Ni'binögö｜North Sumatra

Part 21/38 in a series exploring one dish from each province of Indonesia.

I wanted to go for a dish from Nias for this one, because when you think of North Sumatran food your mind goes straight to Batak food. And that’s fine, there’s plenty within that cuisine I could have picked that would have been good here, but it does seem to overshadow Nias a bit.

Unfortunately that means finding a recipe has been tricky. Even the name seems to be spelled differently wherever it shows up, with nobody really bothering to check it. On that point though I did a little research and looking at the menu of Nias restaurant Warung Pa Sisca, you see the pork dishes ni’owuru, ni’unago, and ni’binogo. Anyway as a result of all this I’m not totally sure of this recipe given its source - I would have liked a recipe more clearly documented as being from Nias really. But let’s see, and if you have any better info on this dish please do get in touch. Either way this sounds tasty. And it’s nice to have a pork dish in this series as its place in Indonesian cuisine often gets minimised in the literature.

(And if you’re looking for a side dish to serve with this, I like the look of lehedalo nifange.)

Serves 6.

Adapted from here.

☒ UNTESTED

Ingredients

• 1 kg pork, diced
• 2 tomatoes, diced
• 100 g red bird’s eye chilli, finely sliced
• 100 g shallot, finely sliced
• 100 g garlic, finely sliced
• 3 tbsp sweet soy sauce
• 3 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp sugar
• ½ tsp ground white pepper
• 2 banana leaves
• Wooden toothpicks

Cooking

Mix everything (except the banan leaves and toothpicks of course), leave for around 30 minutes.

Lay out the mixture on the banana leaves, then roll into a package and seal with the toothpicks in the ends as pins.

Steam for ~30 minutes.

Barbecue until the banana leaves are brown and aromatic.