Time to come in from the cold?

April 7, 2006 8:28 AM

Surviving, perhaps thriving, without a refrigerator?

I live in a large city in Indonesia. I've just moved into a new house without many developed-world appliances. I can't afford a fridge until the end of this month, maybe longer.

What can I make which/that:

a) contains ingredients which require positively no refrigeration or freezing prior to/during/after cooking/eating
b) is nutritious (lower salt/fat/sugar, higher protein, etc)
c) is made of things I can find here (think rice and chicken, not quinoa and hummus)
d) is more ant-proof than not (it's bug central out here!)
e) can be made as a one-serving thing

I have:

a) a two-burner LPG-fuelled gas cooker (like a camp stove, I guess)
b) an electric/toaster oven
c) some basic kitchen tools: pots, pans, a can opener, a colander, utensils, plates, and a big knife and cutting board

There are lots of snacky foods (toast, etc) I can whip up with all this, but nothing dinner-worthy after a long day of hailing minibuses and sweating constantly.

Dietary and shopping considerations:

a) UHT (er, comes-in-a-box) milk is available, but is expensive for the single-serving packs I'd be forced to use, as it's got to be refrigerated after it's open; ditto cheese, yogurt, and other dairy stuff.

b) Eggs would be fine unrefrigerated in a temperate climate for a week or two, but here, food starts to go bad really fast because of the heat and humidity, so if I use eggs, I worry that I've got to buy them on the way home from work and use them immediately, but I have no idea about this, really.

c) Pasta is available but relatively expensive and fresh tomatoes, which form the basis of my internal pasta-sauce monologue, are mostly imported and apparently not ripe yet anywhere I've looked.

d) Fruit and vegetables are cheap and plentiful - mangoes, avocados, oranges, carrots, garlic, mushrooms, onions, etc; potatoes, squash, lentils, and peas aren't really part of the picture as far as I've seen.

e) Indonesia's predominantly Muslim environment means pork and alcohol are rare in stores and expensive when you find them.

f) Baking is still untested in the toaster oven, but theoretically possible according to the instruction manual.

g) I have to boil water before using it or I could die, horribly, of dysentery, giardia, and the like.

h) If I had to rank my Indonesian language skills on a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give myself a 2.

i) Rice is everywhere but in a dizzying array of varieties and I really don't know where to start. No rice cooker.

j) No money for a barbecue.

While I'm open to eating out more often than I usually would (it's certainly cheap enough), cooking asserts this notion I have that my house is a home and a place I want to spend time.

If I were back in the States, I'd be cancelling my cable to pay for organic veggies and whole wheat flour. This is my first time living by myself and I want to make it fulfilling, comfortable, and fun, and maybe learn to cook better along the way. I know you won't let me down. Thanks for your help!

posted by mdonley to food & drink (20 comments total)

Well, in the Boy Scouts, I learned to make a one-pot, no-refridgeration meal of chicken and rice. We used canned chicken, dumped it into a plastic food bag with some seasonings and shook it up to blend the seasonings with the chicken. Then, we cooked up some rice, and then combined the seasoned chicken with the rice. You could add fresh chopped vegetables like onion and peppers, or really, any thing else you wanted to.

It doesn't really matter what kind of rice you use; it's a matter of personal preference. I'd probably stick with regular white rice or long-grain wild rice for starters and maybe branch out to something more exotic if you're feeling lucky.
posted by fvox13 at 8:38 AM on April 7, 2006

rice with stuff in. cook rice in a pan. either cook stuff in another pan or add to rice while cooking. mix and eat.

stuff can be veggies or meat, cut small.

cooking rice is easy; you do not need a rice cooker. there must be a million explanations via google. if you don't know what to buy, watch a stall and see what sells most. buy that. you may need to wash rice if it's local produce - slosh it round in water, pick out stones and junk, strain, repeat. then modify cooking instructions to add a bit less water.

add seasoning (however it is available locally) to rice as cooking.

