Gudeg : The Traditional Cuisine of Yogyakarta

December 2, 2009 # 4:56 am # Culinary

Hungry for a bite of Yogyakarta’s traditional food? Well if you are then there’s no other dish to mention other than Gudeg. What is gudeg exactly? Gudeg is basically young jackfruit boiled in coconut milk and seasoned with traditional plants and seasonings. The process of making it is as follow : First of all, you must prepare a well sized and thick pan since the boiling process may take a while. After preparing the pan, cover the surface with daun salam (bay leaves) and slices of ginger or other traditional plants. The function is to give flavour to the food and to prevent it from being scorched. After that put into the pan some coconut milk and boil with medium fire. In the process add into the boiling coconut milk the seasonings, and then young jackfruit, boiled egg, brown sugar, and chicken ( other than the young jackfruit the ingredients are optional). Add more coconut milk to the pan to get the ingredients soaked and stir well to get them mixed. After that all you do is cover the pan with pan covering and wait for a couple of hours without opening the cover. When the two hour mark is reached, open the pan and see whether the coconut milk has dried up or not. If not, then just repeat the above process until the liquid has dried up. It can take up to 7 hours to wait for the liquid to dry, so be patient.The result of the dish is brown to red colored soggy jackfruit, tofu, eggs and chicken that taste sweet. It’s usually eaten with rice and presented with banana leaf on top of a plate. An optional cuisine you can eat with gudeg is Chicken Opor and Krecek.