One of the pleasures of a short break in Amsterdam is the famous Rijsttafel, or Ricetable. Curiously, it doesn’t feature to any great extent in restaurants in Indonesia itself because it’s irrevocably linked with the Colonial Dutch period. Back in Amsterdam, however, it’s a mainstay on the menus of the city’s Indonesian restaurants.

When the Indonesian city of Djakarta was Batavia, and the Dutch ruled the East Indies from 1602 to 1949, native cooks would delight their colonial masters’ taste buds with feasts that could take a whole day to prepare, with over twenty Sajours, Satays and Sambals. Some feasts could even run to a hundred dishes.

The Dutch plantation owners enjoyed sampling a wide range of local recipes. This created the idea of many small dishes rather than the more traditional way meals were eaten in local homes. There a meal would be soup, then a salad and a main course, possibly rice and dried fish, accompanied by a relish, or sambal.

A Rijsttafel, in contrast, involves being surrounded by many small plates with a bowl of rice as the centrepiece. You place some hot rice in a bowl, and then select from the many side dishes, plus a little relish, which you place on the edge of the plate. You don’t mix the side dish with the rice as some of the flavour will be lost.

The side dishes include the now well-known sateh, or grilled meat on skewers with a peanut sauce; gado-gado, vegetables with peanut sauce; babi ketjap, meat in a soy sauce; perkedel, or meatballs with potato; kroepeck, or shrimp toast; and much more. Some dishes will be fiery hot, others mild and sweet. A word of warning - the Rijsttafel isn’t a recommended night out for nut allergy sufferers! Sambal Kacang is peanut sauce, and it turns up everywhere with meat and vegetables.

The spicing behind Indonesian food is curious in that the fame of the East Indies was built on cloves, mace and nutmeg. Yet these spices are rarely used. Instead, it’s pepper, coriander and garlic that rule the taste buds. Other flavours you’ll encounter are cardamom, chilli, ginger, galangal, lemon grass, soy, star anise, tamarind, turmeric and those favourite fish flavourings - shrimp paste and dried anchovies.

If you find pork in an Indonesian restaurant, chances are the owners come from Bali, the only non-Muslim part of the country. Nasi kuning, the yellow rice dish, is also a Balinese speciality. Normally beef, lamb, duck, chicken, fish - Indonesia is made of 6,000 islands and has a longer coastline than any other country on earth - will appear, as do a wide range of vegetables and coconut. Soy-based tofu and tampeh are popular too, the latter made of soybeans in the form of a cake and known as ‘Javanese meat’ - hence its popularity with vegetarians.

So, when on a city break in Amsterdam, set at least one night aside for a Rijsttafel. It’s a delightful meal to linger over and discover flavours that could well be new. Look out for the fiery dishes - although kinder restaurateurs may well flag them up. In all, it’s a relaxing evening when you discover those Dutch colonial planters of yesteryear knew a good thing when they invented the Rijsttafel, one of the great pleasures of an Amsterdam city break.

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Bob Cartwright writes for Amsterdam Restaurants