What's the difference? Sweet potatoes vs yams vs taro vs yucca - a brief guide to tropical tubers

Football risks being an afterthought as two fanbases with radically contrasting philosophies come face to face in Glasgow

These finger-sized Kaastengels cookies are salty, cheesy, and savory. They are one of the most popular holiday cookies in Indonesia.

Indonesia, a multicultural country, exhibits high diversity of cultural heritage. Sambal, for example, a traditional chili paste or sauce usually consumed as condiment, has been an integral part of Indonesian food culture for centuries. Initially, sambal was prepared using native ingredients such as pepper and ginger. Cayenne pepper (Capsicum annuum), a native American plant, was incorporated in sambal recipes in the sixteenth century and since then, it has been the major ingredient of Indonesian sambal. Each region of Indonesia has its own traditional versions of sambal, distinguishable by its ingredients or production methods. The aim of this review is to identify and establish a profile regarding the diversity and geographical distribution of 110 different varieties of sambal in Indonesia reviewed from various cookbooks. The island of Java exhibits the highest amount of sambal variants (64.5% of sambal variants found in Indonesia) among other islands. More than 80% of the identified Indonesian sambals are prepared by crushing and cooking the ingredients. Some also are served as raw sambals in all islands in Indonesia, except Java and Sumatra. Besides chili pepper, sambal production often involves the use of diverse secondary ingredients that gives a unique identity for every sambal recipe (e.g., fruit, local food, aromatic herbs, etc.). Nowadays, sambal is produced both traditionally for direct consumption and modernly in food industries, thus resulting in commercially packaged sambals with long shelf life. Sambal also has potential to contribute to the nation’s economic conditions, mainly by supporting the development of small and medium enterprises. With regard to novelty, this is the first international review discussing the diversity of sambals in Indonesia in a thorough and comprehensive manner.

The art of winning hearts and minds through food is central to gastrodiplomacy, where nations and regions aim to promote their wares beyond their borders. Kiki Aranita took a closer look.

A rich and complex chile paste that's a mainstay of the Malay kitchen.

In the 1970s and 80s, when the guards stepped away, the pots and flames came out.

The convergence of global diets means just three crops provide 50% of the world’s calories. When shocks come, they hurt.