- Student
- 03/05/2016
What sort of house is this and who lives here?
‘De Mau’ is recognizable at a distance. Wooden boarding covers part of the facade where a delivery truck drove into the building in early March. For the past two and a half years it has been home to four friends from Breda.
Is cooking on their list of priorities?
The answer to that is a resounding ‘yes’. The food department gets a lot of attention, time and money. “We’ve done nineteen euros worth of grocery shopping for this soup,” says Industrial Design student Alex. They also plan to produce a book of their favorite recipes. As we speak, Camiel (Biomedical Engineering) is writing 'Soto Ajam' on the first page. “That’s our house recipe, you know.”
Words of wisdom such as “ingredients can always be added later, but can never be removed from a soup” (Oscar) and “it’s easier to juice a lime if you roll it before you cut it” (Camiel) reveal cooking experience. They don’t find it a chore to spend more than an hour on a main-course soup, which they are doing this evening - on the contrary!
Recipe | Soto Ajam
For the Indonesian main-course soup with chicken, you need to chop finely:
2 red onions
1 red bell pepper
a good thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger
3 cloves of garlic
a handful of cilantro (including stalks)
and fry these ingredients together in oil. Add to the frying pan: 2 tubs of Soto Mix (herb paste) of the KoningsVogel brand. Soon after, add:
3 liters water
6 chicken stock cubes
3 frozen lime leaves (available at the Indonesian foods store)
1 bruised lemongrass stalk (ditto)
500 g chicken fillet (whole pieces not cubed)
pinch of (palm) sugar
drop of Thai fish sauce
juice of 1 lime (squeeze half a lime over the pan, taste and add more as necessary)
Hard-boil some eggs. One for each person. (This is enough for at least eight people. Dinner this evening, lunch tomorrow.) Cook rice for four people. Remove the chicken fillets. Pull them to pieces using two forks. And put them back in the pan.
Put out in individual dishes on or near the table:
scallions cut in rings
hard-boiled and peeled eggs
bean sprouts
rice
lime wedges
cilantro leaves
fried onions (they can stay in the tub)
ketjap sauce (manis or asin)
sambal (preferably KoningsVogel’s Sambal Brandal)
The serving ritual:
Take a deep plate, mash an egg on it, add a serving of rice, top with scallions and bean sprouts.
Pour soup over the top. Season with lime, ketjap and sambal. Sprinkle with cilantro leaves and fried onions.
Slamat makan!
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