(i'm surprised you can't eat out at very low prices)
posted by andrew cooke at 8:48 AM on April 7, 2006

Living Without a Fridge by Kim Forhand.
posted by Rash at 8:50 AM on April 7, 2006

Do what your neighbors likely do, shop every day for perishables.
posted by caddis at 9:15 AM on April 7, 2006

Eggs will keep for a long time, no matter the temp. The humidity will keep them from drying out over time.

In the past I read quite a bit about food on long sailing trips. The sailing community might be a good source of info for you. Start with the magazine "Cruising World." (sorry - I'm too much of a dork to know how to post a link.)
posted by shifafa at 9:26 AM on April 7, 2006

I'm judging by your comments that you haven't cooked much before (very sorry if I'm wrong, and about to patronise your horribly). Well there's no better way to learn than by just doing it, but you have to think hard about what goes with what. I'll outline a basic dish that can withstand a great deal of variation.

The idea here is to cook all the elements so that they're done at the same time in one pot. While that's going on, you want some of the elements to be combining into a tasty sause, handily already combined with your meat and rice. In the following, this sauce comes together from the stock, onions and the tomatoes.

Start with onions. They're tasty, versatile, healthy and a great foundation to a one-pot dish. Dice them and fry them in low to medium in a little hot oil or butter, 'til they're soft and smell really good. Try throwing chilli and garlic in too, as you like it.

If you want a meaty dish, chopped chicken breast, or chopped pork goes in with the onions. You want to fry the outside of the meat to seal in some juice.

Add some or all of the following:

Tinned tomatoes: chopped or whole. They break down and add a lot of thickness and depth to the end result.

If you can't get tinned (I've never been to Indonesia...) you can get some whole tomatoes, drop them in boiling water for a minute and slip off their skins as easy as pie. Then chop the innards and throw it all in.

Cook these with your meat and onions for a short while, less than 5 minutes

Next you need a liquid

Water might work (you'd have to add more herbs, salt and pepper to get some taste out of it), or much better, you could add Stock.

Use stock cubes for convenience, or proper stock for a big taste improvement. You can make your own if you're buying whole chickens. Seriously, the stock is what makes this dish.

The rice, obviously. Any kind will probably work, but be advise that cooking times vary, particularly between white and brown rice.

Kidney beans or similar: good for protein if you have no meat to go in. Cheap, and make the whole thing more filling. Tinned ones need a little cooking with the other stuff to taste good. If you're using dried beans you need to carefully follow preparation instructions.

Herbs: Dried oregano is a great general purpose one. Thyme adds something pleasant. I personally love it with coriander. Basil is good, but should be added late in the cooking. Be wise Don't add more than two.

Salt and pepper, to taste.

Cook for up to half an hour, stirring regularly to keep it off the bottom.

Serve and enjoy. I'm no gourmet, but I was the envy of my student room mates for my cooking skills.
posted by godawful at 9:30 AM on April 7, 2006

Bedtime (it's midnight here!), but -

Everyone: Almost everything is available here, but at a price. Fresh food is far cheaper than anything preserved/processed. Spices are far different than anything I'm used to - maybe they're just so much more intense because, you know, it's the Spice Islands and all that. Everything available at warungs (street vendors) also seems really fried, which I'm not really looking to emulate.

Godawful: That recipe sounds tasty and super-versatile. No need to feel bad for sounding patronizing - life is fascinating but challenging here and I've been humbled by finding out how little of my (admittedly small) cooking knowledge is useful here. For the MeFi record, tinned tomatoes are available.

andrewcooke: Eating out is, indeed, scandalously, frighteningly cheap, pennies and dimes for heaps and heaps of food, but I'd prefer to cook my own stuff and learn on my feet and be in my boxers on my couch scanning my shortwave radio. Googling all things rice in the morning.

caddis: Done and done. Meat's tricky as I'm not as linguistically prepared for a meat counter as I am for a produce section yet, but pointing and making size approximations and apologizing a lot has helped.

shifafa: Never knew that about humidity and eggs "drying out." Thanks. Will check out the sailing info.

fvox13: Thanks, but canned meat here is dubious at best. Trying to keep salt/sugar/etc down.
posted by mdonley at 10:02 AM on April 7, 2006

Wow this sounds like the same experience I had but on a different continent 15 years ago (no fridge, gas cooking appliances, tropical rain forest, I rarely cooked before that).

