Culinaria Yogya......

One of the things I enjoy doing in all of my travels is to sample the local cuisine.

For the Staroba golfers, every trip we made to Indonesia will offer us a full dose of Masakan Padang, the flavour of which is most familiar to our palate. In Jogjakarta, our regular joint is the Rumah Makan Padang Sederhana, with its array of hot and spicy dishes. My only reservation about Padang food is that they are not freshly cooked. Some of the rendang dishes are probably a few days old and the beef rendang can be quite tough to chew. Their "sambel" is without belacan and is not pounded as fine as ours. But you can rest assured that even the green chilli "sambel" will give you a punch and will go down well with the blanched tapioca shoot ( pucuk ubi kayu) or the crispy fried of sliced lung.

Delicious Makanan Padang

After our games at the Merapi Golf Resort, we lunched at a vilage fish restaurant - Rumah Makan Salma. The dining halls are built on stilt structures over fresh water ponds where varieties of fresh water fish are reared. We were served several fish dishes - deep fried crispy gourami, sweet and sour fish, locally grown stir-fried kangkong and of course the local "sambel" and its accompanying ulams. One dish which I liked is the 'soup ikan patin' - a sweet clear soup with chunks of ikan patin cooked with local herbs and pineapple pieces.

Fresh-water ponds rearing various types of fish

Hungry golfers waiting for lunch at Rumah Makan Salma

At the hotel I was able to sample 'nasi gudeq' - this typical breakfast dish consists of rice served with gulai nangka ( jack fruit) and fried chicken and rendang beef. The gulai nangka however is sweet. I prefer the spicy gulai nangka Padang style ( spicy jack fruit gulai cooked in coconut milk and yellow saffron)

Dinner at a local Yogya restaurant

"Nasi timbel" is another local Yogya dish. The rice is served wrapped-up in a roll of banana leaf and accompanied with fried chicken, slices of roast beef, a fried sambal of anchovies with pieces of tempeh ( soya bean cake)and a mixture of ulams ( fresh vegetables) with its sambal. I find in both the 'nasi' , the beef dishes tend to be dry and tough to the chew.

Pak Solehuddin and Pak Noramid trying to charm Sita

I wish I had had the chance to go out and try 2 dishes famously associated with Yogya. One is the 'bebek goreng' - deep fried duck, and the other is the Malioboro Fried Chicken - reputedly better than the Old Colonel's KFC. The Malioboro Fried Chicken is first boiled in the juice of young coconut after which it is deep fried and is tender to the bite. One has to check-out the many food stalls that sprout up along the pedestrian side-walk of Malioboro Street at night in order to savour these dishes.

Maybe next time!