Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Makanan Khas Yogya dan Lain-Lain

     As if you haven't read enough about food in this blog- there's more talk of Indonesian cuisine coming your way.

Apologies in advance.

     But I realize that I haven't yet told you about Gudeg: makananya khas Yogya, my city's specialty dish. Here in Indonesia every city has at least one dish (usually a few) that are unique to that city. In Yogya, it's gudeg and bakpia. In Bali there's batter fried peanuts, dodol, and brem Bali. The lapis legit cake that I posted about a long time ago is khas Jawa Timur, only made in East Java, and if you remember nasi pecel, the best is from Madiun, near the the northern coast of the island.

     So if you ever come to Yogyakarta, you have to try gudeg, because anywhere else it won't taste as good. Then again, I think I'm the only Yogya inbound that likes gudeg so I perhaps I should say it won't taste as bad in Yogya? Gudeg has several components that are always served together, but the main event is young jackfruit (called gori) that is boiled in gula Jawa for several hours until it becomes dark red-brown and soft. It's served with krecek, which is like a chip made of animal fat then fried in a spicy sauce. Generally this is accompanied by a duck egg boiled in kecap manis, and you can add chicken as well. The egg and the gudeg are sweet, which can be a nice break from all the spicy food in Indonesia. Do I need to say it's served with rice?

The krecek is the big orange piece on top, in front is tempe slices and chillies fried with the krecek. The gudeg is underneath the krecek- you can only see a small bit next to the egg (looks like a piece of beef). I'll admit it took me a few tries to like gudeg- and I'm glad I got used to the flavors because I get invited to eat it a lot, and a common question upon meeting someone here is "Pernah makan gudeg? Suka?" Have you tried gudeg? Do you like it? (And the answer they're looking for is yes.)
     My host mother swears that the best in Yogya is gudeg Yu Djum. I went to the main kitchen off of Jalan Kaliurang (there are three Yu Djum restaurants in the city) and got to meet the Yu Djum: an old, thin Javanese woman wearing the traditional kebaya and jarik. She didn't say much; she was busy sitting on the floor ripping banana leaves for the order-out baskets. Yu Djum was the original gudeg cook, but now her grandaughters run the business, which has become famous throughout Yogya because they only use wood-burning kompors to cook.

Back in the kitchen at Gudeg Yu Djum
Just the other day my host family and I were out eating soto for breakfast, and Yu Djum shows up with two of her granddaughters. So I asked for a picture. One of the granddaughters said she is 80 years old. Yu, by the way, is a Javanese word used to address an older sister. 
  During my year here I've eaten sate ayam, kambing, babi, and keong (chicken, goat, pork (a hard one to find- we had to go to a dark alley off of Malioboro), and snail) and now I can add one more- sate kelinci. Rabbit. It tastes like you would imagine bunny to taste: tender and mild. The sauce is like a mixture of sate kambing and sate ayam sauce; it has both peanuts, chillies, and sweet kecap manis. Rather delicious. The best part was that it was all fairly good cuts of meat. Usually if you buy sate ayam off a cart vendor the first and last pieces on the kebab are meat, the middle ones are skin or fat.

   And I am officially in a fruit frazzle. I only have a little over a week left and I will be leaving all the tropical fruits I have grown to adore. I'm quite certain I will never enjoy a banana in the States ever again. There are about twenty different types of bananas here and even the ones meant for bird food are sweeter than American bananas. The best kind is pisang raja, which can only be found in a produce market (not in grocery stores or fruit stands, generally); it's somewhat short and a bright yellow-orange color on the inside. And So Sweet. My second host family had two pisang raja trees on the side of their house and when the bunches ripened I think I averaged about three a day. What I would love more than anything is to bring back some pisang raja for my Dad's banana bread, but I don't think my bag would make it through customs. I've heard from an Indonesian living near L.A. that she has found pisang raja in an international market there, so maybe there's still hope.


     Though I do enjoy Indonesian bananas, my new favorite fruit is sawo, or sapodilla in English. Have you ever heard of a sapodilla before? I hadn't, before I looked it up on Google a while ago. They have a very odd flavor- my first thought was apricot jam. Very sweet, and a hint almost like caramel. Yum. I bought jus sawo the other day and shared a sip with Pauline, the inbound from Belgium. She paused, gave me a perplexed look and said "How can you drink that? It's not bad, it's just.... weird". I guess it's a weird delicious.


