Category Archives: food

Jakarta Street Food: Dawet Hitam, Wedang Ronde and Kupat Tahu

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This clip showcases three delicious dishes, I’ll discuss them in order of appearance.

Dawet Hitam

The basic ingredient is glutinous rice flour.  The black colouring is merang, which is made from burnt rice stalks.  A green variation of this dish is coloured using pandan or suji leaves.  As you can see in the clip, a great deal of syrup is added along with evaporated milk and ice.  All served up just as the call to prayers starts.

Wedang Ronde

This is normally eaten to protect against the cold (yes, it does get cold in Indonesia sometimes).  There are big differences in the way this dish is made depending on the region.  The one shown is, of course, Jakarta style.  It’s made with water, ginger and cane sugar, so it’s quite a clear broth.  To this they add condensed milk, maizena (corn starch), kolang-kaleng (palm fruit), green bean and sweet bread.  Further East in Java, the water is made from sugar and ginger, so it’s brown.  In this variety, the broth contains sticky rice flour balls containing peanut and sugar, and smaller balls that are just made of flour.  In both types you have some nuts floating around too.  Either way, it’s the perfect dish for a rainy night.

Kupat Tahu

This is a specialty of Magelang and surrounding areas. As you can see, it contains fried tofu.  The white stuff she’s cutting up from the banana leaf packet is a rice ball.  It’s served in a clear, sweet garlic and chili flavoured soup with bean sprouts.  The variation from Cirebon uses peanut sauce and is called ketoprak.  A further variation from further West again is made with santan sauce and uses labu (pumpkin) as the vegetable.  This one is known as ketupat sayur.

So, even after you’ve tasted all the different foods available in Indonesia, you will have to go back to try the regional variation of each one.  It’s a delicious lifetime occupation for those up for the challenge.

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Jakarta Street Food: Deep Fried Pasta and Sausage Omelette on a Stick

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Amri has gone back to school again for this clip. The vendor has two snacks, neither of which I have seen before. He’s obviously a creative guy.
The first is some kind of deep fried pastry. The vendor uses a pasta machine to make the pastry strips. It looks like he’s making fetuccini until he drops it in the oil. Anyhow, these pasta machines are quite common, they use them to make the pastry for pisang molen (banana wrapped in pastry). They don’t seem to use them for making pasta or noodles, though.
The second one is cheaply made sausages (sosis) which have been cut into quarters lengthways and skewered. The white ones are chicken, the red is beef, the one made of quartered balls is bakso (meat balls) and there is a yellow one which may be chicken nugget. All are deep fried and then wrapped in a thin omelette.

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Jakarta Street Food: Roti Goreng (fried bread)

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Basically it’s a chocolate sandwich in batter, deep fried. 

A very simple and popular snack. 

What’s not to like about it?

Other than consideration for your arteries?

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Jakarta Street Food: Candy Sculptures

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Watch this video to see how to turn a lump of melted sugar into a butterfly or a horsie. 

Some people are put off by the fact that he uses his hands and everything’s done a foot off the dusty ground.  Indonesians are generally very clean when handling food and they often use thir hands, even with communal food.  But they always wash their hands first and their fingers never touch their mouths.  Regarding the second point, children themselves are only a couple of feet off the ground and go through stages where they have no qualms about eating mud pies and earth worms.

This is the second time I’ve posted a street food clip taken in a school yard.  You can see the typical red and white uniform of the child standing next to the vendor.

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Jakarta Street Food: Mie Goreng

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Fried noodles are almost as popular as the national dish, nasi goreng.  You can see why – its cheap, delicious and easy to make.

You can see from the clip how easy it is to make it.  And the main ingredient is dried noodles – cheap as chips?  Cheaper.  If you were having friends over to watch a game on tv, you could save pizza money and impress them no end by knocking out a few dishes like this from your stove top.

Of course, if you’re in Indonesia it’s even cheaper.  And you don’t have to clean your wok afterwards.

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Jakarta Street Food – Bubur Sumsum and Potato Crisps

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In Jakarta, the street vendors are entreprenuerial.  In this case, if you don’t like sweet – she can offer salty.  Although Bubur Sumsum is a bit salty too.