I don't know if you can find these products there but I found these in large towns/villages in a country in Africa, so perhaps you can find these things too which do not require refrigeration:

-A cheese called 'Vache qui rit' or 'Smiling cow' - I used to buy it from stores at room temp, it lasted a long time (equivalent to cheese spread)
-I noticed eggs in stores were never refrigerated, so they lasted a long time/I did the same, bought them and up to 2 weeksk used them. If you want to test if your egg is fine, get waterin a pot, put your egg in - if I remember correctly, if it sinks it is still good if it floats - bad
-Dehydrated milk (Nido) for small portions
-Tomato sauce paste in cans - if you add sugar, it does taste like tomato sauce in the states

Local products that can be preserved/last for a long time
-Do they have salted fish there? You can save that forever, make the quantity that you want
-Potatos, do they have tarro there?

I did not know how to cook either and this is how I learned enough to get by - I was given a cookbook for Peace Corps volunteers for that country/basic basic cooking instructions and what you could make from local products. Most valuable product I had perhaps you can find something similar via googling.

The second (and amusing way) was to visit neighbors. Show them what you bought and see if you can ask a basic question.At minimum you will entertain people for quite a while - and learn how to cook something. Believe it or not young kids/teens can probably help out and show you what to do with local prodcuts and how to prepare them.
posted by Wolfster at 10:13 AM on April 7, 2006

There are a number of sources for homebuilt evaporative refrigerators, essentially they consist of a standalone shelf draped in cloth that is attached to a bowl of water. It will allow you to at least keep some foods cooler for a few hours during the day and slow bacteria growth. At least, I've seen these in boy scout manuals. I can't find a link online...
posted by craniac at 10:15 AM on April 7, 2006

Wait I just thought of something that should taste really good and I will assume you can find this product there - plantain bananas. They look like really large bananas.

Save them until they are ripe (yellow or even almost black).

Slice your banana up into different pieces

Get a frying pan, fill it up with oil (quite a bit/I know it is not healthy but tastes great) Fry it and flip it over from time to time until each side is brown

Throw sugar on top of it. Seriously, it tastes great
posted by Wolfster at 10:16 AM on April 7, 2006

b) is nutritious (lower salt/fat/sugar, higher protein, etc)

Unfortunately, this part may be a bit tricky: salt and sugar are preservatives, so a lot of things that keep a long time without refrigeration are salty or sugary. Hard cheese, for instance, and dried fruit.

Speaking of dried fruit, though, if you put some in a shallow dish or pan, cover it with water, and leave it for a few hours or overnight, you'll have a nice dessert.

I know you said no hummus, but canned chick peas are very versatile and probably affordable. Other canned beans as well, but chick peas seem to keep their texture better when canned. Here's a nice recipe for curried chick peas with tofu, but you can throw in any vegetables that would seem to go well with it.

Speaking of tofu, you can find it packaged in boxes that don't require refrigeration.

Also, baking in a toaster oven is definitely possible, assuming it has heating elements on both top and bottom. You just need a baking dish that fits in it. Think lasagnas, casseroles, and frittatas.
posted by staggernation at 10:30 AM on April 7, 2006

Previously on the green (in answer to a camping food question), the FEMA Healthy Hurricane Disaster Cookbook (PDF link). It's really a pretty impressive piece of work.
posted by chr1sb0y at 10:36 AM on April 7, 2006

craniac's suggestion is spot-on (evaporative cooling methods), but will work better if you are not in a humid environment.