    A fruit that just came into season here is kesemek. It is like a cross between an apple and a mango: crunchy but orange and tropical flavored. What I like is there are no seeds on the inside, so you have no worries while eating :)

    What takes the cake as the oddest fruit I've eaten so far is nutmeg fruit. Baru dicoba tadi malam, I just tried it last night, in dried form, actually. In Indonesian dried fruit is called manisan, and when I saw manisan pala I was confused- is that really nutmeg fruit? (This I learned from looking at recipes: pala halus is ground nutmeg). It looked like clementine-sized slices of dried mango. The flavor was surprisingly similar to the actual nut, and spicy like ginger.

   Last piece of talk about food, I promise- but this one has special significance for my Norwegian heritage. I've been collecting some traditional Indonesian recipes, and there are several common spices/herbs in Indonesian cooking that I had never heard of, and no idea what they looked like. (How am I supposed to cook these if I don't know what the ingredients are?) One of these ingredients was keluak. With a little more research I found it's referred to as the Indonesian Black Nut (a fitting name since in the grocery store it turned out to be a big black nut). Now the bark, leaves, fruit, and seeds of a keluak tree are all poisonous; if crushed or bruised they excrete a chemical like cyanide. It is said that some Indonesian tribes crush the bark and then throw it into rivers/ponds to stun fish and make them easy to catch. The keluak nut has also been known to be placed inside fresh caught fish to preserve them. It's like an Indonesian lutefisk :)

     For me, I plan to use the keluak to make rawon and brongkos, saucy dishes that look like mud but taste much better. Luckily, all keluak products sold in stores have already gone through processes of boiling, drying, etc, to make them edible, so I won't have to worry about that part. I guess I really should try Norwegian lutefisk once I get back to Minnesota, too- since I've made it a habit to eat out of the ordinary dishes (according to me) in Indonesia, I should probably start on the local oddities once I get back home.

    I can't believe I've already come to this point, but I only have around a week left here in Yogya so I'm not sure if I'll be able to fire off another post before I get on my plane home. Hopefully I'll find some time to round out my blog with a post about something other than food... Tapi belum tentu, it's not for sure, though, because I'm already in the process of cramming everything I haven't seen/done into my last days here, not to mention packing and saying goodbye. And rumors are there's a restaurant that serves cobra in Yogya, so you can bet I'll be roaming the city looking for that one last mealtime thrill.

Kita segera ketemu kembali! We will soon meet again!










2 comments:


