Gudeg

Gudeg is a traditional food from Yogyakarta and Central Java, Indonesia. It is made from young Nangka (jack fruit, called gori) boiled for several hours with palm sugar, and coconut milk. Additional spices include garlic, shallot, candlenut, coriander seed, galangal, bay leaves, and teak leaves  – the latter giving a reddish brown color to the dish. Gudeg is served with white rice, chicken, hard-boiled egg, tofu and tempe, and a stew made of crisp beef skins (sambel goreng krecek).  Gudeg is traditionally associated with Yogyakarta, and Yogyakarta is sometimes nicknamed “Kota Gudeg” (city of gudeg). The center of Yogyakarta gudeg restaurants is in the Wijilan area to the east side of the Yogyakarta Kraton (Sultan’s palace).

To be honest I never taste the real gudeg from Yogjakarta, even though I have been there couple of times for holiday. The reason is just one, being born and grow up  in Surabaya where most of the food is spicy, I don’t like sweet food.  I imagined gudeg must be really sweet and eating it might be like eating chocolate with rice 😀 But then when I moved to Slovenia, I start exploring and want to try different kind of food from different regions in Indonesia. Gudeg finally caught my attention. Last year when I was in Yogjakarta, I planned to taste real gudeg, but then we ( me, my husband and my 13 months old baby) got stomach problem and the doctor said that I need to avoid food with coconut milk for a while 🙁 Yup, it ruined all my plan for delicious culinary trip. I remember when my grandmother is alive, she used to cook most of the food sweet because she came from nearby area. That is why my mother sometimes also cooks in the same way and same taste. I asked my mother if she knew how to make Gudeg because as far as I remember she never cooked it for us 🙂 In short she gave me the recipe. And when I have all the ingredients, except teak leaves because there is no teak tree here,  I dare myself to give it try and cook it. I use the combination of black tea and brown soya to create reddish brown color. It’s not so complicated as I thought. They said best way  is using clay pot and cook for hours to make it even tastier. And in the end, I like it so much! It was definately worth of cooking :-

Category: Side dish/Vegetables

Difficulty: Medium

Cooking time:  90 minutes

INGREDIENTS

– 1 canned of young jackfruit

– 5 boiled eggs, peeled

– 50 g palm sugar

– 2 or 3 black tea

– 100 g brown soya (kacang tolo/kedelai merah)

– 5 Salaam (Indian Bay Leaves) leafs (or substitutes with bay leaves)

– 2 cm fresh galangal

– 300 ml thick coconut milk or 250 ml coconut water

– 300 ml water

Spice Paste:

– 6 shallots

– 4 cloves of garlic

– 1 table spoon of coriander, pan-broil

– 3 candle nuts

– 1 1/2 teaspoons salt to taste

DIRECTIONS

1. Grind or blend the spice paste.

2. Boil the brown soya until it’s tender. Set aside

3. Cook young jackfruit into 300 ml water, together with tea until the water turn brown

4. Take out the tea from the broth. Then add the spice paste,  eggs, palm sugar, salaam leaves and galangal. Cook until the aroma come out  fragrant.

5. Add the coconut milk, brown soya and salt. Cooked until the sauce is absorbed.

6. Serve gudeg with steamed rice, opor ayam,  tahu bacem, tempe bacem, sambal goreng krecek and sambal.

Note : You can also add shredded chicken together while cooking gudeg.