The most common meal ingredients are rice, stir-fried vegetables, dried salted fish, tahu (tofu), tempeh (a bar of fermented soybeans), krupuk (fish or shrimp crackers), and sambel (chili sauce). Favorite dishes include gado-gado (a salad of partially boiled vegetables eaten with a peanut sauce), sayur lodeh (a vegetable and coconut milk stew), pergedel (fat potato fritters), and soto (soup with chicken, noodles, and other ingredients). Dishes of Chinese origin are very popular, such as bakso (meatball soup), bakmi (fried noodles), and cap cay (stir-fried meat and vegetables). Common desserts are gethuk (a steamed cassava dish colored pink, green, or white) and various sticky-rice preparations (jenang dodol, klepon, and wajik).
Javanese often buy prepared food from peddlers making the rounds of neighborhoods. They enjoy lesehan, late-night dining on mats provided by sidewalk food vendors. For special occasions, the tumpeng slematan, a cone-shaped mound of steamed rice, is served ceremoniously. The guest of honor holds a knife in his right hand and a spoon in his left. First, he cuts off the top of the cone, usually featuring a hard-boiled egg and some chilies in a type of garnish, and places it on a serving plate. Then he cuts a horizontal slice from the top of the rice cone and serves it to the most-respected (usually the oldest) guest.
Gado gado
Ingredients: Lettuces, A small bunch of long beans, Young cabbage, 1 cucumber, Tofu, 100 gr soyabean cake, 2 eggs, 5 pieces of red chili pepper, 5 pieces of small chili pepper (jalapeno or scotch bonnet), 3 pieces of shallots, 100 gr. peanuts, lemon, brown sugar, and salt.Direction:
- Fry an egg and soyabean cake
- Cut into small pieces
- Boil one egg and slice it
- Boil young cabbage, long beans, and slice them
- Peanut sauce:
- Fry peanuts
- Slice shallots, and brown with chili peppers
- Mix and grind all these with brown sugar, lemon, salt and pepper, and boil with a little bit of water. (Use this sauce with satay as well)
Rujak
Rujak, not to be confused with RuPaul, is eaten as a snack in the late afternoon. Kedondong, an Indonesian fruit, is not available in America, so i have made a substitute.
- 1-14 oz. can pineapple chunks, packed in natural juice - drained - save the juice
- 1 Tb. tamarind pulp soaked in 1/2 c. the pineapple juice - OR - use 3/4 tsp. tamarind concentrate.
Soak tamarind pulp in juice for about 15 minutes. Squeeze to extract flavor. Strain and discard tamarind seeds and fibers. If using concentrate, dissolve well in juice
- 3/4 tsp trasi (firm shrimp paste) - roasted
to roast, wrap piece of trasi in aluminum foil, place in skillet, heat on high fire for a couple minutes, just until you can smell the trasi. - 1 tsp. petis (a soft gooey shrimp paste)
You may want to use both types of shrimp paste or only one, depending on availability
- 6 Tb. brown or palm sugar
- 1/2 tsp sambal ulek - or Vietnamese chili paste
- 1/2 tsp. salt or to taste (since trasi and sambal are salted, you may not want any)
- 1/2 c. roasted peanuts, chopped finely - or substitute 1/3 cup natural crunchy peanut butter
Mix tamarind, trasi and/or petis, sugar, & chili paste. Add to finely chopped peanuts
- 1 cucumber, peeled and sliced in matchsticks
- 1 small jicama, cut in "matchsticks" (called benkoang in Indonesia)
- 2 tart apples (Granny Smith, for example), cut in matchsticks - (in Indonesia, they'd use kedondong)
- 1 mango or 2 firm peaches, if mango unavailable - cut in dice