INDO DUTCH KITCHEN SECRETS by Jeff Keasberry

The First of its Kind in the English Language

by Inez Hollander

OK. I am biased. 

When Los Angeles-based entrepreneur and food writer, Jeff Keasberry, asked me to proofread his Indo Dutch Kitchen Secrets manuscript, the first cookbook for Indo Dutch cuisine in English, I said yes and found myself quickly immersed in his interesting family history and the mouth-watering recipes. But this is not just a cookbook but it offers history and context to a fusion cuisine all foodies should know about if they take themselves seriously.

After learning about this history, I remember going over the recipes at night, in bed, and my stomach would not stop growling. I finally got up, clanging pots and pans in the kitchen and my husband thought I’d gone raving mad. Walking into the kitchen, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he asked me what I was doing, and I said: “It’s that darn book of Jeff’s! And where the hell is my Trassi?!”

This was not menopausal madness. It’s the best compliment for a book that I will use so often that it will be covered in grease and sambal. Good thing I have two copies…

Eating Indo Dutch food, the food that binds and brings us together and that will possibly be the only piece of heritage that gets preserved as fourth and fifth Indo Dutch generations become more and more Americanized, has always been like coming home for me personally. I could eat the stuff every day, and yes you can wake me in the middle of the night for a good Rendang, a succulent satay or a superbly layered spekkoek.

Jeff already has two cookbooks to his name in the Netherlands, but since Indonesian, let alone Indo Dutch cuisine is hardly known in the English-speaking world, this comprehensive and fascinating cookbook has been long overdue.

Although Jeff was not born in the kitchen of his famous grandmother, Oma Keasberry at Restaurant Djokja, he spent most of his childhood there, and learned by osmosis, from his ‘oma’ and his mother who was also a very fine cook.