And the world is looking rather tasty...

A dash across the churning traffic, a slip down a side street and it is like discovering a new land at the back of the wardrobe. It looks different here, another colour palette altogether: lively reds and rain-fresh greens. The smells are strangers to my nostrils: pungent, sweet fruits swirling in the smoky aroma of meat from an animal I’ve never tasted.

We are hungry for lunch but this is Glodok, Jakarta’s mammoth-sized Chinatown, and we don’t know where to go. We dodge scooters and market shoppers, into a street bursting at the seams with mountains of apples and brimming baskets of stringy green beans and glistening red chilli peppers.

This is Glodok’s abundant pantry. I become transfixed by the culinary skills of a man with a cigarette dangling from his mouth: he is skinning frogs. A deft movement, once here and once there, and the fresh carcass joins the row neatly laid out on banana leaves.

I am not brave enough to try one. Besides, for the moment they are raw and other gastronomic curiosities battle for my attention. My nose is caught mid-air as I walk past a man tending to a huge meaty broth. I can’t help but return and, with a closer look, I see that it is pork. Snout, ears, trotters and all. Salivating at the sweet smell of ginger and spice, my mouth betrays my eyes as I order a portion. I stand on the street and wait.

His wife insists we go inside and leads us to the front room of their home, which is open to the street during the daytime. We sit obediently at the rickety wooden table, while she prepares some rice on the counter behind us.

Our lunch arrives at the table: pork in a ginger soup with rice. The aroma of the pork is so enticing that even the dark chunks of offal I spy (heart and lung, I am told) do not deter me from diving straight in. Of course, the meat melts in my mouth as it only could after hours of gentle cooking, and the flavour is one that this part of the world has mastered so finely - a sweet fruitiness balanced with a savoury tangy kick, all set off by spices that my taste buds have met for the first time.

Two glasses of cendol, a sweet drink made of coconut milk, rice-flour jelly pearls and palm sugar, appear on the table. Served with shavings of ice, it is delicious and refreshing; the worm-like jelly pearls play around in my mouth and, before the first glass is finished, I order another. We sit, becoming slowly revitalised, while our hostess makes us feel welcome and content in her street-side living room.