02 October 2017

The promised account of Padang food is appearing here very shortly.  Meanwhile, to whet your appetite, here is see the RECIPES section for a newly posted recipe for Satay Padang that I gleaned from Warung Sate Sjukur in Padang Panjang.

26 September 2017

Before I settle down to serious blogging, I'd like to share with you an image kindly sent to me by West Sumatran friends, full of excitement at the prospect of visiting all the destinations cited in a single trip on this brand new Quintuple Decker Bus.  I was immediately tempted to join them as Padang is right next to my home town.  But the roads are winding, with alarming rises and falls - surely no sensible bus company would contemplate such a route...and indeed my suspicions were well founded.  This is of course a masterly bit of Fake News Imaging.  

Clear cue however:  my first blog entry in my renewed resolve to inspire curiosity and enjoyment of true Indonesian food will be an account of the culinary tradition known as "Padang Food: Nasi Padang, Sate Padang, Rumah Makan Padang etc."

15 February 2010

Hello again. Yes, I know my latest posting to this blog was in September 2008 – I hope visitors to this website had a happy prosperous 2009 and will accept belated good wishes for 2010. I'm just about in time to add my greetings for Chinese New Year, the Year of the Tiger.

I have really no excuse for my long silence, but I can truthfully say that I've been extremely busy these past eighteen months, first with launching the new book and then with enjoying my new status as a grandmother – Joshua Zachary Owen was born on 26 February 2009. And there've been all sorts of other projects as well. For instance -

Writing for the Jakarta Post. This is the principal English-language daily newspaper in my home country, Indonesia. Once a month they publish a colour magazine called 'Weekender'. Last year I started contributing articles on food, with recipes, and I'm now writing a 'Letter from London' for each issue, focussing of course on food and a range of Indonesian dishes, classic and new. I'm posting a recipe on my website today which I hope will also feature in next month's 'Letter'. It's for Roasted Pumpkin, delicious and easy to make – in almost any part of the world!

 I've got two public appearances coming up, both in London: on 19 February I'll be at Asia House in New Cavendish Sreet, and on 24 February at Books for Cooks in Blenheim Crescent, just off Portobello Road.

Thereafter for a while I'll be busy on the fundraising committee for the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery. The Symposium is a registered UK charity, and I'll be looking for donors for our raffle and auction. This year's Symposium will be held, as usual, in St Catherine's College, Oxford, but this year it will take place earlier than in recent years – from 9 to 11 July. Any of my readers who are interested should visit the Symposium's web page, where you can find out all about it and how to apply to take part.

29 September 2008

The new book has been officially 'out' now for a fortnight. In the UK it's called (as I intended) "Sri Owen's Indonesian Food" and the cover looks like this:

It's published here by Pavilion, which is an imprint of Anova Books, based in London. All the Anova / Pavilion people have been absolutely marvellous, and I'd like to thank them here for being helpful, considerate, patient, and always friendly and cheerful - and highly efficient as well.

In North America, the book is published by Interlink, who I'm sure (from previous experience with American publishers) are equally wonderful - so far, however, I've had almost no contact with them. They call my book "The Indonesian Kitchen", and it looks like this:

But the differences between the two books, when you open them up, are trivial. No invitations - not yet, anyway - to fly to New York or San Francisco to help launch "The Indonesian Kitchen", but we've made up for that in London by having three launch parties in just over a week - as I mentioned in my last posting [below].

The evening at the Indonesian Embassy was a particularly good party - more than a hundred people there, and I spent most of my time signing copies of the book. I made a speech - just a little one - to the assembled diplomats, publishers, agents, old friends, the Anglo-Indonesian Society, and several people who I knew I'd met before but whose names escaped me ...

- while my lecture at Asia House, a few evenings afterwards (actually the annual Yan-kit So Memorial Lecture), led to many questions from the audience, and discussion at the reception that followed.

22 August 2008: book launches

LAUNCHES of the new book -

please note that dates and other important details have changed ...

My new book, Sri Owen’s Indonesian Food, which in the  US  is to be called The Indonesian Kitchen, is to be published in early September by Pavilion. I will be celebrating the publication first here at my home in Wimbledon, London SW19, on Thursday 11 September, during my fund-raising pre-Symposium lunch. Then the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery is giving a dinner with an Indonesian menu on Friday 12 September, during the Symposium. The first official launch of Sri Owen’s Indonesian Food will be on 19 September at the Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia in Grosvenor Square, London W1. Then, on Thursday 25 September, I'm giving the Yan Kit So Memorial Lecture at Asia House, who have promised that my book will also get a launch party there. However, my next lecture and cookery demonstration at Asia House, "Curry and Prosecco", that was scheduled for 26 November, has had to be moved to April or May next year. But in connection with my new book, I'll be giving a talk and cookery demonstration at Divertimenti on 5th November, and at Books for Cooks on 3rd December.