'Coconut & Sambal' author and card-carrying member of the Surabayan Secret Society of Home Cooks Lara Lee joins host Kristen Miglore to talk maximally crispy potatoes, internet-stalking Sri Owen, and whittling vegetables into flowers.
Special thanks to listeners Kayla (@kaylacalbano), Rachel (@craftsandcrumbs), and Oumaima (@lemonshmallow) for your potato-tales.
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P.S. Help me hunt the 20 remaining recipes for the forthcoming genius beginners book! See the full list and join the conversation here.
Kristen Miglore (voiceover): Hi. I'm Kristen Miglore, lifelong genius hunter. For almost a decade, I've been unearthing the recipes that have changed the way we cook. And now on The Genius Recipe Tapes, we go behind the scenes with the geniuses themselves and we get to hear from you.
This week I'm talking with Lara Lee, chef, and author of the beautiful new Indonesian cookbook Coconut and Sambal. Our Genius Recipe on Food52 today is Lara's Crispy Soy & Ginger Roast Potatoes, in which she helps us achieve exceptionally crisp-edged, creamy centered-roast potatoes. Then toss them with stir-fried scallions, ginger, and garlic, and then toss them all in a bright, salty soy vinegar dressing. I had never seen a roasted potato dish like this before and had maybe never wanted to try one more. I had to know, would all that crispiness that we had fought for hold up under all that dressing? It very much does thanks to Lara's well-tested technique and it made for some of the most memorable dinners I've had in a very long time, usually with my husband's fried eggs, to swipe up any extra dressing that had spilled off onto the plate,
The recipe and video for how to make Lara's potatoes air all on Food52 today. But here you'll get to hear more about the secret cooking society in East Java, where Lara first tasted a local version of this recipe. What she discovered seeing her grandma's home and recipes for the first time in Indonesia and how she ended up with a life and cooking mentor back home in London.
And at the end of the episode, we hear a few more completely different tricks from you for crispy potatoes, which are never unwelcome. But I am getting ahead of myself. And here is Lara to tell you about why these potatoes deserve to be the main dish.
Kristen: Hi, Lara.
Lara Lee: Kristen. Hi. How are you?
Kristen: I’m well, how are you?
Lara: I am so good. It is just so great to speak to you. I'm super excited.
Kristen: Well, would you please, just to start off by telling us the story behind this recipe?
Lara: You mean these potatoes? Things are just a little something I whipped up earlier, you know? So I traveled to this area of Indonesia called Surabaya. It's a city in East Java, and I was really lucky to meet with this secret society of women who were a cooking club. And it's invite-only because they didn't want their cousins or aunties or friends of friends to join. They only wanted really good home cooks to be part of this cooking society. This dish is originally a dish called sambal goreng kentang, which is essentially fried potatoes. This dish is actually a main, it's not a side, it's eaten with rice. And so I think what I wanted to achieve when I wrote the recipe is, let's think about this potato. Is this an amazing thing that you could actually eat as a main on its own? Now don't get me wrong. I eat this with roast pork belly, of course, but you can eat it as a main with a bit of sambal on the side with fried rice. It can become its own thing, so I think in that way people will rethink how we can celebrate vegetables. And I, and other Indonesians, find vegetables to be such an exciting part of the food world. So the original dish is served with liver or gizzards on a bean called the Stink Bean. It's known as Petai bean in Indonesia. And so when I came back to London to test the recipes, I realized that liver and gizzard is not everyone's cup of tea. Stink Bean is very hard to find, and also not everyone wants to deep fry potatoes in their kitchen. Some people are nervous about deep frying. So I thought everyone could roast a potato in the oven. Everyone can achieve a crispy potato in the oven, and I basically use Indonesian aromatics Indonesian ingredients so that the heart of Indonesia is in the dish is just repurposed for a domestic kitchen. And I think that works really well. But in terms of how it's going to change, how people roast the potatoes just staring at the potatoes because they're beckoning me to eat them. Everyone's got their way to roast the perfect potato, but for me, it's all about roughing up the edges, giving it a good exfoliating all around that kind of potato when it's parboiled so the hot oil can penetrate it on. It could become a crispy and golden thing, and I think it kind of emulates that deep-fried potato that I tasted in East Java, which is great.
Kristen: This is the Genius Recipe Tapes. We will be right back.
Kristen: And I know in the intro to your new book, Coconut and Sambal, you wrote about walking into your grandmother's kitchen for the first time as an adult and noticing how similar you two are. Could you just speak a little bit about that?
