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How I traveled to Indonesia during the Pandemic

A story about black sticky rice chiffon cake and an international search for recipe, equipment and ingredients

Social media can spread anxiety and negatively influence psychological well-being. And then there’s #bookstagram, and cake. If you’ve never read Gone with the Wind with a dozen people of a dozen ages in half a dozen different countries, you may not be using your social media correctly.

Ditto for feeling inferior in the face of gorgeous food.

Feel inspired. Drool a little.

A few months ago a friend — if you can say friend about someone mostly a pen pal in the DM way, who you met once, when she visited New York City and you went for coffee and book shopping, laughing about everything, discussing Antigone, lemmas (word families), and rumpled bed sheets in photos — introduced me to Black Sticky Rice Chiffon.

Not surprisingly, black sticky rice flour, AKA black glutinous rice flour, was required. Glutinous, I knew, was a misnomer. This flour, like rice, is gluten-free. The adjective refers to the gluey texture-consistency that happens when its cooked. Sticky.

I knew where I could buy white glutinous rice flour. I’d never seen black.

I went to every market within my Pandemic range, called 10 others, including one in Los Angeles, emailed a manufacturer in Kuala Lumpur and a wholesaler in Singapore, debated ordering a 50-pound bag, wondered if Southeast Asian e-commerce sites would ship to the U.S., then found a bag for sale on ebay in the U.K.

Was I ready to spend $24.98 on a 78-cent item that may or may not have come from someone’s home pantry? Not yet.

I reconnected with my friend. She lives in London. She wasn’t sure my idea to grind black sticky rice into flour was a good one. She’d never seen the flour (sometimes called powder, which may or may not mean ground finer) outside of Indonesia. But, excitedly, she sent a link to the exact item in my ebay watchlist.

A sign. Buy It Now. Delivery within 21 days. In the meantime, my friend translated her mom’s Bolu Ketan Hitam recipe. That’s the proper Indonesian name.

I made my first trip to Chinatown in nearly a year. Because what if what was arriving was wrong or bad or never arrived. Also, it had been nearly a year, which had never before happened in my life.

“Do you have this in black?” I asked cashiers and shop employees, holding up a bag of the extremely findable white glutinous rice flour.

“Black color,” I added, when I was more used to the incredulousborderingangry look that preceded every head shaking no.

So I shopped for other ingredients, started following Jakarta-based Natural Cooking Club on Instagram, waited for my Royal Mail International Standard, and watched the video my friend sent.

How to make Black Sticky Rice Chiffon. Beware the music. Focus on the food. YouTube video.

I also watched the video below it. And others. And conducted other research too. Air pockets in very-beaten eggs leaven chiffon.

“My mom was really adamant that you should use this tin to make the perfect chiffon cakes,” said my friend, sending a photo of a two-piece, aluminum tube pan.

You might call it an angel food cake pan. Compared to angel food, chiffon is less sweet and less dry. I did not own this pan. I do now.

The flour arrived. The pressure was on. My partner suggested inaugurating the pan with any other recipe, to take the edge off. But it wasn’t until early morning Bolu Ketan Hitam day that the stress of having only 500g of my primary ingredient — in the entire country and possibly continent–set in.

I’m not usually a procrastinator but I procrastinated. I looked up time zones (Jakarta is today plus 11 hours) and flights (nothing direct). I made and remade tea. I rearranged ingredients.

I debated 335 v. 340°f (my oven options) as 170°c, which equals 338.

I watched the video for the eighth or 800th time. I translated the ingredients myself to learn more Indonesian words. That led to some search engine rabbit holes. My friend and I had discussed “medium protein flour” and agreed it was probably U.S. cake flour. Wrong. It’s A.P.

Wow. Game time substitution.

I was ready.

I cut into the bag of black glutinous rice flour, product of Thailand, shipped from England. It was more gray-purple than black. I’d seen recipes with charcoal powder to create more black black. Color wasn’t the point for me but I understood. I leaned in and inhaled. It smelled like hay. Like dry grass and sweet earth.

It’s on.

The non-meringue half of my batter was like ultra-thick purple brownie mix. The meringue half stuck to my spatula as directed.

The scent of eggs with a hint of coconut escaped the 335 oven. Familiar yet not.

I felt nervous in that plane-about-to-land way. Did I have my passport? Did I fill out the paperwork? Was my research thorough enough? Would I be able to figure out the train or bus or walking path?

Butterflies in my stomach. The kind I hadn’t felt for months, and months. A primary reason I love to travel: discovering and exploring the unknown.

I realized my previous thought that cooking and baking were the way we traveled during the Pandemic was only about memory. Re-living. Here I was experiencing something that had only ever happened before when I was on the road, rail, or in the air.

Wow. I felt excited in that plane-about-to-land way.

The smell shifted, less egg, more coconut, more sugar. More like a cake. I imagined this to be the aroma of Indonesian kitchens, and bakeries, and maybe malls. I’d have to ask my friend.

Does purple have a smell? I think this is the smell of purple. Like creamy earthy fruit sweet.

I sliced the top of the cake as directed.

Then I got nervous again. Was it rising enough? Did I forget anything? Four minutes to go. Then I got excited again. Anticipation. Kitchen crew, please take your seats for landing.

To cool a chiffon, the pan sits upside-down, supported by the tube and leg-like hinges. Please do not think I could risk taking pictures at this time. It’s unsettling. Like traveling to the other side of the world. Like jet lag.

Also, it looks like an upside down pan. You can’t see the cake.

Then time passes and things are right side up again.

Did my first Black Sticky Rice Chiffon get the right rise? Not really. I blame the eggs. But dang it’s delicious, squishy, kinda chewy yet airy, spongey, like nothing I’ve tasted before. But I knew it was right.

I sent photos to my friend. She was impressed. I was grateful. Terima kasih. Thank you. This was a happy Pandemic day. Plus cake!

Now I’m researching my next trip.

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