Gudeg

Gudeg is a traditional Javanese cuisine from Yogyakarta and Central Java, Indonesia. Gudeg is made from young unripe jack fruit (Javanese: gori, Indonesian: nangka muda) boiled for several hours with palm sugar, and coconut milk. Additional spices include garlic, shallot, candlenut, coriander seed, galangal, bay leaves, and teak leaves, the latter giving a reddish brown color to the dish. It is often described as "green jack fruit sweet stew".

Serving

Served solely, gudeg can be considered as a vegetarian food, since it only consists of unripe jackfruit and coconut milk. However, gudeg is commonly served with egg or chicken. Gudeg is served with white steamed rice, chicken either as opor ayam (chicken in coconut milk) or ayam goreng (fried chicken), telur pindang, opor telur or just plain hard-boiled egg, tofu and/or tempeh, and sambel goreng krechek a stew made of crisp beef skins.

Variations

There are several types of gudeg; dry, wet, Yogyakarta style, Solo style and East Javanese style. Dry gudeg has only a bit of coconut milk and thus has little sauce. Wet gudeg includes more coconut milk. The most common gudeg comes from Yogyakarta, and is usually sweeter, drier and reddish in color because of the addition of teak leaves as coloring agent. Solo gudeg from the city of Surakarta is more watery and soupy, with lots of coconut milk, and is whitish in color because teak leaves are generally not added. Yogyakarta's gudeg is usually called "red gudeg", while Solo's gudeg is also called "white gudeg". The East-Javanese style of gudeg has a spicier and hotter taste compared to the Yogyakarta style gudeg, which is sweeter.