Indonesian Beef Stew

I always fancy myself cooking "Indonesian" dishes.

That either shows:
- how proud I am of being Indonesian (Ms. Nationalist of the Year medal, I am here) or
- how I miss my home country's food or
- I just have major MAJOR misconceptions about Indonesian cooking, i.e:

a. Not everything drenched in kecap manis (Indonesian sweet soy sauce)/palm sugar/coconut milk should be called Indonesian cooking
b. Not everything cooked/eaten/loved/missed by someone from Indonesia (i.e. me) should be declared as Indonesia's national dish
c. Not everything I used to eat back home in Indonesia are necessarily Indonesian inspired/influenced

- or all of the above

Conclusion: Whatever. I can call anything Indonesian if I want to. HAHA.

Example: Oh gosh, that cheeseburgers are SOOO Indonesian (yes we have hot dog & burger vendors on bikes in Indonesia, I used to eat it and lots of it after church in Jakarta, so yeah. That makes it Indonesian)

Just like this beef stew. I fancied beef semur (Indonesian beef stew), but I didn't have the complete set ingredients needed for a traditional semur. So...I just used whatever I had and call it semur LOL

Ingredients
- half-1 pound of beef brisket
- 1 medium sized carrot, sliced about 5mm thick
- 2 small potatoes (I love the sound of small potato haha), cut into cubes
- garlic, shallot, ginger (crushed), some for boiling (1 clove of garlic, 2 cloves of shallot, 1-2 pcs of ginger), some for stewing (2 cloves of garlic, 4 cloves of shallot, abt 3 cm ginger, sliced thick then crushed)
- kecap manis, palm sugar, salt, pepper
- nutmeg powder (you can grate fresh nutmeg if available)
- juice of 1 lemon
- 2 tbsp cooking oil (I use olive-canola mix)

Cook beef brisket in boiling water, salt, pepper, ginger for about 5 minutes (or until the excess fat's gone. I was using frozen beef brisket so it took a bit longer), drain, cut into chunks, set aside. Saute garlic, shallot, ginger in 2 tbsp hot oil, add beef chunks, add water, add carrot and potatoes, add more water if necessary, just to get everything covered, add some kecap manis, salt, pepper, palm sugar, nutmeg powder, cook until water's reduced but not completely dry, adjust seasoning, squeeze lemon juice, serve with rice.

Indonesian or not, I love it. :)