161 Christmas in Indonesia with M. Aimee Tan

Welcome back to the Christmas Around the World Series on The Storied Recipe Podcast!

This series began as a crowd-sourced post titled Christmas Desserts Around the World. As the Storied Recipe community shared their cherished Christmas recipes and the memories surrounding them, I really wanted to hear MORE. So I decided to expand on a few of these with a little mini series about Christmas traditions all around the world. You can find the entire series here.

Welcome M!

Have you ever watched that show Chopped where contestants are given a basket of random ingredients that can’t possibly go together and are asked to make a delicious dish for their hosts?

When I read through the ingredient list for these Indonesian cookies today’s guest shared, I felt like I was on that show! Coconut, gouda cheese, and pandan leaves… I wasn’t even sure what that last thing was!!

It turns out, as you’ll hear M explain, these cookies are a very Indonesian adaptation of the Dutch Spritz cookies, with a little tweaking by M herself. Here’s what she says about these:

My maternal grandfather was the avid cookie maker during Christmas time. I remember watching him making different types of cookies for Christmas since all of his grandchildren came to visit.

It was normally very humid in the kitchen as it was rainy season in December. There were always too many people in the kitchen in my paternal grandparents house. Sometimes the helper helped us; one of the senior helpers had been with the family for years so she knew how to do it.

We relied on our old gas oven. My job was to sit in front of the oven with a tiny stool and wait. I recalled our gas oven only operated automatically with actual fire from the bottom, so to make any cookies golden brown, we had to manually hold the ignition button for the top fire to turn on for however long you need it. It could quickly turn to disaster as it got really hot rapidly, so I had to watch carefully.

Later on when we moved to our own house, the kitchen was more spacious and comfortable, with a window in front of the stove which helped, but my job was still the same. Watching the cookie with my tiny stool while making sure the fire did not devour it before we did.

I’m so glad you’re here with me today to hear from M all about her memories of Christmas in Indonesia.

Highlights

M’s region of Indonesia, surrounded by mountains, lush and cooler than many other Indonesian islands - icy rain during winters
Christmas as a double minority: Security risks for Christians celebrating in Indonesia
The shift of Christmas to a commercialized event
The party atmosphere praying and singing Christmas Carols on
Themed Christmas celebrations
Emphasis on “naughty” in the “naughty and nice” parts of the Santa legend
Kue Semprit Keju Piped Cheese Cookies with Coconut and Pandan
What is pandan? An aromatic, grassy plant in Southeast Asia - “like vanilla, but better” and why does it go well with coconut?
Why we cook the tapioca starch and how the texture changes