“Full Served Meal for You from the Indonesian Taste”

Tourism is one of the most eye-catching and fascinating attractions for almost every human being. Exploring different regions along with their cultures, languages, traditions and lifestyles is a journey of lifetime. In this journey of exploration, food plays a key role to enhance the pleasure of exploration. Sometimes, food can be used as the identity of a particular destination. At times, food represents the 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 a major role in providing a boost to the economy of any country. Sometimes, cuisine urges you to revisit the place just to enjoy the exclusive meal in a particular atmosphere. Let’s have a look at the 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 are visiting any countries or hearing them from an acquaintance, the first thing that goes through our head is mostly the characteristics of the countries. One of the topics is food. Like what foods are famous there? Where can we try the meal out in or out of the countries?

Same here with Asian foods that are famous as rich in spices. Indonesia, as one of the Asian countries, has some of 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 out as the winner without any reasons. Just look at the picture above. Can you imagine how the taste of that pile of well-done juicy meat was covered up completely by dark spices? Do you imagine it has a sweet taste? Or the spicy one? Well it has that all! Rich taste for some pieces of meat.

Now, you have an abstract of the taste of Indonesia’s number 1 food, it’s for you to know more. Especially the kitchen secret! As mentioned before, the meat is cooked well. 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 needs to add coconut milk in. Then stir it slowly time by time to avoid breaking the coconut milk or you won’t get the 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 burned.

Rendang is actually a traditional food from West Sumatera, Indonesia. It’s around the northern part of Indonesia. But it’s okay if you are not there because you can find restaurants that have Rendang in their menu in almost every corner of Indonesia! If you are in or going to Indonesia and planning to explore the 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 it is Eid Al-Fitr, as a special food. And of course with the rice as well. Like Asians say, it’s not a meal if there is no rice on the plate!

We are done with the main course! So what will we do next? Yeah, the dessert of course! Come closer and take a look at 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 a snack. The cutie we got here is called Klepon. You must know that mochi from Japan has a chewy texture and is a bit sticky. Klepon has the same characteristics as mochi. It’s made from glutinous rice flour.

Different from mochi, Klepon filling is made from grated brown sugar while 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 comes from the fragrant screw pine (Pandanus amaryllifolius) so, it’s safe and smells so good.

Grated coconut is added on all over the klepon’s soft and green skin to make it tastier. You can find these foods in the traditional market as street foods. And the price that is so cheap makes it more worth it.

Now, it’s time to drink something to make your throat feel 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 the cendol is different from the 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 tastes. That’s right! Sweet!

For those who want just-water based drinks but still need the Indonesian taste, here is the most common drink, ice tea.

As a tropical country, Indonesia has so many tea plantations. And Indonesia has many different kinds 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!