  The brown-colored bottom layer is made with shredded singkong (cassava root), hence the coarse-texture look, and sweetened with palm sugar, which imparts the brown color.  Both layers are soft and sticky, but the white part much lighter, smoother and delicate in texture.  There are many versions of Kue Talam.  The original has no use of singkong in the recipe, making it an ultra smooth textured cake.  And so when singkong is included, the cake has to be called Kue Talam Singkong.

Kue Pepe

Steamed cake made with a mix of rice flour and tapioca flour.  Tapioca, which we locals call sagu, is the starch content of singkong (cassava root), which would be the same as calling it cassava flour.  The many layers of this cake is steamed one layer at a time, which makes it another laborious cake to master.  It has that soft chewy sticky texture that we Asians love.  Flavored with white granulated sugar and pandan leaf, to give that sweet grassy vanilla-like scent.  The extract juice of the pandan leaf gives the green hue as food coloring.  This cake is sometimes called Kue Lapis Pandan (pandan layered cake).  Many a times one may find this cake with no trace of green hue in between the layers, like the one in the picture as well.  In this case, the red and brown hues come from the use of food coloring.

Now moving on to the savory goodies…

Pastel Kentang

This one is most definitely a Dutch influenced creation.  It is basically a deep fried wheat flour-based pie that is stuffed with kentang (potato) that has been cooked and flavored with spices. The shape resembles that of little clam-like parcel. The Chinese community here tends to call it kari pok or curry puff, as it resembles a puff pastry filled with curry flavored filling.  A very simple savory snack, yet when done right and freshly made, it sends accumulation of saliva in one’s mouth upon the first bite into the soft crispness of the piping hot fried shell and the pungent aroma and intoxicating flavor of the spices.  Sadly, this one is not quite up to par.

Lemper Ayam

There are two components to this cake, the rice cake and the filling, both which are made separately.  The rice cake is made with ketan putih (white glutinous rice) cooked until they are very soft and pliable.  The filling is made with cooked shredded ayam (chicken) flavored with coconut milk and seasonings.  When done, the chicken stuffed inside an ample amount of cooked glutinous rice, then wrapped in banana leaf, and then steamed together.  This is done to create some sort of adhesiveness between the two components, as well as to achieve a cohesive blend of aroma.  Often times, they are reheated on a charcoal grill upon consumption, hence the burned marks on the banana leaf wrapping.  However, now a day the grilled marks often done for an aesthetic reason, for we almost always consume these little guys at room temperature anyways.

All these treats can easily be found at the wet markets as well as some local bakeries.  They are cheap and tasty and a great way to satisfy a mass of people.  In the past, we had baskets of these and with more varieties of sweet and savory selection to chose from.  However, as great snacks they all are, they are not my first choice for a birthday celebration.  Don’t get me wrong, I love sweet stuff.  But if it was my birthday, I’d have an ice cream party instead, with ice cream flavors ranging from avocado to coconut, jackfruit, matcha, black sesame, espresso, hazelnut, and vanilla bean.  And maybe accompanied by a humungous lemon tart and servings of freshly brewed Rooibos and Oolong teas.  Yeah, I’m picky and weird that way

I survived days of walking around like zombies.  I took pills to ease the migraine.  Tossed and turned constantly in the evenings due to the stubborn jetlag.  But, all these turned bearable only because of a gracious gesture made by one of my Japanese guests.  Suddenly, future days appear friendlier and especially more appetizing.

Now and then, we get special gifts from dealing with Japanese companies.  They are known for their gift-giving tradition.  I can do many blogs on the gifts I have received over the years working with them.  Most of which are Japanese food, which speak closely to my heart.  Few days ago I once again received one of those special gifts… rice.  Most importantly, Japanese rice.

Japanese rice is especially loved in my family.  We always long for the subtle sweeter flavor that it has over other rice varieties, as well as the plump and slightly soft sticky texture that it tends to give, as our teeth sink into each and every perfect short opaque-white grain.  This sticky perfection works well when one prefers to eat rice in a bowl and with a pair of chopsticks, like I always do.

This bag of rice I received is from the Niigata prefecture, located on the western coast of Japan, the origin in location of the company my business guest is working for.  It is a region blessed with great seafood as well as quality water from nearby mountain, as I have discovered when I went to their factory a couple of years ago.  Niigata is also known as one of the leading regions in Japan to produce a high quality of rice, many which are not exported.  And this gift in particular is not just a bag of Niigata rice, but it is a five-kilo bag of Niigata rice.  Not one kilo, not two kilos, but five kilos!!

This is not the first time I have received rice as a gift from a Japanese company.  It is also not the first time this particular company so generously bestowed a bag of rice to me.  This is probably the third time I got rice from them, about once every two years, and it had always been a two-kilo bag.  And so to get a five kilos worth of a high quality Japanese rice… well, I’m just so freakin’ blessed.  I guess this is a good indication that our business is doing just fine.

The gift makes me miss Japan even more though.  I should really go back there in the near future.  Maybe in a couple more years, when my passport expires and I get to renew it as an E-passport, which makes it eligible for multiple entries into Japan with NO VISA REQUIRED.  I think life is about to get sweeter and sweeter

It’s been a sleep deprived week since I got back and it is a problem.  My brain still functions in German time.  Feeling frustrated with being jetlagged, I turned to alcohol.  CHOYA style.

A little bit of sake, given as a gift, oh, I don’t know how long ago…

With a little bit of umeshu, purchased many years ago…

And you get this…

A balance of flavor in lightness from sake and in sweetness from umeshu, complementing each other in a clear liquid of blush-copper shade.

Long gone the high note of a slight stringent filtered rice alcohol taste of sake.  Long gone the intoxicating pungency of sweet and sour plum of umeshu.  What’s born from the marriage of the two is a welcoming gift to the night.  Bringing with it a new and mellow fragrant freshness and a subtlety in sweetness.   And hopefully a quick remedy for a good-night sleep.

Wish me luck.