Indonesia

Indonesia's seventeen thousand islands each guard their own sambal, uniting a vast archipelago through chili heat, coconut, and aromatic spice pastes. Rich rendang, fragrant nasi goreng, and satay skewers showcase a cuisine shaped by the original Spice Islands.

The Spice Islands were specific islands, not a mood. Nutmeg and mace came from the tiny Banda group in the south Moluccas, for a long time the world's only significant source, while cloves were tied to Ternate, Tidore and Ambon further north, and the Dutch fought and reorganised whole societies in the seventeenth century to control them.

Rendang belongs to the Minangkabau of West Sumatra rather than to Indonesia at large, and Malaysia lays its own claim; it is defined by cooking the coconut milk down until the liquid is gone and the meat starts to fry in what is left. Sambal, meanwhile, is not one recipe but hundreds, changing island by island with what grows and what is fermented locally.

A soft rice-flour and coconut porridge pooled with dark palm-sugar syrup.