Lara: Yes, so when I finally did visit Indonesia, it was as a young adult. I think I was 20 or 21 years old and we went to a city called Kupang. And it's where my grandmother lived most of her life. My grandmother's house is vacated, but still standing in the old town because one of my aunties had lived there for a while. And so we went there as a family, to look through some of her old things and to get a feel of who she was. And what was amazing going into that house, even though it was vacated. It was still full of all of her possessions, and the kitchen was every shade of blue imaginable. This blue hose, this blue sink, a blue bucket on the floor, blue tiles, blue stair rail. Her bedroom was lime green with a bright electric pink chicken statue and a Jesus statue and a cat statue. And all of these amazing trinkets that she collected from around the world. And the walls were crumbling. A bright purple hallway, splashes of yellow on the roof.
And I am someone who lives for color. I wear a lot of colorful clothes, my home is colorful, my poor son is dressed in a rainbow on most days. When I walked into her home for the first time, I realized how much we had in common and how much we share in terms of our passions. Our passion for color, our passion for good food. I have a passion for family. And that was a really special moment because I was grieving the loss of her as an adult. I have been able to find a lot of comfort in those similarities and really realizing that I can know her and get to know her again through all of these memories that we have of her. And that's being really special and really beautiful to discover.
Kristen: And through her hand-written recipes, too. That was an incredible discovery, it sounds like
Lara: Yes, when I was on this mission to recreate my grandmother's food and recreate her recipes, what we did find in this house in Kupang were two very old, very yellowed, hand-written recipe books written in Bahasa Indonesian that my grandmother had recorded over the years. And it's a very unusual discovery because in Indonesia there is an oral tradition of passing recipes down between the generation, so recipes are shown and demonstrated and spoken about, but there's not a tradition of writing things down. So for my grandma to have done this was a very rare thing, and the reason she did that was that she was widowed at the age of 36 and had four children and needed a way to support herself. So she learned, really taught herself to cook Indonesian baked goods, Indonesian cakes, and opened a bakery at the bottom of her home. Because she had this bakery, she had some staff to help her. So she needed to write these recipes down in order to be able to preserve that knowledge. So I was so lucky to find those. And that was a really helpful guide in terms of shaping what my collection of her recipes would be, and ultimately, what you see in the book as well. But she had a funny kind of way—I mean, this is the Indonesian way of describing recipes. It's not prescriptive. Everything is very intuitive. So she might write a handful of chilies and a thumb of ginger and a bowlful of green beans or whatever it might be. And so obviously trying to transcribe that and translate that into a cookbook took a lot of tweaking and testing and talking to my aunties and figuring out what she meant when she said this kind of measurement. A cupful-is her cup the way that we think of the cup or is it in a mug for her? Those kinds of questions
Kristen: Was that hard for you? Was that challenging to decide where to make changes and where to stay true to the original recipes as you cooked them and tasted them in Indonesia?
Lara: It was something that I spent a lot of time thinking about and worrying about because there's a very delicate balance between obviously re-creating a very authentic cookbook versus something that has a mix of both, which is what I wanted. I wanted to show some recipes that were very true to the original that couldn't deviate at all. Rendang would be an example of that. Rendang is a caramelized beef curry, actually. Well, it's not a curry, and that's the thing. It starts off as a stew with a lot of coconut milk, a really gorgeous spice paste, which has chilies and garlic and shallots and bruised lemongrass and Makrut lime leaf and bay leaf and so on. And then it simmers over about three hours until the beef is tender. Then the coconut oil has split from the coconut milk, and then the chunks of beef begin to fry in the oil of that coconut milk until all that is left is a sediment of that spice paste that has essentially browned the beef. And it is probably my favorite meal on earth. It is just to die for. But I think some recipes out there in the ether have their rendang a little bit saucier, which is, therefore, more of a curry style of thinking of rendang, which would be called a collier. So that's the name of the when it has more sauce. But you have to follow it to the point where the cubes of beef are blackened and that there is no sauce left, because that is, that is how it is eaten in West Sumatra. And that is how it tastes the best, really. So that's an example where that technique is a 3 to 4-hour process. But I know it needs to become what is the definition of the dish, which is rendang. So that's an example where I didn't want to deviate from the recipe, and I'm glad I didn't.
But there are some recipes like, there's a recipe in the book called Babi Guling, which is essentially in Indonesia. it's a Balinese dish. And it is a baby pig that is slaughtered in the morning at about 4or 5 a.m, rubbed with this beautiful Balinese spice paste, which has galangal, chilies, garlic, shallots, turmeric, quite a few different ingredients, marinated inside and out. And then it is turned by hand for five hours over the burning branches of the coffee tree. And what results is this gorgeous, crispy pig skin, gorgeous, tender flesh full of flavor, so decadent and wonderful, luxurious to eat. But obviously, that's something that is just impossible to recreate. But I wanted to adapt it and do an inspired version. So for me, that was getting a pork belly. I tested it about eight times to get it as close to that memory as possible, as I had of that baby pig on the skewer. And it's rubbed in that Balinese spice paste. But obviously, it's not over the burning branches of the coffee tree, but I think the integrity is still there.
