Vegetarian Journal May/June 1999
Adventures in Tempeland
American Tempeh Maker Visits the Motherland
by Seth Tibbott
The Pasar Bedang market in central Denpassar, Bali is a three-story
rabbit warren of stalls, smells, and humanity unlike any other. As my wife,
Sue, my 5-year-old son, Luke, and I slithered through the crowded maze
of a fruits-and-vegetables section on the ground floor, women reached out
to Luke with friendly hands saying "Hello, boy." He hated the attention,
but even more he hated the smell which was rising in intensity as we approached
the "protein" section straight ahead. Turning left between a table full
of exotic bird eggs and one piled high with dried, fly-infested fish, I
first saw what I had traveled halfway around the world to see-native Indonesian
tempe (spelled "tempeh" in the USA). It was piled neatly on a table in
the humid afternoon heat of the tropics. One pile was cut into approximately
1.5-pound pieces and wrapped in the traditional green banana leaves that
were pinned with little sticks. The other, smaller, half-pound size was
wrapped in the more Western perforated plastic bag and appeared to be of
poorer quality. A small crowd gathered around as we purchased the larger,
banana-wrapped product for the standard 500 rupiah (about 20 US cents).
We were the most unusual oddities-tempeh makers from the land of beef and
wealth across the same ocean that lapped in the distance.
It took very little persuading to make the decision to come to Indonesia.
It was a "no brainer" to accept the Yayasan Tempe Foundation's proposal
to present a paper on "The State of the North American Tempe Market" at
their International Tempe Symposium in Bali. After all, I have been making
tempeh professionally for 18 years at Turtle Island Foods (now the second
largest tempeh producer in the United States). For years, we had listened
to the stories of tempeh-making in the motherland from our loyal Indonesian
customers. It was past time to see it first-hand.
There was a taste of irony that the Symposium was held at the 5-star
Kartika Plaza Hotel of Kuta Beach on Bali. Kuta Beach, and Bali in general,
are not the most fertile havens for tempe makers or consumers in Indonesia.
Indonesia-the fifth most populous country on earth-is a diverse land of
many islands and many cultures. It is said that one sixth of the world's
languages are spoken on these islands! Bali has two obvious forces that
distinguish it from the rest of Indonesia-its Hindu cultural roots (the
rest of Indonesia is predominantly Muslim) and the impact of tourism. With
the vast influx of visitors from all over the world, an eclectic blending
of cultures and food tastes has occurred. Whereas tempe is made and consumed
on Bali, it is much less prevalent and rooted in the culture than it is
on Java, the most populous island of the Indonesian archipelago.
While the conference itself was a mostly scientific gathering, it did
provide many practical insights into the place of tempe in the Indonesian
culture. In the past, then-president Suharto had exhorted his people, "Don't
be a tempe nation." By this he meant, grow past the impoverished country
lifestyle and become more modern and Western-tempe being a symbol of "poor
people's food." At the keynote address of this conference, Mr. Joop Ave,
the Indonesian Minister of Telecommuni-cations and Tourism, tried to create
a new image for tempe. He told of a recent movement to "Indonesianize"
the presidential palace and proudly serve tempe to heads of state as an
example of Indonesian ethnic food. He fervently extolled the virtues of
eating tempe and tahu (tofu). "The American concept of meat eating is almost
offensive," said Mr. Ave. "We need to make it trendy for people to eat
tempe." Sadly, the conference turned out to be long on scientific studies
and short on marketing research, although there was a rich display of innovative
tempe products in an adjoining hall that included: tempe miso from Japan,
chicken flavored tempe chips, and tempe breakfast cereal.
Every day we were served a vast buffet lunch from the hotel. Besides
the great variety of Indonesian tempe dishes, such as sambal goreng tempe
(spicy fried tempe with rice), tempe mendoan (slices of batter-fried tempe),
and tempe croquettes, meat was always served as well. It was interesting
to note that whereas nearly everyone in Indonesia loves and eats tempe,
they are not a particularly vegetarian country. The same scientists that
produced the papers on Tempe Consumption Patterns in Indonesia would load
up their plates with plenty of beef and chicken, as well as tempe, at lunch.
