How going back to Indonesia changed the way chef Lara Lee cooks

When Lara Lee first travelled to Indonesia in her twenties, the smells and flavours unlocked a part of her identity. Years later, each visit deepens that connection and shapes her cooking.

Lara Lee in Indonesia, where tempeh or tempe is a key ingredient. Source: Supplied

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Beyond Bali With Lara Lee

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Standing in her grandmother's abandoned house in Kupang, East Timor, chef Lara Lee felt the weight of memories settling around her. Furniture had vanished, electrical wires dangled from the ceiling and the building that once buzzed with family life lay quiet. Yet, as she moved through the rooms, sifting through old photographs, discovering handwritten recipe books, and talking about her grandmother’s life with her auntie, Lee recalls her grandmother's presence: “It felt to me like she'd kind of come back to life just for those few moments.”

As a child growing up in Sydney, Lee – an acclaimed chef and James Beard award-winning cookbook author – was mesmerised by her Indonesian grandmother preparing traditional dishes, watching her ‘Popo’ grind ingredients into a paste for gado gado sauce, observing the steam rising from a bubbling pot of babi kecap on the stove. Although, as Lee recounts in her cookbook Coconut and Sambal, meals were often a blend of cultures – Aussie sausage rolls with peanut satay sauce – ‘not a classic Indonesian combination, but one that sums up the influence of growing up with an Australian mother and Chinese-Indonesian father’.

“I feel like I've always been in that little space between in the Venn diagram, that third culture… an outlier in Australia, not really knowing where I belonged.”

It was when she first stepped foot on Indonesian soil at 21, Lee says that "it finally all made sense – the smells, the sounds, the heat, the vibrant colours... When I came to Indonesia, I suddenly made sense of who I was, that I was a part of both worlds and it felt incredible.”

Beyond Bali with Lara Lee. Credit: Johannes P Kusumo

Since that first visit, Lee regularly returns to Indonesia – recently, as host of the SBS series Beyond Bali. These visits have not only shaped her cultural identity, they have changed the way she views and cooks Indonesian food.

“For me, the centre of Indonesia is its food. It's at the heart of the people, it's at the heart of community, and it's how Indonesians express love.”

It finally all made sense – the smells, the sounds, the heat, the vibrant colours.

You can eat gado-gado on its own, but it's also a great side dish. The peanut sauce will last for up to 5 days, but once tossed, it's best eaten the same day. Credit: Louise Hagger

Understanding Indonesian food though language

Lee shares a handful of words that she feels distills Indonesian cuisine – and that, beyond being food vocabulary, they are experiential, sensory terms that express how Indonesians relate to food. These words – concepts – guide Lee in the kitchen, as they can any budding Indonesian chef.

Makan (to eat) – “The most important word of all is makan,” says Lee, “Makan means to eat and if you're not eating in Indonesia, you're not in Indonesia!”

Pedas (spicy) – sits at the heart of Indonesian cooking. "If you're not eating hot food in Indonesia, you are missing out."

Wangi (fragrance) – "When you enter an Indonesian kitchen, you should be hit like an assault of the senses with full-on fragrance, aroma, chilli, ginger, garlic, shallot – you name it."

Nasi (rice) – taught Lee about the fundamental place of rice in Indonesian meals: "A meal is not complete without rice, and in fact, half of your plate should be rice."

Goreng (deep-fried) – revealed the Indonesian love affair with texture and textural contrasts. "When you're eating in Indonesia, it's got to be crunchy, it's got to be crispy, and it's got to be fried in hot oil because that's the way we eat."

Grilled fish with sambal matah, hijau and balado. Credit: Asia Unplated with Diana Chan

And, crucially, sambal – the spicy chilli condiment that appears in countless varieties across the archipelago – is a gateway to understanding regional Indonesian cooking. "A little bit of sambal is eaten with every bite of food," Lee says. "For Indonesians, a meal is not complete without sambal."

Sambal tomat from Java incorporates fresh tomatoes that "make it a little bit milder and less spicy." Sambal hijau from Sumatra's Padang region is "an umami bomb" made with green chillies and tiny dried anchovies that pairs perfectly with rendang. And the classic, sambal terasi, is enriched with fermented shrimp paste that’s “a little bit subtle, a little bit overpowering – but it’s perfect. It’s full of umami and you use it the same way you would season something with fish sauce."

Crispy dried fish, rice and sambal terasi.

A little bit of sambal is eaten with every bite of food.