And I think one of my favorite memories—so my grandmother would make Gado Gado, Gado Gado is a cooked vegetable salad with peanut sauce drizzled on top of it, and eat it with a krupuk cracker, which is a really delicious, crunchy Indonesian cracker, And she would always adorn the Gado Gado platter with these carved vegetables. So she would whittle flowers out of carrots and cucumbers and tomatoes. And as a little girl, there could be nothing more exciting than someone turning a vegetable, which not many kids like to eat into a flower. Oh, yes. Give me that vegetable. I shall eat that carrot now, And then I would try to copy her with blue tack and try to make the flowers myself, and she would teach me. So I have really loving memories of Gado Gado because watching her do that like there was nothing better.
Kristen: Do you think you could recreate the carrot flowers at this point? Or do you have plans to when Jonah is old enough to appreciate them as much as you did?
Lara: Considering that I spent, like three years writing this cookbook. I have not yet attempted to whittle a carrot flower. What was I thinking? That should have been a whole chapter devoted to that. But I think, actually, that's maybe what I'm gonna do to calm myself. Some people buy coloring books or some people knit. Maybe I'm going to whittle carrot flowers.
Kristen: I would actually also love to hear more about your relationship with Sri Owen, who has been your mentor on this project. How did you first encounter her work? And could you tell us some of the most memorable things you learned from working with her?
Lara: Sri Owen has just been the most important figure aside from my grandmother in terms of my culinary journey. And it's really funny, actually, because Food52 wrote an article about Sri Owen four years ago or so. And it was about Sri. It was a really wonderful interview with her about her life and about this task that she has to kind of carry on the legacy of Indonesian food and to teach people about Indonesian food. And so I was on this mission, and journey to reconnect with my heritage. I'd moved to London and so I felt very far away from my dad, my parents, my aunties. And my access to Indonesian culture was abruptly stopped when I moved to London because there's a very small Indonesian community here and not many Indonesian restaurants. So I read in this article that Sri Owen lived in Wimbledon in London, which I didn't actually know because I knew of her books. But I didn't realize that she lived in the same city as me, and I suddenly had this kind of awakening that I can perhaps contact her and see if we could meet because I want to write this cookbook and I've got this idea and I would love to get some guidance from her. I stalked her quite heavily because there were no contact details in a very obvious place. But maybe in the seventh or eighth blog post, I saw there was an email address. And so I emailed her and I emailed her my book idea and the journey had been on so far. And she emailed back within a few hours, saying, what are you doing on Saturday? Would you like to come to my house and meet me? And which was completely unexpected. I just was floored by that.
So I turned up to her house on a Saturday at 10 a.m and rang the doorbell on this little 4’10” woman answered the door and said, hello, dear! And invited me upstairs, pops an apron on my head, tells me to wash my hands, and then says, okay, we've got 12 people coming over for lunch in three hours, and we're going to cook an Indonesian feast together. And so we did that, and it was magic. We just had this incredible energy together in the kitchen, obviously at that time. So that was just over three years ago. She was 82 then, but a little bit frail. Not as fast as she perhaps had been in the past. So suddenly she had this very enthusiastic person in her kitchen who was like, what do you want? What do you need me to chop? I will wash up everything. I'm going to do it all. I'm so grateful to be here. And we had a blast. After that lunch, she said to me, if you want me as your teacher, I'm really happy for us to get together every week and we'll cook together and I'll invite some friends over, and I'll teach you everything I know. And she said that she'd been waiting for someone who had a connection to Indonesia but that knew how to cook and knew how to write. She was waiting for someone like that to come along to pass her knowledge down to. And so it was this amazing moment in time where we both really needed each other. I think for her getting older, it was harder to host. And she is just someone who is the most wonderful host, the most wonderful cook and has just the most incredible recipes. So I think for her to have someone to help her to do that, to continue to be that generous, hospitable host, which is so very Indonesian of her. And for me, I got to learn from this master of Indonesian cooking. it couldn't have been better. And this beautiful friendship blossomed for both of us and we are still very much in contact to this day. Well, because of COVID, it's a bit challenging. She's now in a care home, so they have quite a lot of rules on when you can and can't visit someone depending on the number of COVID cases. But I sent her care packages all the time. So I'll make sambal and freeze it. I'll bubble wrap it. I'll put it in the 24-hour post and it will get to her defrosted. Or when I do visit, I bring a big box of frozen rendang, nasi goreng, lots of different treats for her to eat because she's got a very limited kitchen now in her care home. But I still go to her for advice and questions about Indonesia cooking. So we're still very much students and teachers. She's wonderful, she's so wonderful.