While in Indonesia, I visited three different sized tempe shops. The
smallest was a little shop in Ubud, Bali which makes about 100 pounds per
day, and the largest was Pak Pedro Sudjono's factory in Yogyakarta, Java,
which makes 5,000 pounds per day! Here are my brief impressions of those
shops:
Tempe Ubud
Ubud has long been the artistic center of Bali. Surrounding this mountainous
town are small villages that produce everything from furniture and woodcarvings
to paintings and toys. The country's deep spirituality is omnipresent here,
with many temples and shrines scattered about the hinterlands. Tempe Ubud
is owned and operated by a small family group of four adults and several
small children. Fifty kilos of tempe are made each day in the house that
also serves as the family's living quarters. When we arrived at mid-morning,
a man was cooling the cooked beans by hand in a large bamboo colander placed
on the floor of the front porch. The tempe from the day before was incubating
in small 3"x 3" perforated plastic bags, each of which weighed about 3
ounces. These small cakes were incubated for two days on wooden slats in
a dark room next to the main living area. A bicycle-powered mill, the colander,
an aluminum cooking pot, and a heat sealer were the only pieces of equipment.
The 3-ounce cakes were sold to restaurants and were available in the market
for 150 rupiah (about six US cents).
Tempe Murni
Located in back of an oil depot in the heart of industrial Denpassar
sits Tempe Murni. This is a substantial operation, producing 750 kilos
of tempe seven days per week, 30 days per month. The proprietors, Mr. Marso,
and his wife Pukita, employ 10 young men in this operation. The employees
work eight hours per day, 30 days per month, and are paid 100,000 rupiah
(about $42 US dollars) each month. This is considered a good job, and several
papers wondered what impact the loss of these jobs would have on the Indonesian
economy if tempe were to be produced in modern, efficient factories. The
soybeans are cooked in delidded 55-gallon drums placed over propane burners.
Two sweaty, bare-chested men were skimming the hulls off the beans with
plastic colanders.
Two others were cooling and packaging cooked beans in perforated
plastic bags in another room. The beans were piled not on the floor but
on a piece of white canvas. Tempe Murni sells 250 grams of finished tempe
for 400 rupiah (16 US cents) to their distributors who sell it in the market
for 500 rupiah (21 US cents). It is interesting to note that in Indonesia,
tempe is viewed as "poor people's food" and is largely purchased as inexpensive
protein. Yet in the United States at $1.89 per 8-ounce pack, tempeh is
seen as being "natural" food and relatively expensive compared to, say,
ground meat at $1.69 per pound. Yet when one compares the cost of tempe
in Indonesia and the US to the per capita income of their respective countries
($540 USD and $23,000 USD) a cake of tempe is actually more than four times
"cheaper" in the United States!
Pak Pedro Sudjono's Tempe
Yogyakarta has always been viewed as the cultural capital of Indonesia.
It is also, I learned at the Symposium, the city with the highest per capita
consumption of tempe in all of Indonesia. On a weekly basis, the average
person in Yogyakarta consumes nearly 200 grams of tempe versus only 75
grams per Balinese citizen. This shows in the local market, which is totally
inundated by a large variety of tempe products, both raw cakes and prepared
in various sauces. The main supplier of all this is Pak Pedro Sudjono,
a local actor, politician, and tempe maker. This innovative plant produces
5,000 pounds of product each day from a 1,500 square foot area. The shop
does have a gas-fired boiler and copper kettle for cooking the beans, but
everything else is done with the same level of technology witnessed elsewhere
(bamboo colanders on the floor for mixing and packaging, etc.). What is
unique about this shop is the ingenious barter system that exists here.
The main operation is run by a paid staff of 24 people, but the filling
is almost all done by local women who sit on the floor and seal the inoculated
beans in plastic bags, sometimes melting the plastic by running it near
the open flame of a cloth wick stuck into a soda can filled with kerosene!
After the bags are sealed, the women pack them up into the cloth sacks
the beans came in, load them onto bicycles, and pedal the load home. There
they incubate them for several days and, when white and ripe, take them
to the local market for sale! It was in Yogyakarta that I noticed small,
one-ounce packages of tempe incubated for an extra long time in banana
leaves and sold for 25 rupiah (about one US cent!).
Our time in Indonesia ended all too soon, with many places left to explore.
Soon after our visit, the Indonesian economy crashed, taking President-for-life
Suharto with it. To this day, the challenges that face the Indonesian people
are staggering. One thing I know for sure is that somehow throughout all
of this upheaval, tempe is still being made in its own funky, time-honored
way by some of the hardest working and friendliest people on the planet.
The culture that binds the beans together binds the people as well.
Scott Tibbott is CEO of Turtle Island Foods, manufacturer of
Tofurky, tempeh, and other products.
Excerpts from the May/June Issue
The Vegetarian Journal published here is not the
complete issue, but these are excerpts from the published magazine. Anyone
wanting to see everything should subscribe to
the magazine.
This article was converted to HTML by Jeanie
Freeman
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