  1. 2
    E' DAVVERO DA ARRESTARE SUBITO ( PRIMA CHE FACCIA AMMAZZARE ANCORA), IL TERRORISTA NAZISTA ED ASSASSINO, PAOLO BARRAI, NATO A MILANO IL 28.6.1965. NONCHE' MEGA RICICLA SOLDI MAFIOSI E POLITI-C-RIMINALI, OSSIA FRUTTO DI MEGA RUBERIE E MEGA MAZZETTE, RICEVUTE DA LEGA LADRONA E STRAGISTA SPAPPOLA MAGISTRATI, NONCHE', TANTO QUANTO, NAZIFASCISTA DITTATORE E PEDOFILO SILVIO BERLUSCONI! DICEVO, E' DAVVERO DA ARRESTARE UNA QUARTA VOLTA, E SUBITO, IL TERRORISTA NAZISTA ED ASSASSINO, PAOLO BARRAI ( ASSICURANDOSI CHE QUESTA VOLTA RIMANGA IN CARCERE PER SEMPRE O PER LO MENO PER DECENNI E DECENNI). NON PER NIENTE, GIA' STATO IN GALERA 3 VOLTE. OPINIONI TUTTE TERRIFICANTI SU DI LUI! MEGA TRUFFATORE E MEGA RICICLA CASH LERCIO CHE PIU' LERCIO NON SI POTREBBE, VIA CRIMINALISSIMA BLOCKCHAIN INVEST, OLTRE CHE VIA CRIMINALISSIMA WORLD MAN OPPORTUNITIES LUGANO, CRIMINALISSIMA WMO SA PANAMA E CRIMINALISSIMA BSI ITALIA SRL DI VIA SOCRATE 26 MILANO! NOTO PEDOFIL-O-MOSESSUALE SODOMIZZA BAMBINI PAOLO BARRAI! CACCIATO DA CITIBANK A SBERLE, PER MEGA FRODI CHE LI FACEVA ( IL FUNZIONARIO SUPER DELINQUENTE DI CITIBANK MILANO DELLA FINE DI QUESTO ARTICOLO E' LUI http://ricerca.repubblica.it/repubblica/archivio/repubblica/2001/02/19/maxi-evasione-da-400-miliardi-terenzio-sotto-torchio.html )! SBAGLIA SEMPRE IN BORSA! AZZERA I RISPARMI DI CENTINAIA DI PERSONE! FALSO&LADRO&TRUFFATORE! DIFFAMA SUL WEB A FINI NAZIRAZZISTI! FONDATORE DEI NUOVI MEG-A-SSASSINI MOVIMENTI TERRORISTI DI ESTREMA DESTRA: "NEO NAR"! FONDATORE DEL, PROSSIMAMENTE, DI FREQUENTE, OMICIDA: KU KLUK KLAN PADANO! CONDANNATO AL CARCERE A MILANO ED IN BRASILE ( 8 ANNI E PURE PER PEDERASTIA OMOSESSUALE, RIPETO, PURE PER PEDERASTIA OMOSESSUALE)! MULTATO DA CONSOB BEN 70.000 €! DESTABILIZZA L'ITALIA PER FILO NAZISTI SERVIZI SEGRETI SVIZZERI ( ITALIA, DICEVAMO, DA 30 ANNI, GIUSTAMENTE, NAZIONE SCHIFATA IN TUTTO IL MONDO, IN QUANTO FASCIOMAFIOSA DITTATURA DI BERLUSCONIA.. NON PER NIENTE, TUTTE I MIGLIORI CERVELLI PRIVATI E TUTTE LE PIU' GRANDI INDUSTRIE, IN ITALIA DA SECOLI, DALLA TIRANNI-A-SSASSINA DI BERLUSCONIA SON SCAPPATE, VEDI FIAT, PIRELLI, LUXOTTICA, MERLONI E MIGLIAIA E DI ALTRE... E CHE SIA CHIARO, PLS, CHE IDDIO BENEDICA I GRANDI PM ED EX PM CHE NON SOPPORTANTO IL CANCRO DEL MONDO INTERO SILVIO BERLUSCONI, COME HENRY WOODCOCK, ILDA BOCASSINI, ANTONIO INGROIA E CHIUNQUE ALTRO DI QUESTA AMMIREVOLISSIMA CATEGORIA)! FA CRIMINI SU CRIMINI E NAZI-ST-ALKING, SU INTERNET, SU ORDINE DEI BASTARDI CRIMINALI SILVIO BERLUSCONI, PAOLO BERLUSCONI ED UBALDO LIVOLSI DI FININVEST ( PER NON DIRE SU ORDINE DEL FIGLIO, PADRE E MARITO DI PUTTANE ENNO DORIS DI MEDIOLANUM). IL BASTARDO, PURE ASSASSINO, PAOLO BARRAI, E' ANCHE, DA SEMPRE, INNEGGIANTE ALLO SPAPPOLAMENTO DI MAGISTRATI SCOMODI "COME BERLUSCONI GRANDEMENTE FECE CON FALCONE E BORSELLINO"! PAROLE SUE, DETTE SPESSISSIMO! FU LUI AD ORGANIZZARE L'OMICIDIO DI DAVID ROSSI DI MONTE PASCHI!
    Avrei tantissimo altro da scrivere sul gia' 3 volte finito in galera, accertato pedofilo omosessuale, ladro, truffatore, sempre falso, nazi-st-alker, mandante di omicidi ( spesso, ma non sempre, mascherati da finti incidenti, malori o "suicidate"... come quando fece ammazzare David Rossi di Monte Paschi), mega ricicla soldi mafiosi e/o politico-criminali (piu' tanto di orrido altro), arrestato gia' 3 volte, Paolo Barrai, nato a Milano il 28.6.1965 e gia' residente a Milano in Via Ippodromo 105! Come presto meglio sottolineeremo, multato pure dalla Consob ben 70.000 euro!

    http://www.consob.it/main/documenti/hide/afflittivi/pec/mercati/2013/d18579.htm

    VI SONO TONNELLATE DI ALTRE COSE DA DIRE SU QUANTO SIA BASTARDAMENTE EFFERATO CRIMINALE E PEDOFILO, PAOLO BARRAI. NE TROVATE UNA NON PICCOLISSIMA PARTE ( CHE PRESTO AMPLIEREMO ALL'INFINITO)... QUI:
    https://es-la.facebook.com/public/Truffati-Da-Paolo-Barrai

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