Tourism is one of most eye-catching and fascinating attraction for almost every human being. Exploring different regions along with their cultures, languages, traditions and life styles is a journey of life time. In this journey of exploration, food plays key role to enhance the pleasure of exploration. Sometimes, food can be used as the identity of particular destination. At times, food represent long history, festivity and culture of any particular region. Occasionally, cuisine energizes you to continue the journey of exploration one extra mile.
Street food does not only give you the opportunity to interact with the locals but at the same time it plays major role in providing boost to the economy of any country. Sometimes, cuisine urges you to revisit the place just to enjoy the exclusive meal at a particular atmosphere. Let’s have a look at irresistible food culture in Indonesia directly from the pen of the author Putri Marcel from Indonesia.
ACCORDING TO THE AUTHOR PUTRI MARCELIANA ARYANTO FROM INDONESIA:
When we’re visiting any countries or hearing them from an acquaintance, first thing go through our head mostly be characteristic of the countries. One of the topics sure is the foods. Like what foods are famous there? Where can we try the foods out in or out of the countries?
Same here with Asian foods that famous as rich in spices. Indonesia, as one of Asian country has some this kind of “Irresistible foods” too. If you go around and ask what is Indonesian most famous food, the one and only answer you will get is rendang.
Here you go, the most delicious food in the world in 2017 stated by CNN Travel! Rendang comes as the winner not without reasons. Just look at the picture above. Can you imagine how is the taste of that pile of well-done juicy meat covered up completely by dark spices? Do you imagine it as sweet taste? Or the spices one? Well it has that all! Rich of taste for some pieces of meat.
Now you have an abstract of the taste of the Indonesia’s number 1 food, it’s for you to know more. Especially the kitchen secret! As mentioned before, the meat is cooked well-done. But actually the meat is not roasted at all, otherwise meat that has been cut to size of an ID card — but the weight is a lot different, is boiled with lots of herbs. When the meat is half-cooked, the chef need to add coconut milk in. Then stir it slowly time by time to avoid to break the coconut milk or you won’t get best taste of rendang. How long is rendang cooked? Right, this is another interesting side of cooking rendang. To cook rendang perfectly, you will need hours to make sure the meat is not hard or not cooked well. And add water continuously so the meat won’t get burn.
Rendang is actually a traditional food from West Sumatera, Indonesia. It’s around northern part of Indonesia. But it’s okay if you’re not in there because you can find restaurant that having rendang in their menu in almost every corner of Indonesia! If you’re in or going to Indonesia and planning on giving a taste of rendang, you can look for any restaurants with “Padang” or “Minang” words in its name. They definitely have rendang for you. Indonesians usually make their own homemade rendang when Eid Al-Fitr as special food. And of course with the rice as well. Like Asians say, it’s not meals if there no rice on the plate!
We’re done with the main course! So what will we do next? Yeah, the dessert of course! Come closer and take a look to these cute green sweet balls!
Those mini balls will fill your mouth with sweetness after eating the heavy main course. Or you can eat this up as snack. The cutie we got here is called klepon. You must know mochi from Japan that has chewy texture and a bit sticky. Klepon has the same characteristic as mochi. It’s made from glutinous rice flour.
Different from mochi, klepon filling is from grated brown sugar meanwhile mochi filling is anko or red-bean paste. The cooking procedures between those two are different too. Mochi is steamed and klepon is boiled. The color of klepon come from fragrant screw pine (Pandanus amaryllifolius) so it’s safe and smell so good.
Grated coconut is added on all over the klepon’s soft and green skin to make it tastier. You can find this foods in the traditional market as street foods. And the price that so cheap make it more worth it.
Now time to drink something to make your throat feels easy. Here is something green and fresh!
It’s cendol time! If you know boba ice, it’s just the same as this cendol ice. The cendol is made from rice flour and colored. The shape of cendol is different from boba. It’s like a fat spaghetti but the texture must be the same as boba as well. Add some spoon of cendol, ice, liquid brown sugar, and coconut milk. Bet you have already known how it taste. That’s right! Sweet!
For those who wants just-water based drink but still needs the Indonesia taste, here is the most common drink, ice tea.
As a tropical country, Indonesia has so many tea plantations. And Indonesia has many different kind of tea as well. That’s why the taste of this golden water called ice tea has the authentic taste of Indonesia with its freshness!
Very good article, hopefully useful. Thank you