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Twenty Skewers and a Blurred Border
My cousin Seng and I sat on plastic stools at a satay stall in Kajang, back when Kajang was still the place for Malaysians who loved their satay. Between us, a pile of empty sticks grew like a trophy. I was ten years old, eating more meat than I probably should have, but I didn’t care. I finished the skewers, then the cucumber, then the ketupat, all covered in that sweet, spicy peanut sauce I couldn’t get enough of. The air was full of charcoal smoke. Sauce dripped down my fingers. Seng gave me a smug look when he pulled ahead by two skewers. I loved food before I even knew what that meant.
I didn’t realize then that the satay we were eating had come from somewhere else. The dish actually traces its roots to Indonesia, where it is thought to have originated on the island of Java before spreading across the country and throughout Southeast Asia. An archipelago of more than seventeen thousand islands, just south of where I grew up, had been feeding me all along without getting any recognition.
Growing up, Indonesia never felt foreign to me. It was the nanny who packed sambal terasi in an old jam jar and called it lunch. It was my mother’s gado gado, so good I thought it was just our family’s dish. It was onde onde, with gula melaka that burst with sweetness as soon as you bit into the sticky green shell. I didn’t know I was eating Indonesian food-I was just…