More than just words, these principles provided guides for Lee's evolving understanding of Indonesian dishes when she started cooking from – “decoding” – her grandmother's handwritten recipe books. “The way that Indonesians often cook is through intuition,” Lee affirms. Some of her grandmother's recipes would note “a handful of this, a thumb full of that, a fingertip of this," Lee laughs. "She had smaller hands than me. I'm pretty tall, so I've got to figure it out."

Regional revelations

From her experiences travelling throughout Indonesia, Lee attests that “Indonesian food doesn’t really exist as one cuisine – it’s deeply regional.” The country spans more than 17,000 islands and 1,300 ethnic groups, each with their own dishes and flavour profiles.

In filming Beyond Bali, Lee travelled to five of these islands. The first, Bali, where food reflects Hindu traditions and ceremonial dishes are central to daily life. Coconut, lemongrass and galangal are abundant in the tropical climate and complex spice pastes (bumbu) underpin everything from roast suckling pig (babi guling) to vegetable salads like Coconut lawar salad (lawar buncis). Dishes are fragrant and colourful.

Balinese coconut lawar salad (lawar buncis). Credit: Beyond Bali with Lara Lee

From Bali, Lee visited to Lombok in the Sunda Islands. Lombok is famed for fiery dishes like ayam taliwang (grilled chicken with chilli sambal) and snake beans with cashew and chilli. Fertile volcanic soils support rice, soybeans and spices like cinnamon and cloves, while coastal waters provide abundant seafood. Muslim influence shapes halal preparation, and the island’s cuisine retains a rustic intensity that sets it apart from Bali.

Lombok snake beans. Credit: Johannes P Kusumo

Sumba is an ancient island of waterfalls, rice fields and beaches, with a rich tribal culture. Its arid climate means corn, cassava and tubers often replace rice; wild greens are foraged from local hillsides, and the island’s fruit is known for its sweetness from nutrient-dense soil. Buffalo and pork feature in Marapu feasts, while seafood and goat are cooked in bamboo or over fire. Flavours are earthy, restrained, and rooted in ritual.

Flores is famed for Komodo Dragons, dazzling reefs, misty highlands – and a cuisine as vivid as its landscapes. Portuguese colonisers left more than cathedrals: indigenous Manggarai people slow-braise pork in coconut milk and spices and roti kompiang, a yeasted bun, is a popular street-food snack. Coastal communities grill the abundant fresh seafood and cooks across the island make the most of local vegetables like papaya leaves and flowers, cassava leaves and banana hearts. Sweets proudly feature the native brown sugar, gola malang.

In West Timor – Lee’s father’s birthplace – corn rivals rice, native herbs and chillies thrive and indigenous Timorese ingredients meet Indonesian techniques of grilling and smoking meat. Local dishes embody food that is resourceful, communal and deeply bound to heritage – se'i sapi is meat, usually beef, smoked over Ceylon oak and river tamarind wood served with sambal. Perkedel jagung are crisp golden corn fritters fragrant with lime leaf and chilli – a favourite of Lee's aunty to make for visitors and, "a tradition I've carried over to my home in London," says Lee.

Indonesian pantry essentials

Lee’s return trips didn’t just change how she thinks about recipes, they also shifted her everyday pantry.

Kecap manis is a "salty, sweet, soy kind of spice infused condiment that is thick like molasses, but you can drizzle it over everything and it's used as an amazing seasoning,” says Lee. “If you want to cook like an Indonesian, you've got to have kecap manis in the cupboard.”

Tamarind "adds a little bit of that kind of sour sweetness to a dish. But unlike citrus, tamarind can be added at any stage of cooking – it doesn’t go bitter if you add it at the beginning,” says Lee, "It gives that quintessential Indonesian flavour".

If you want to cook like an Indonesian, you've got to have kecap manis in the cupboard.

Sambal oelek is a simple, vinegary chilli condiment that ‘you can buy at an Asian supermarket’ and that has become her cooking safety net. "Even if you have the blandest of dishes, it can make a meal go wow," she says. “I love making my own sambal, but it's always useful to have your own sambal oelek in the cupboard.”

And – a non-negotiable – chillies: “Big red chillies, small red chillies, medium chillies”, because they’re going to give you the heat and the spice that Indonesian food is famous for. “At the heart of every Indonesian spice paste is chilli.”

"I'm so proud to be Indonesian,” says Lee, who wants people to know that "there's so much more to Indonesia than meets the eye, and to go there to try, to taste, to feel – and hopefully, they'll fall in love with Indonesia as much as I do."