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Maritime Southeast Asia · Volume 49, The Monopoly, the Monsoon Line and a Border Still Drawn

Batar da'an

Timor-Leste

Batar da'an, Timor-Leste's stew of corn, pumpkin and mung bean: a rustic stew of pale corn kernels, soft orange pumpkin cubes and small green mung beans in a thick, glossy broth, served in a dark bowl beside a small mound of plain white rice.

Illustration

Time
40 minutes

Timor-Leste. Corn, pumpkin and mung bean, the accompaniment to rice rather than its replacement, this side of the border. A note: no Timorese or Portuguese-authored recipe with traditional quantities was found, and what follows is built from the best structure available, corroborated against West Timor's own closely related jagung katemak.

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, alongside

Method

  1. Sauté the onion and garlic in a little oil until softened.
  2. Add the corn and enough water to cover, and simmer until the corn begins to soften.
  3. 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.
  4. 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

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
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