Ingredient list of spices and sauces I often use to cook at home.

Hello dear Steemians...

Today I want to write a list of spices and sauces, which are commonly used in Indonesian cuisine.
Some sauces are actually used in chinese cuisine but in Indonesia there are many Indonesians with chinese origin so that their culinary style could be said as common food in my country as well.
In western countries it's nearly impossible to find a chinese restaurant that offer dishes in the original taste and style, since they normally need to be adjusted with the local "tongue" in order to collect enough customers.
Most westerners are not accustomed to the strong taste of spices and chilis.

On the other hand, in Indonesia we can find chinese restaurants or even street vendors which offers Chinese delicacies with their original taste like the normal Chinese household would cook. I must say that somehow I also miss those dishes because it's impossible to find here in my city despite the existence of so many Chinese restaurants. :)
So my only option is trying to cook it by my self. Fortunately we have internet nowadays.
Internet is my saviour LOL.
However, some dishes are just too complicated to make or the ingredients and the necessary tools are not to be found here, so I still miss plenty of food actually.
Ugh...what a foodie! I will never have success in losing weight hahahahaha.

Anyway... the spices and sauces I list here are only the ones necessary for making the most common dishes in Indonesia and relatively simple to make. I also only list those who are considered really exotic in western culture so that most of westerner don't recognise them. Spices needed in Asian dishes that are no longer so uncommon for westerner (for example: pepper, coriander or lemongrass ) are not necessary to be listed here, since they are easily recognised anyway. :)

These spices can be found in Asian stores in your town or you can just order it online:

