Culinary trip: Yogya

I planned to write only one post on Yogyakarta, but I fell in love with the food here, so I must have a separate post on it (or more).

Some people find it hard to leave the safe zone of nasi goreng / mie goreng (fried rice – fried noodles), but the Indonesian cuisine is just amazing. Even if as a European you say “no chili” more, than you say “thank you”.

I enjoy local food lot. But it was only in Yogya, when I felt it is time to have a bit deeper understanding of the cuisine. I went for an organised culinary trip, and due to a lucky twist in the story, it turned into a private tour, that I enjoyed a lot. It was organised by Viavia, a company that believes in responsible travel. I cruised the city on the back of a scooter, behind Vera (I’m not sure how to spell her name), who was born in Borneo, but lives in the city for a while now. We went to places, where you hardly can see tourists. I could have a look around the kitchen of the restaurants, I visited a cookie factory and tasted so many things, that I arrived back to my hostel in a fatal food coma.

Gado-gado and latek

Many tourists meet gado-gado in Indonesia, but they don’t dare to try it, as it is basically a salad. They prepare it differently in every region, but still, it is a national dish. Vegetables, cooked potato, boiled egg and tofu, with a pre-cooked, heavy peanut sauce on top. The best. This is what I thought until I tried its local variant, latek, that is unbeatable in this category.

Steamed vegetables: cabbage, green bean, spinach, bean sprout, rice cookie, boiled egg. But first the sauce is prepared freshly by smashing roasted peanuts, some salt, palm sugar, garlic,lime leaf, galanga (similar to ginger, but less intense), tamarind water and terasi (local shrimp pasta) in a lava stone bowl, mix it well until it is smooth, than add the vegetables and mix it with the sauce.

Yummy. And here I made the mistake of eating almost half a portion. My mind denied to acknowledge the fact, that there are still 4 more places to visit and taste food. It was just too good.

Bakpia

This is a local cookie, that you can see in the bazaar street, Malioboro as well. But the difference between the fresh one and the one on the street is just hard not to notice. I visited the 25 Bakpia Pathok factory on a very busy weekend. The origins of this pastry are in China, the current owner of the family is Chinese, and the family tree is on the wall. The original pastry had pork filling, but this was modified in the muslim Indonesia, and the Indonesian original filling was the sweet mung bean pasta, and later more variants – chocolate, pineapple, cheese, black bean – were born. There are even some special ones available now, filled with durian, sweet yam root, or green tea, but those are produced in a separate factory. The best bakpia factories are in the Pathok district, right behind Malioboro street, and their name contains the number 5, as the Chinese lucky number. The locals consider bakpia as the best gift they can bring to friends and family from Yogya.

The original and the variants are handled separately. First they smash the beans and wash it with clean water, and separate the skin from the beans.

Then in woodfire ovens the beans are steamed/cooked, grinded and put in huge mixers. 18 kilo beans are mixed with 13 kg cane sugar, 300 g salt and 9 liter palm oil. It stays in the mixer in a while to get a nice texture. Later they keep it in jars to cool it. The pastry skin is made of wheat flour, salt, water and margarine. (If I get it right, the skin of the original and the variants is a bit different, the one covering the original has a secret recipe. The original is softer, while the variants are a bit more crunchy.) Once the dough is ready, it is cut into small pieces and sent to the workers sitting next to each other wearing masks, who put the filling in the dough, and form nice little balls. The balls are put in huge baking pans, and the pastry is baked in charcoal ovens, flipping the balls one by one with by hand, to have a nice golden brown color all over. This is a real challenge during the Ramadan, as around the oven it is really hot and the ones working in the heat cannot even drink anything. In this period of the year the shift is shorter, starts at 7 am and finishes at 3 pm.

The variants are made in a similar way, except they mix the bean pasta with other flavors, make the little balls in a separate room and bake them in a gas oven. Packaging is the point of quality control. Only the balls with perfect shape make it to the box, the rest goes to the tasters, who check the quality of the taste. If after this there are still some left, the workers take it home after their shift.

In the factory they pay attention not to produce too much waste. For example the skin of the beans goes to huge containers and is carried to farms to feed the animals. In the shop of the factory you can buy all the pastry but also some specialities prepared in the closeby villages, such as beef lung crackers, beef intestine cracker, greaves, sun dried banana, dried fish…

Snack corner

They love sweet taste in Yogyakarta. Some say it is because of the colonial heritage, when “sugar plantations” were established in this part of Java. If they are lazy to cook, or have guests, or just need something little for a meeting in the office, they pop by a snack corner and buy something to eat. There are many different variants of sticky rice, colored sponge cake, pastry rolls, pancakes, pancake filled with vegetables and then deep fried, and so on. Most of these places close in the early afternoon, but some are open till 6 pm even. The little goods are made in little local villages, brought to the snack corners very early in the morning, and in the evening they come to collect the mobey and bring back home the remaining pieces.

Gudeg

Gudeg is also a typical Yogya food, but nowadays you can find it elsewhere too. The key of this dish is the young green jackfruit. Jackfruit is used as a vegetable while it is green, and as a fruit when already ripe. Mixed with some condiments (lime leaf and cloves for sure) and with a lot of palm sugar and coconut milk it is cooked for at least 6 hours, in huge pots, on charcoal. Boiled duck egg accompanies the gudeg on the plate. The egg is boiled first for 40 minutes, then it is put into the gudeg without the shell, and cooked together with the gudeg for at least 6 hours. This is how the egg reaches its brown color. There is sweet tofu, tempeh (fermented soy, an Indonesian invention), rice and really spicy krecek (cooked beef skin cracker) and optionally chicken and chicken feet on the plate. Krecek is not my favourite, it is just like a sponge with a lot of chili.

Originally gudeg was prepared for the sultan only, it was his favourite. It had no special name, until he offered this dish to the Dutch, colonizing the country, and they said something in Dutch about how good it is, and this is what the sultan heard as ‘gudeg’. And later the name was just kept. At least this is the story I was told. Still, the best gudeg is served in one street, in Wijilan, that is in the neighbourhood of the Sultan’s Palace.

Ronde

My culinary trip ended with a dessert on a square behind the palace, where young locals gather to chat and hangout. As they say, here is no wifi, so they spend quality time together. So, after the many sweet dishes I tried a local dessert, already on the edge of feeling sick.

Sweet ginger tea (tastes more like a syrup for me), with wheat flour balls stuffed with peanut/peanut sauce. And as an extra, some bread is also added, to have something to pick for a longer time. You can take little stuffed crepes, if you need a bit more sweet.

I loved the drive back to my hostel in the cool air. Then I was laying on the couch as a whale on the shore, having difficulties to breath. And I felt a bit in unease about the fact, that I booked a cooking class for the next day. I’m not sure I will be able to eat anything at all.