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.

Sperm Counts and Soy

I think I have found an excuse for why it took me more than five years to get my better half pregnant! A research study out of the Harvard School of Public Health at Harvard University is suggesting that the eating and drinking of products that contain a lot of soy or isoflavones has a negative impact on fertility in men. To all out there that do not understand what this means, then in lay person's terms more soy equals less sperm!

There have not been many studies into this, and this particular study is but the third to be completed. Nevertheless, the idea that there is a causal relationship between the eating of soy and the reduction in sperm is an interesting one. I need to get a copy of the study and have a look at who the subjects were. Indonesians for example eat a lot of soy-based products. Since I have been living here in Indonesia, soy has always been a staple and has always been present in just about every meal that I have had. I love the Indonesian forms of soy and regularly eat tahu and tempe.

It seems that soy contains isoflavones, an organic compound which acts like female hormones, which then appears to impact negatively on a man's ability to produce sperm. The science is that the isoflavones in soy are structurally similar in the chemical sense to estrogen and then serve to mimic the way estrogen acts in the human body.

The study involved 99 test subjects all who were involved in a relationship where there were difficulties in conceiving. There was an "inverse" association between soy intake and sperm concentration. This inverse association was distinguishable even after other factors such as age, abstinence, caffeine, BMI, and alcohol were taken out of the equation. The average man has a sperm count of between 80 and 120 million per millilitre whereas the soy consuming subjects had an average sperm count of just 41 million per millilitre.

I guess the next time I am contemplating getting into the baby making game then it is time to swear off the soy.