1. Jahe = Ginger This is a special ingredient used to cook most of chinese food and also Indonesian curry varieties. We can use ginger to make many different beverages and dessert, especially for winter since it gives warming effect, soothing sore throat , treating nausea and could also help treating common cold. It has an antiinflammatory effect as well.	2. Lengkuas = Galgant This rhyzome is often called as Thai-ginger in Germany. This is also a main ingredient for many different kind of soup in Indonesia, especially those cooked using coconut milk.
3. Kencur = Kaempferia Galanga. The Germans call it "Gewürzlilie". This spice is not so common in Thai-cuisine, that's why it's not so easy to find in the local Asian shops. I normally order it in an Indonesian online shops since the Indonesian shop in my city is closed down.	4. Temu Kunci=Chinese ginger / Fingerroot This rhyzome is also commonly used in Thai-, Cambodia-, and Chinese cuisine so it's rather easy for Indonesians to find it in local Asian shops. We Indonesians love to cook spinat soup with young corn and sometimes also Luffa acutangula or winter melon. This soup is especially great to be eaten in a hot summer accompanied with dried salty fish or smoked mackerel, or even bakwan and tempe kemul/mendoan and with sambal terasi.
5. Kemiri = Indian walnut You can find it in an Indian grocery shop too if there is no Indonesian shop in your town. But if you really can't find one for your recipe, you can replace them with almond or walnut.	6. Pekak = Star anis This is also commonly used in chinese cuisine and Indian cuisine too, so it's rather easy to buy as well in Eurepe. This will be used normally in Sumatra cuisine such as: rendang and gulai.
7. Asam Jawa=Tamarind It tastes sweet sour. We use this fruit a lot in our dishes. We use it for main dishes and also for dessert or beverages. Combined with tumeric it's good to make herbal drinks for women during their period. It relaxed the menstrual cramp, reduce the bad body odor as well. It's really fresh to drink it cold.	8. Gula Jawa / Aren = Palm sugar This sugar is made of the sap from different kind of palm trees. Each palm brings out different taste in the sugar made out of it. But generally speaking, you can use any kind of palm sugar for your recipe, they still taste slightly similar, better than using sugar made of sugar cane or other substances, at least for Indonesian dishes. But you need to be a bit careful too in picking palm sugar, because I have once found palm sugar but in the composition list it's said that it's simply brown sugar in block, made of sugar cane. So it's not made of palm. I wonder how come such fake product could be brought in Eurepe at all. That's cheating anyhow.
9. Bayleaf. There is not much to say about it since Eurepeans also use bayleaf for their dishes. We use this a lot for ours too.	10. Lime leaf This ingredients would be used a lot in Asian cuisine. They give out very nice fragrance to the food. Kaffir lime is the exact name of it. In the next picture you can also see the fruit.
11. Wijen = Sesame seeds In Indonesia we normally use sesame seeds for desert, sweets or cookies but since I love chinese and korean cuisine too, I always have this in stock as well. Sesame seeds are typical ingredients in japanese, korean and chinese food.	12. Biji Selasih = Basilikum seeds This seeds are used normally to make dessert or beverages. They have medicinal properties too. They are good for digestion and have cooling effect. Basilikum seeds are not the same with chia seeds, however they have similar consistency and both are healthy food.
13. Jeruk sambal / jeruk purut = Kaffir lime Here you can see how Kaffir limes look like. We use it to make sambal (spicy Indonesian salsa). It smells so good and could camouflage the fishy smell of shrimp paste or fish sauce.	14. Jeruk nipis = Lime I think many of you are already familiar with this citrus fruit. Yes, it's the main ingredients to make Caipirinha. ^_^ So we also love to use it to make beverages. However Indonesian beverages are in general made without alcohol. It makes the food taste fresher as well. We use it to prepare fish and poultry dishes too because it could help reducing the unpleasing odor of fish and poultry.
15. Jintan = Caraway Most people tend to confuse caraway and cumin. They are similar but not the same. Cumin is often used in Indian curry and middle east cuisine. They smell very strong. Sometimes we use it too in Indonesia, normally for savory food from Sumatra. But what we use in Java most of the time is caraway. That's why javanese curry tastes and smells slightly different than Indian- or middle east dishes.	16. Terasi = shrimp paste This paste is made of fermented shrimp so it smells strongly fishy, very unpleasant especially when it's fried or cooked. So I normally buy the pre-cooked one since I normally only use it to make sambal (spicy salsa) or Indonesian salad dressing, this way it doesn't need to be cooked again so that my house doesn't smell badly. :-D We can camouflage the smell using lime leaf/fruit when making sambal using shrimp paste. If I happen to not having shrimp paste at home, I'd replace it with fish sauce. It doesn't make very much of a difference.
17. This is one of many ready made chili sauce from Indonesia. I love to buy the brand ABC, Indofood or Cap Dua Belibis. From all those threee, my favourite for dipping purpose is the last one. But for consuming with meat ball soup, I would rather use either ABC or Indofood. We can buy them online in tokoindonesia.de as an example.	18. These are two example of Indonesian soy sauce. It tastes sweet but savoury, you would definitely need it to make "satay" (meat skewers). Without sweet soy sauce, the skewers wouldn't taste special anymore. These two are my favourite brand, original made in Indonesia. The other sweet soy sauce made in Eurepe doesn't work that well to give the particulas taste of Indonesian food (IMHO). But if you can only find the local brand, it's ok though. It's better than nothing. ^_^
19. This is Chinese typical cooking vinegar. It tastes very strong and special, so I'd rather not replace it with another kind of vinegar. It's rather easy to buy here and not expensive, so it's not a big problem.	20. This Chinese rice wine, Shào Xīng Jiǔ It also as a very special taste. But you can use dry sherry as a replacement if you really can't find the original. But this rice wine is not hard to find in local Asian shop since it's so typical for Chinese food. Otherwise, ordering it online is also an option.
21. Saus Tiram = Oyster sauce This is typical sauce used in Chinese cuisine as well, made of oyster.	22. Saus Hoisin = Hoisin Sauce, also a typical ingredient for Chinese cuisine too. It's made of fermented soya beans. It tastes sweet and savory.
23. Minyak Wijen = Sesame oil This is very typical in Chinese, Korean and Japanese cuisine. It gives out very nutty taste, I love it so much.	24. The last one in this post would be salty soy sauce. Since my baby also loves to eat Asian food, so I try to find organic product as good as possible. Soy sauce is already very famous in Eurepe so there are some local organic products in the market. However I still have another special brand in China because it tastes stronger than the organic one. I also notice the different taste of organic sesame oil and the one imported from Asia. For the asian sy sauce, I still try to find those that doesn't use artificial flavor enhancer like MSG. Perhaps you are wondering why some soy sauce costs much higher than the others. Is the price still fair compares to the taste or is it just about pride... a more famus brand? Well the answer is: yes, there is a difference in taste and quality, so the price difference worth it to spend. Both soy sauce would somehow contain glutamat, however... the pricey one doesn't use artificial glutamat. The MSG content in it came from the fermentation process of the soy sauce only, it's not being added another more with chemical flavor enhancer.

Well.. these are my weapon in the kitchen. :-D
Those are ingredients I use the most frequent. I hope this article would help you recognising the spices in the shop.
See you again next time and thanks in advance for the upvote.