Maritime Southeast Asia · Volume 49, The Monopoly, the Monsoon Line and a Border Still Drawn
Batar da'an
Timor-Leste
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 40 minutes
- Researched
- No outside sources linked
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Timor-Leste. Corn, pumpkin and mung bean, the accompaniment to rice rather than its replacement, this side of the border. This chapter's honest note: no Timorese or Portuguese-authored recipe with traditional quantities was found in researching this volume, and what follows is built from the best structure available, corroborated against West Timor's own closely related jagung katemak, rather than presented as a settled, canonical ratio.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. 30 to 40 minutes.
Ingredients
- 400 g sweetcorn kernels, fresh or dried and soaked
- 300 g pumpkin or squash, peeled and cubed
- 200 g mung beans or red kidney beans, cooked
- 1 onion, diced
- 4 cloves garlic, minced
- to taste oil, salt and pepper
- to serve rice, to serve alongside
Method
- Sauté the onion and garlic in a little oil until softened.
- Add the corn and enough water to cover, and simmer until the corn begins to soften.
- Add the pumpkin and cooked beans, and continue simmering until the pumpkin is tender and the corn fully cooked, the liquid reducing to a thick, stew-like consistency.
- Season with salt and pepper, and serve as an accompaniment to rice, in the Timor-Leste style, rather than as its replacement.
What a modern chef changes
The corn and legume grammar, treated with the same discipline this chapter applies either side of the border.
Rung 4, Rung 5.
Method
- Toast the corn kernels before they go into the pot, applying this chapter's own candlenut discipline (Rung 5) to a grain rather than a nut, for a deeper, roasted sweetness beneath the finished stew.
- Purée a portion of the pumpkin in the high-power blender and fold it back through, thickening the stew naturally rather than relying on reduction alone.
- Serve a small quantity of West Timor's own jagung bose alongside, corn cooked the coconut-milk way rather than the rice-accompaniment way, letting the diner taste the same staple's two lives either side of a border that is, in food terms, considerably softer than the political one running through it.