Every wire story describes Indonesia’s Papua province as being ‘restive’. Sure, it is, but I’m sure there’s other descriptors that can be used. But it’s always restive, restive, restive.
I was feeling restive myself tonight, because I am now unemployed and will be of no fixed address as of Tuesday as I take myself on to the road to try and travel and freelance and hopefully do some volunteer work too (if any NGOs get back to me…).
So I decided to go and try some food from the restive province at the food court at Pasaraya Blok M. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for a while.
Kopi Susu has already written about the flavors more comprehensively than I can be bothered to this eve, but I will say that it was really tasty. I liked the robust flavor of the sour spicy fish stew, which definitely had a strong taste of lemongrass and some tumeric too.
The papeda side accompaniment was a bit of a puzzle though.
Made from sago, it looks like glue, tastes like bland and feels funny going down the throat. I didn’t dislike it, and it was fun to spin it around on the sticks and it helped balance out the fish stew, but it was definitely strange to eat. For some reason, it reminded me of a kid at primary school who used to eat the Clag Glue whenever we did craft.
I reckon you could easily use this stuff to make a good paper mache Easter bonnet. Maybe NSW state schools should switch to sago instead of Clag. I hope it’s more nutritionally sound?
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I remember tucking into that clag in Bali. I don’t think it will catch on.
Oops typo. I mean Papua.
Definitely agree with Aubrey. More power to the Papuans if they want to eat sagu (they say it makes you full for the whole day), but give me some nasi! Good that you weren’t given the biscuit version of it – you can tell when you bite into those things that you really are eating sawdust. Less than awesome.