If you want to try it for storing perishables, this is the best method I know of: get two nesting clay (porous) pots with about an inch gap between the inside of the bigger one and outside of the smaller one. Fill the gap (including on the bottom) with sand. Add water to the sand. Put perishables in smaller pot. Replenish water as it dries out. Like craniac suggests, damp cloth on top will slow evaporation and prevent other types of contamination.

Like I said though, this works best when it's not humid. Temperature differences can be up to 20F. Difference in shelf-life can be days (lettuces) to weeks (tomatoes).
posted by whatzit at 11:41 AM on April 7, 2006

What I saw was similar, only the cloth was draped over a box with open sides, the container on top of the box and the fabric surrounding the chamber in which the food was kept. I forgot about the need for relatively arid air.
posted by craniac at 12:13 PM on April 7, 2006

I used to live in the Marshall Islands, and upon reflection a lot of their cooking was based on non-refrigerated stuff (doh!) like dried coconut, salt fish, fermented breadfruit and variations on the same. It was always cool to visit someone who had caught reef fish while you were talking to them and then frying them up.
posted by craniac at 12:37 PM on April 7, 2006

You have internet access, so google up a bunch of Indonesian recipes. That will help you understand the ingredients available. Looks like shrimp, beef, chicken, cabbage, eggplant, sprouts, peanuts, rice, noodles, coconut and soy products are dominant. Then you can choose ingredients and google for new recipes.

In many developing nations, you can buy food in quite small quantities since there is no refrigeration. Also true of spices and sauces.

Rice and noodles can be boiled/steamed and then fried, with or without variations of available ingredients, like sliced cabbage, tofu, peanuts and soy. Or cook up some noodles, and separately stirfry some beef and broiccolli, adding some local condiments or sauces from the market. Peanut sauce is a favorite of mine; great on noodles, maybe with some cooked chicken.

You might want to develop a favorite local restaurant/food stand where the vendor will learn what you like and be able to understand your language, so you can try lots of local foods.
posted by theora55 at 1:05 PM on April 7, 2006

just live on avocados, durian and other fruit. With rice and sambal for main course.

Little bottles of sambal are quite cheap and long lasting.

Email me privately (via profile) for more info.
posted by singingfish at 2:01 PM on April 7, 2006

Hey you're in Bandung! There's a pretty big expat community there, and while I'm sure many are caught in the fun game of jockeying for status that their new relative wealth brings, some would have been in the same situation you have and can help you out. Look around on the internet, I'm sure there's an expat association you can go to for help.
posted by lemur at 2:19 PM on April 7, 2006

My husband says that if eggs are never regerated then they will keep for several weeks at room temps. He had a friend on the Eastern Shore of Maryland (Temps above 90 most of the summer and humid) who would buy stacks of fresh eggs and keep them on the kitchen floor.

If you want to do this and are concerned that a particular egg may have stayed out too long, put it in a bowl of water. If it floats, it is bad.

wife of 445supermag
posted by 445supermag at 2:50 PM on April 7, 2006

Keep in mind that cooked rice is potentially food poisoning city. It has a shelf life of only 24 hours when refridgerated/cooled and even then needs to be fully heated through before eating. It's a great food, healthy, keeps wonderfully when raw and sounds like will form the basis of a lot of what you cook. Just be careful about not storing it too long once it's been cooked and reheat it properly.

NZ is known for it's high rates of food poisoning apparently (I'm never sure if that bit's true or media spin but anyway), and cooked rice is a prime culprit simply because many people don't realise (people focus on meat and stuff). However, the wet, solublised starch in cooked rice is perfect bacteria food. Heh, I've seen the results on my poor flatmate, it wasn't pretty.

Bad eggs float because the shell has become permeable and let air in, so that's a good, scientifically valid test. You can cometimes see the permeable patches in the shell too, like little greasy spots. Once air is getting in so can bacteria, and the egg is going bad. It takes a while though.
posted by shelleycat at 4:53 PM on April 7, 2006