On Friday morning, a truck carrying lots of of packages of beef rendang – a conventional dish from the Indonesian province, slowly cooked in coconut milk and spices – left the town of Padang in West Sumatra.
By Saturday 1.3 tons the essential part should reach the neighboring province of Lampung, which was devastated last weekend by a deadly tsunami that also hit the west coast of Java. In total, 426 people died within the disaster and greater than 40,000 were displaced – lots of them now living in evacuation shelters.
The donation drive to the rendang was organized by the West Sumatra Disaster Mitigation Agency because, as its head Erman Rahman put it, the displaced people need food but don’t necessarily know the right way to cook it.
“Maybe just Indomie,” he said, referring to a preferred brand of fast noodles. “So we decided to send them rendang. It can be eaten for the next three weeks to a month without the need to reheat.
The groceries – a staple item for most Indonesians that has twice topped CNN’s annual ranking of the world’s 50 best food products – were donated by agency staff, local residents and Padang shops such as Rendang Asese and Kripik Balado Shirley, which are popular among tourists looking for edible souvenirs. This is a dehydrated version – without all the water – unlike other rendangs with a rich sauce.
This isn’t the first time the West Sumatra Disaster Mitigation Agency has used rendang’s versatility to its advantage.
About 800 kilograms were sent to the tourist island of Lombok after an earthquake struck in August, killing more than 100 people. Then a month later, about 1.1 tons were sent to Palu after an earthquake and tsunami reduced much of the city on the island of Sulawesi to rubble. More than 3,000 people died and an estimated 220,000 were displaced.
Food entrepreneur and cookbook author Reno Andam Suri, who sells his own brand of the dish called Rendang Uni Farah from his home in Tangerang, near Indonesia’s capital Jakarta, said West Sumatra is known for “rendang that lasts.”
He says the Minangkabau people of West Sumatra take the rendang with them on long journeys outside the province.
“People who went for the hajj [a pilgrimage to Mecca] in the old days people traveled by ship, which took months, and they took the rendang with them. So they tested that rendang could be eaten gradually and the rest would not go stale.”
She agreed it was a very good dish to send to disaster victims, given its large following – though donors should consider the preferences of the people they’re helping.
The approach to preparing rendang varies depending on the archipelago. For example, people in Central Java prefer rendang to be served with a thicker sauce, while people in Yogyakarta prefer a sweeter dish, she added.
Reno, nevertheless, says he believes the extent of spice sent to victims of the recent tsunami shall be “acceptable.”
Anak Krakatoa, which is positioned in the midst of the Sunda Strait between the islands of Java and Sumatra, erupted within the early morning hours Saturday, causing a part of the volcanic crater to collapse and slide into the ocean, triggering a robust wave that caused such destruction and death.
Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse
This article appeared within the print edition of the South China Morning Post as: A Rendang dish that relieves the hunger of tsunami survivors
