Marco Polo and Mie: Indonesia

One of my favourite places to obtain bakso Mie in Yogyakarta was Bakso Itu but unfortunately it has closed down. 'Meatballs with spaghetti in water' was one description I heard from an obviously ignorant traveller.

Mie is a basic staple in Indonesia and you can buy it with any dish and in any form at restorans, from the kaki lima in the streets or at markets. It is a filling meal and also big business in Indonesia. Indomie is the biggest manufacturer of dried noodles in the country and go into any supermarket in Indonesia and you will see a shelf dedicated to al the varieties available.

Candika always eats mie on her birthday or mine as this is accepted as good luck and more birthdays to come which really means, long life. But from exactly were did this food originate from and who was it that introduced the delicacy to the world?. Brilliant epicurean Suryatini N. Ganie has a fair idea:

Several days ago I watched my driver savoring two bowls of mie bakso at a sidewalk stand. And when after the intermezzo, we drove further he seemed to be very satisfied and did not comment on the terribly congested traffic. Well all along the way to my destination in North Jakarta I counted about 19 mie bakso vendors. It seems that, backed by a glut of noodle advertisements, we are following in Marco Polo's footsteps in liking mie or noodles.

How did Marco Polo know about the existence of mie? In their book titled Marco Polo, David Butler and Keith Miles wrote about Marco Polo's astonishment at the luxurious lifestyle at the palace of Khublai Khan where they were guests to a dinner honouring his uncles and the emperor's friends, Nicolo and Matteo Polo, who brought their nephew Marco with them.

Serving the hundreds of guests who were seated at small tables the servants put bowls in front of them. And the Polo's Italian servant Jacopo was also serving them food prepared by local cooks. Marco Polo first thought that their hosts were having rice as a staple but looking at the contents of the bowls he discovered they were served wet long strands of wheat. Marco Polo and his uncles were not the only ones surprised to see what they had in their bowls. All distinguished Mongolian aristocracy were seemingly equally surprised. After trying in vain to eat the slippery strands with the normal cutlery they managed to eat by taking it with the fingers and putting it into their mouth. It was delicious. They asked Jacopo what it was. "Wheat strands" Jacopo answered.

After becoming a distinguished advisor to Kublai Khan, Marco Polo made many journeys for the emperor and made notes on the foods he was served. The long strands of wheat, later called noodles, and first served at the Imperial Palace was one of the foods he liked very much and he even gave recipes for mie, or mian, to the local inhabitants of the harbour places where his galley threw anchor on his way to his homeland Venetia in Italy. Later on Chinese traders going around the world also spread the word about noodles which became a global delicacy.

What about us in Indonesia? Though we don't grow wheat here the basic ingredient of wheat noodles or mie seems to have become part of people's diets. And next to the mie bakso consumed by both the poor and the rich there are countless variations of the long wet strips once eaten by Marco Polo at the emperor's palace. Nearly every region in Indonesia has its own mie specialty. There is mie Jambi for example, mie Jawa, mie Bandung, mie Medan and countless other variations made by very creative mie-minded people. The mie made from wheat flour is also used to make western-influenced dishes like pastel mie for example, a baked pie with a spicy noodle filling. In Kalimantan, mie Karindangan is made into a steamed banana-leaf-wrapped delicacy consisting of mie, carrots, French beans, chopped leek and celery leaves. Or some people put the mie Karindangan in a buttered oven proof dish and bake it, serving up big portions with sambal.

But in Indonesia there are rarely foods without a symbolic meaning and mie is no exception. The mie made from wheat flour is a symbol of longevity for Chinese-Indonesians and no traditional birthday celebration is complete without a noodle dish. Please be careful when enjoying it because the long strands have to be intact as the length of the noodle is a symbol of longevity!. Not taking that into consideration could be seen as evidence of a lack of manners.