I Celebrated Kartini Day by Cooking Ginger Honey Beef Stir Fry

Many people commented on my appearance. The round shape of my face, the size of my nose, the width of my forehead, the complexion of my skin, that I am a true embodiment of Javanese women. But beyond that, I have lived a life that many javanese women experienced,.

As a child, I grew up learning that women’s job is to macak, masak, manak (tidy up, cook, give birth). I was trained, and groomed by my elderly that the sole purpose of women’s life is to have a perfect family. I was told to be able to cook, for my future husband; to look good, for my future husband; to be fertile and healthy, so I can produce (many) good child(ren) for my future husband. I was told my whole life, that as a javanese women, that your main purpose in life is to please your future husband.

Khaleed Hoseini in Thousands of Splendid Sun once wrote that women job is to endure. Javanese women, many choose to endure. Choose to endure to leave all of their dreams to be a doctor, engineer, lawyer, for the sake of happiness of their husbands.

But there is a Javanese woman that I can always relate to. R.A Kartini. I don’t remember when did the first time I heard about Kartini. I feel like I’ve known her my whole life. But, I remember the first time I celebrated Kartini Day. My mother still has the picture in an album, that she even put captioned on every picture (this before instagram was cool). I was wearing green javanese basahan style kebaya, my hair was in konde with five straws of flowery hair accessories, full makeup with red lipstick. My male cousin was wearing purple beskap and blangkon with a fake mustache drawn by black eyeliner on top of his lips. Then I learned that these numerous number of 5 years old kids was paraded to the entire school neighborhood. Later in the afternoon, I remembered that my mother won a nasi tumpeng competition between women resident in the neighborhood. Then, it happened, every year of my entire school's life.

Kartini, through her letters, shows the world that women should have options to choose. To choose whether they wanted to get marry or not, to choose who are the person they want to marry, to choose who is the person that they want to cook for - even if that person is themselves - , to show the world that women should decide what they are aspire to be, to make their own decision for their own life. 

But in honoring her, we celebrated by glorifying women's role that she tried to change: good in cooking, being pretty and being an object. Through my whole education life, I never knew much about Kartini, at some point in my life I even questioned why she is national hero, simply because we never taught about her real fight, her point of view that she really believes in. We were told that Kartini is a javanese women who wear kebaya and stlye her hair in konde.

But Kartini, and all women are so much more than a kebaya, konde, and beauty pageant. Kartini, and many women in my life choose to endure, and to rebel. I choose to rebel, I choose to endure every negative comments that my close minded family threw upon me. I choose to fight for what I believe in. 

So, celebrating Kartini Day this year, I choose to cook for myself (and my sister who just happened to be around). 

My mother left to Malang the day before and left us with some beef chunks leftover. The Chinese root inside me craved for simple Chinese food then I decided to come up with a simple recipe to satisfy myself. 

I transformed the beef chunks into something sweet and salty by mixing it up with honey, garlic and ginger. I paired it with a simple recipe of hainan rice, simply because I am tired of just eating plain rice almost everyday. But honestly, the hero of these both recipe is always sesame oil. I always put sesame oil in most of my asian food recipe. It just bring the asian-ness to it. Lol. 

So here you go, I promise you this is so simple it only took you 10 minutes cooking this. Go ahead and try!

Ingredients:

Ginger Honey Beef Stir Fry

250gr of beef, cut in dice; 

2tbs of olive oil; 

2cm of ginger, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

3tbs of honey

3tbs of soy sauce

2tbs of sesame oil

Hainan Rice

1 cup of rice

4cm of ginger, sliced

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

2tbs of soy sauce

1tbs of oyster sauce

2 big scallions, 

pinch of salt

 

Instructions

Ginger Honey Beef Stir Fry

1. Pre heat olive oil, once heated add the diced beef. Cook each side until it's medium rare, set it aside; 

2. Put together in a bowl chopped ginger, garlic, honey, soy sauce and sesame oil, stir it. 

3. With the same sauce pan that use to cook the beef, add the sauce mix to the pan, bring it to boil. 

4. Once it boiled, add the beef and mix it well. 

Hainan Rice 

1. Rinse the rise in clean water, add enough water to it;

2. Add ginger, garlic soy sauce, oyster sauce and salt to the rice and mix it well;

3. Chopped the scallions, add it to the rice, and boiled it all until the rice cooked (or you can use electronic rice cooker). 

Serve all both together, you can also add simple soup stock that I wrote in my previous simple wonton soup recipe.