Welcome to Sesame Street

Sesame Street is a wonderful television show centered around the interactions of muppets and their neighborly humans. The show is set in a dense, urban neighborhood lined with a bodega, carts, mom & pop shops, and high brownstone apartments abutted with metal or wooden fire escapes. Everywhere is clean, orderly, and spacious.

Sesame Street is inhabited by people who all seem to enjoy hanging around outside. One cannot step outside onto Sesame Street without running into neighbors ready to impart wisdom or sing about life. I grew up on the likes of Cookie Monster, Bert & Ernie, Luis & Maria, Mr. Hooper, and the lesser known characters such as The Count and Captain Vegetable. I still occasionally break out in Captain Vegetable’s theme song when the whim overtakes me.

Our own neighborhood street is a more adult version of Sesame Street. Stray cats, small lizards, and giant spiders are numerous. Litter is liberally strewn about everywhere, often by said cats and rats. Most of the men on our street are heavy smokers. Everyone under 50 ends every sentence with a profanity. Warungs are plentiful, though most need a renewed paint job. The smell of motor oil is often in the air. The only singing comes from the Tahu Bulat truck (it sings about tofu balls) and the local mosque.

If I step outside I am sure to idly chitchat with many. I might receive an enthusiastic welcome from the local property manager. Everyone else greets me with a smiling nod and, “Pagi! Mau ke mana?” (“Good morning! Where are you going?”). This question is a bit like “How are you?” to Americans, except that instead of just walking away as our people do, they answer their own question first “jalan-jalan ya?” (just traveling, right?) and then walk away.

Similar to Sesame Street, real conversations start when I stop walking. Pak R. will talk about Netflix shows and badminton. His brother Pak B. will talk about scooters/motorcycles. I could practice language skills with Pak A. (a warteg vendor) or trade language help with Ibu Y., (a pushcart vendor). Ibu M. and all the ladies in her extended family who hang in front of her warung will talk to me about cooking and local foods. Ibu M. will also occasionally rebuke me for petting stray cats.

The above context is central to understanding this next story. The subject matter is mundane, even banal. Yet the events unfolded in a style foreign enough to be striking, satisfying enough to be wonderful. Enter: toge (toe-GEH).

The Cultural Wonderfood: Toge

I had just learned how to make several Indonesian dishes from a friend who also happens to be an accomplished cook. One of these dishes was Karedok (KAH-reh-dawk’), a raw salad made of chopped long beans, thinly sliced cabbage, de-seeded cucumber, and freshly-bruised basil. It is tossed with a sauce made from lime juice, palm sugar, aromatic ginger, ground peanuts, and fresh chiles. The taste is deliciously complex. Every flavor hits a different part of the mouth. It is at once sweet, sour, slightly bitter, tangy, and mildly spicy. I could easily eat this everyday.

I was walking through my neighborhood reviewing cooking instructions in my head when Ibu M.’s voice pierced through my dense cloud of thoughts.

Ibu M.: “Mau ke mana, Josh?” (Where are you going?”)

Me: “Oh, Ibu M.! I just finished learning to cook karedok!”

Ibu M.: “Oh really? What kind of karedok? What did you put into it?”

Me: “Mmmm…. I put long beans, cabbage, and cucumbers.”

Ibu M.: “And toge? There was no toge?”

Me: “I don’t think so? What is toge?”

Ibu M.: “Toge is one of our favorite vegetables! We eat toge with every meal, usually fresh and raw.”

Me: “One moment, yes?” I attempted to look up “toge” in Google Translate. Nothing. I showed Ibu M. my spelling. “T, O, G, E, yes?”

Ibu M.: “Yes, correct…. it’s not in Google Translate?”

Me: “I guess not?”

Who Needs Google?

I stood in front of Ibu M.’s bodega stumped, inexplicably abandoned by my heretofore faithful (if occasionally incorrect) companion Google Translate. Ibu M. had attempted to teach me one of the culinary cornerstones of her people but I had no understanding. I began to wonder if I had made faux-karedok. In a lineup with all the other karedok’s it would be picked last for team-sports, or it might contemplate its shortcomings and break down in tears. Certainly the other karedok’s would poke fun at it for not being truly Indonesian.

I need not have worried. Ibu M. called out to her daughter about 20 yards away who was conversing with a friend. “What is toge in English?” Her daughter shrugged, looked around, and called to another friend ten yards further down. “Do you know what toge is in English? Mom wants to know for Pak Josh!” The question was repeated to Ibu M.’s niece, who asked Ibu M.’s neighbors, who asked their respective in-laws. Ibu M. repeated her question loudly for the general populace in the other direction.

I had unwittingly inserted my query into the neighborhood search bar and then became the sole spectator of my neighborhood search engine. All in all, the search chain traversed most of the upper half of our neighborhood. A young lady who knew enough English to answer the question came up to me with a victorious smile almost five minutes later and said, “Toge… is…Bean sprouts”.

This young lady was soon followed by 5-6 other ladies between the ages of 21 and 55, all curious as to why the new-foreigner-in-town wanted to know about toge. I told them I had learned to make karedok, but without toge. Their initial wonder at a foreigner who was learning to cook Indonesian food turned to confusion and mild consternation at my confession. One could make karedok thusly, but it is similar to going on a romantic date by yourself or framing only half a picture. Why do that to myself?

The group of ladies proceeded to tell me when to buy toge (early morning), from whom (either the vegetable guy with the pushcart or at the vegetable stall down the street), and how much I could get (about 1kg for 11,000 IDR). I could not imagine how one ever eats 1kg of beansprouts. Then again, I have not grown up in a culture that eats them at every meal.

The ladies eventually trickled away back to their conversations after they educated me about the former mystery vegetable. I was deeply impressed that my question had somehow involved most of the female population on the upper half of our street. The neighborhood had rallied together and came through for the sake of the mystified foreigner when Google could not. It was a profoundly beautiful educational moment on Adult Sesame Street brought to me by many neighbors, the letter T, and the number 11,000.

Coda

It turns out that bean sprouts are in Google Translate: spelled tauge.

I have made karedok a handful of times since this story, always with tauge. I have even shared some with the neighborhood ladies who helped me with my inquiry. Everyone in my neighborhood then somehow concluded that I make karedok daily. One day, Ibu M. greeted me and then asked:

Ibu M.: “Why make karedok? You can buy it at the market for cheap and it is still delicious!”

Me: [smiling] “But I bought a huge mortar and pestle to make karedok! I need to use it!”

Ibu M. looked with no small amount of disbelief.

“…. You grind your peanuts by hand?! It’s so much easier with a blender. It tastes just as good!” I had wanted to make karedok the way it has been made for centuries out of respect for Indonesian cuisine. So I bought a mortar and pestle to grind whole peanuts into a paste. Meanwhile, my Indonesian counterparts all use blenders or pre-ground peanut dust that only requires adding water. I’m such a silly foreigner.