The whole weekend was dedicated to Indonesian food, from the making of peanut crackers on Saturday to a kitchen takeover at my home on Sunday morning to a full-blown event at Armazém da Cerveja, the location for Indonesian Pop-Up Kitchen #1 back in November. Here are the pics from the test kitchen dinner.

Last time our Pop-Up Kitchen event was a sit-down dinner, but this time we aimed for the snacking crowd. I told everyone to come early and wow, did they ever! People arrived before we opened, there was a queue to the front door, the nasi goreng was finished in less than two hours and the rest of the food about an hour after that. People were still arriving after all the food was gone!

This event brought out an interesting mix of people:

• Southeast Asians who were very surprised to see other Southeast Asians in Porto. I met a Malaysian, a Thai, an Indonesian, and a Filipino who was shocked to see me (another Filipino — because we’re apparently as rare as unicorns here!);
• Portuguese who’ve spent time in SE Asia;
• Portuguese curious about Indonesian food;
• Expats who’ve lived in SE Asia;
• Expats who are on their way to SE Asia;
• Expats who missed spicy food (there were lots of Americans and even one Quebecker!);
• Anyone with Indonesian ancestry (including a guy with white-blond hair who was proudly one-eighth Indonesian through a grandfather);
• Dutch people, who are already very familiar with the Indonesian kitchen;
• Portuguese who were expats in The Netherlands, where they became familiar with the Indonesian kitchen (including the owners of Armazém da Cerveja);
• Anyone in search of spicy food. (The chilis were in such demand that Paulo jumped in to help cut them and spent the next day trying to relieve his hands from the burning sensation. True story.)

After the hectic activity of the first event, I knew the only photos I’d be able to get were a few from the prep. Thankfully, this time around we had a fabulous photographer, Fede Piazza, who stayed from beginning to end and was completely engrossed in her work, even when we kept trying to feed her… she’s Italian so how could she say no?!?

You can see more of Fede’s photography on her Facebook page and Instagram:

https://www.facebook.com/federicapiazzaph
https://www.instagram.com/fintheworld/

Unless my memory has spectacularly failed me, this marks the first time I have ever (in almost 16 years of blogging) published an album of photography that was entirely someone else’s. Yes, it feels a strange but then again, I’ve been organizing these Indonesian food events but I have to explain to people that I don’t do any of the cooking! Cooking credit goes completely to the Indonesian native, Audry Maulana. You’ll see photos of all of us in the album, including Paulo chopping chilis and me surrounded by piles of craft beer. (The eagle-eyed will notice that I’m next to a box of beer named “Raging Bitch”. Intentional? No! I had to laugh when I saw it in nearly all of my photos.)

Click on any of the images to enlarge:

Hungry for more Indonesian food?

I’ve got more pictures here: https://gailatlarge.com/blog/tag/indonesian-kitchen

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