Bakwan Jagung in The New York Times...

Bakwan Jagung or Corn Fritters are one of my all time favourite Indonesian snacks. They are versatile and can go by themselves as a "between meals snack" or they can form part of a main meal. So, I was pleasantly surprised to see a write up of Indonesian style corn fritters in The New York Times. It was also good to see a recipe attached to the article, and some quotes from an Indonesian Executive Chef, Djoko Supatmono, at the Satay Junction in Manhattan, New York.

I still eat bakwan jagung here in Australia. My wife is an excellent cook, and it helps that bakwan jagung is one of her favourites as well. My preferred accompaniments are sweet soy sauce with chopped chillies as a dipping sauce or sambal mentah (raw sambal - ground up chillies, garlic, pepper), or sambal Bali (I am not a connoisseur on that front, but my mother-in-law had the sambal Bali down pat). We are spoilt for fresh corn in this part of the world, and fresh corn is always the best way to go when making bakwan jagung.

It should not be too long before the Malaysians start trying to claim that they are the inventors of the Bakwan Jagung and that Indonesia stole it from them. Malaysia seems to want to claim all manner of Indonesian things from textiles to music, so food would seemingly not be such a big stretch. If Malaysia does not step forward to make a claim, then Singapore probably will.

History's Worst Decisions

I have just finished reading a book titled, History's Worst Decisions and the People Who Made Them by Stephen Weir. I guess if you do not want to repeat history you need to know what history has been before you. However, no two circumstances are every exactly the same so perhaps we are doomed to repeat similar history!

The book is one of those that has an almost vice like grip on your brain as you start reading about the stupidity that has invaded the minds of some of history's biggest stars. It is almost voyeuristic in that you are taking a fleeting glimpse at history through the key hole.

The book starts out with Adam and Eve, the Original Idiots, and sets the rest of the stupidity that follows on the original sin.

The entries include classics such as the trade of Manhattan Island for Run Island by the Dutch by Johan de Witt. The Dutch seem to have erred in making that deal, don't you think?

Other entries include Custer and his last stand at the Little Big Horn, Winston Churchill's folly at Gallipoli, Maralinga and the British Nuclear Testing in Australia's outback, Union Carbide and Bhopal, Chernobyl, and Mugabe, among a total of 50 entries.

It is a great little read and does not take that long to plough through. I actually did it in one sitting over a great many hours! However, it was one of those books that has that perverse kind of attraction in that each time you go to put the book down you think, I will just read one more stupid decision and then go to bed, and then you end up reading it to the end.

Highly recommended.