Our friends and us discussed about how we appreciated our traditional food more after we moved abroad. Now we realize more that Indonesian food is very elaborate. That's the food we used to take for granted because it was everywhere and inexpensive. Food originated from foreign countries including those from chain fast food restaurants is "cooler", which successfully steals Indonesian market. I used to prefer that kind of food too eventhough it put a hole in my pocket because the price could be five times as expensive as Indonesian food from a
warung adjacent to my boarding house.
Living far away from our home country has 'forced' me to learn cooking food I grew up with. Sometimes my cooking tastes similar to the one traditional one, yet sometimes it isn't. Some food is too complicated and is time and energy consuming. Unfortunately I often don't have patience so most of the time, I prefer simple and quick food.
The good news is, living far from our hometown and family, hubby and I become less picky about Indonesian food. We even are grateful enough if we could have traditional Indonesian food wannabe! This food that I made,
empek-empek is one of it. My cooking would not taste as good if I cooked it back home because getting much better one is just a motorcycle away. Haha...
So, what alteration and mistake did I make to my cooking this time? I used tilapia fish instead of mackerel. I also baked the boiled
empek-empek instead of frying them. From making this food, I learned that making
empek-empek kapal selam was so difficult. I couldn't make the dough to hold the egg. During the boiling process, the egg burst out.

Despite it's imperfection, it was a perfect dinner for our perfect Sunday evening. As hubby always says, "the secret of happiness is low expectation".
Happy Thursday!
*
Empek-empek/pempek is a traditional Indonesian food from
Palembang, capital city of South Sumatra province.