3 ideas
In Indonesian cookery the meal is built around rice, and every other dish is a lauk, a side dish that accompanies it. Seeing rice as the fixed center shows why sauces are intensely seasoned, why many small dishes share the table at once, and why a meal without rice does not count as a proper meal. The dishes are best understood by their relationship to the rice, not as separate courses.
Nutmeg, mace and cloves grew in the Moluccas and hardly anywhere else. Indonesia's regional food differences therefore record who traded, settled or ruled where, as well as local agriculture.
The rijsttafel, or 'rice table', was a Dutch colonial banquet that brought dozens of dishes from many regions onto one table to show abundance and status. It was not a traditional Indonesian meal, although it used Indonesian food. It shows how a colonial power can repackage a colonized cuisine into a display format that outsiders later take for the authentic original.