Lucky for us, she names all the ingredients.  First is ketan hitam – black sticky rice.  Next is the sumsum – literally it means ‘bone marrow’ but they only call it that because of its appearance.  In fact, it’s rice flour boiled in coconut milk to make this sort of pudding which forms the basis of this dish.  Next is cendhil – white sticky rice.  It looks a bit like beans, but they roll the rice into that shape.  Then she floods the bowl with santan – coconut milk.  Finally she tops it with a good spoonful of palm sugar syrup.  So yes, although the sumsum is a bit salty, overall the dish is very sweet.

This dish is a popular breakfast, but it can be eaten as a refreshing snack during the day.  Although it won’t be eaten during the day for a little while, because it’s Ramadan now.

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Jakarta Street Food: School Meal

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Outside every school there are always a few vendors serving hungry kids.  The one in this clip is selling omelettes made from watered-down egg, topped with cheap tomato sauce and sprinkled with beef flavouring.  Not the most nutritious meal, but the kids like it.

Considering the price, it’s probably outside a government school.  Private schools normally attract hamburger or bakso vendors and prices are more like 5,000rp.  Even so, the burgers are dreadful.

Some schools have their own canteens, but the food they serve isn’t much better, it’s usually white rice with something deep fried.  Well, that was my experience about 8 years ago.  I guess the object of the canteen was to provide an alternative to going out onto the street for a snack, since some parents are concerned about their child being kidnapped (a crime which hasn’t yet become popular among Indonesia’s underworld).

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Jakarta Street Food: Es Cincau (“Grass Jelly”)

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This is a refreshing snack for a hot day.  You can see the ice is already almost melted by the time the syrup has been poured on.

I’ve never tried what they call “grass jelly” at a Chinese restaurant, only at traditional-style Indonesian ones.  However the idea for this dessert is said to have come from China and spread throughout SE Asia all the way to Indonesia.  The fact they call it ‘grass jelly’ makes me wonder whether it’s really the same thing.  Because in Indonesia they use tree leaves to make it.

Here is the tree where the leaves come from:

cincau tree

And here are the leaves being processed to make the jelly:

Making cincau

I can’t think of any Western food that is made with tree leaves, except maybe those Greek snacks that are rolled in grape leaves – and grape vines don’t qualify as trees.  But in Indonesia there are quite a few.

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Jakarta Street Food: Kue Basah (‘wet’ cakes)

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Plenty of traditional sweeties here. 

First we have the green dadar guling, which is a pancake wrapped into rolls containing young coconut and gula merah.  Traditionally, the green colouring comes from suji leaves, but in this case it’s so cheap they must use a commercial food colouring.  Even so, it’s still delicious.

The next is the little balls.  They’re made from rice flour rolled in shredded coconut and they contain liquid gula merah so when you pop one in your mouth and bite, the sweet liquid floods your mouth.  It’s quite a nice sensation.

Third and last is kue talam.  It’s wrapped in plastic because it’s so sticky.  The brown part is sweet and made from sticky rice flour and gula merah, the white part is savory a nd made from flour and coconut milk, and salt I guess.

Those are quite common sweets which you’ll encounter throughout Java.  Of course, there’s a huge range of sweeties for you to discover.  Here’s just a small sample of what you can find at the Senin markets:

cakes at Pasar Senin

If you’re wanting to kick on in the early hours after clubbing all night in Jakarta, why not head down to Pasar Senin for some sweet munchies?

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Jakarta Street Food: Pecel

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This lady has a few tricks in her little basket.  First we see a delicious salad made from daun singkong (cassava leaves) , papaya leaves, kangkung (an aquatic vegetable), bean and bean sprouts all topped with fried tofu and peanut sauce.  She seems to be mixing the peanut sauce as she needs it.  You can have fried noodles.  She also has unusual noodle crackers.

The real surprise from this clip comes at the end when you can see how she carries her basket wrapped in a sarong.  Such an elegant solution – who needs a backpack when you have a sarong?

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