Kristen: Oh, that's amazing. I'm so glad you were able to keep in touch with her. I was worried about that as you were describing your relationship, and where we are all now in the world. If it's possible, are you able to think of the most memorable things you've learned from her? Whether it's about cooking or about reading a cookbook?
Lara: She's had such an incredible career. She's cooked with Raymond Blanc and she knows Gordon Ramsey and she knows everyone. So I came into her kitchen a little bit like a storm in a teacup, as in I'm a little bit of a messy cook. This is kind of like cheffing 101 in terms of just cooking neat and tidy, I think that's one of the main things that she was concerned about when she met me. What I loved about meeting her was she has a thermomix. I mean, she's a very technologically savvy lady. And in Indonesia, you're grinding spice paste by hand, slightly backbreaking work. And she was like Lara, Lara, let's put it in the Thermomix. It felt like she gave me permission to say chuck your ingredients in the food processor to make your spice paste. I know that things do taste better when you grind them by hand. But I think she gave me permission to use [technology] and take a few shortcuts here and there to achieve a very similar outcome. Sometimes she would cook with six chiles to make her saute sauce to make her peanut sauce, and other times she would cook with three. And it depends on the size of the chilies, which type of chiles you're using. Just learning to not be so prescriptive when you think of a recipe. Obviously, in a cookbook, you have to write exactly the exact quantities. But when I watched her cook, it was amazing to remind myself to always be tasting. I think she taught me everything from the basics to the very far advances of Indonesian cookery.
Kristen: Alright, and here are a few more crispy potato tricks from you.
Listener Rachel: Hi, My name is Rachel Teachman, and I'm in Houston, Texas. So when I go somewhere and I see a shredded latke, whether it's in someone's house or a restaurant, I'm always kind of like that's not really a latke. That's not what I'm used to, and it gets a little bit hash brown seeming. I grew up eating the pureed version. It just makes it like a smoother pancake and easier to put toppings on and a nice mouthfeel, easier to control in the pan. However, my husband and now one of my sons really like the shredded kind. Of course, any fried potato is delicious, but I'm still going to go with the pureed latke.
Listener Kayla: Hi, my name is Kayla, and I live in Redondo Beach, California. My favorite way to enjoy potatoes is the smash and crisp method. I actually learned this technique in Chrissy Teigen's second cookbook, and it was a game-changer. You basically steam your potatoes of choice, I personally love baby red potatoes and using the bottom of a shot glass, you smash them onto a baking pan and season to your preference. And honestly, the simple combination of kosher salt, fresh cracked pepper, and olive oil is perfect. And then you put the pan right on the floor of a very hot oven for about 20 to 30 minutes to crisp the potatoes, and then you flip them once. You're left with pillowy on the inside, crisp on the outside potatoes ready to be enjoyed respectably with a fork and knife or my personal preference, even just going rogue and using your hands. I love them. My husband loves them, and you really can't go wrong when you pair these little guys with a delicious, juicy steak.
Listener Amayma: Hello, Food52 community. I'm Amayma, a Tunisian living in France, and I wanted to talk about the Batata Harra. It literally translated to spiced or spicy potatoes. It’s usually served with a mezze platter with baba ganoush, muhammara, pita bread, or many other variants. And personally, how I love to make it is by cutting the potatoes into small, even cubes, then boiling them, then frying them. While they're frying. I prepare the oil mixture. I start by sauteing a red onion or a shallot, adding a lot of crushed garlic, then adding caraway seeds, cumin seeds, coriander powder, turmeric, salt, and pepper. Once it's fragrant, I toss the fried potatoes into the oil mixture, add chopped coriander and/or parsley. Towards the end, I had a fair amount of lemon juice because it's usually quite lemony and maybe some dried mint, depending on the mood. It's really easy to put together, quite comforting, and it really feels like home to me. And I think it would be a lovely thing to try for every potato lover, especially during these trying times.
Kristen: Thanks for listening and for sending in your stories. This week, I'd love your thoughts on one more thing. I've been working on a Genius Beginners cookbook for the past couple of years, and there are a few more recipes that I'm still hunting. 20 to be exact. Everything from huevos rancheros to your go-to sides that are just one step more thought out than buttering a bag of frozen peas. The full list is on Food52 along with Lara's recipe, and there's still time to make a big impact on the final book. So I really appreciate your help. Our show was put together by Coral Lee, Emily Hanhan, and me, Kristen Miglore. If you like The Genius Recipe Tapes, be sure to rate and review us. It really helps. See you next time.