There is a huge variety of foods and snacks that are famous in Central Java. Yesterday I set off to sample a few favorites, and try a whole lot of new ones.
The first stop was a shop and factory that makes a famous snack that is often given as gifts to friends and family when one returns from a holiday or vacation. In Japan, they call the practice
omiyage, and here in Indonesia it is called
oleh-oleh. You could think of it as a souvenir, but usually something small to eat. It is like saying, "I'm sorry for going away and having fun while you were here at work. Please accept this box of treats with my apologies".
Evidently, a famous oleh-oleh from Yogyakarta (where I am staying now) is a small, round snack called
Bakpia Pathok. I'm not sure exactly what they are made of, but filled with beans, chocolate, cheese, or pineapple. I bought a mixed box, but not before taking a short tour of the factory in the back of the shop.
Walking in the back, I really didn't expect to see this many people making the snacks. It is a holiday weekend in Indonesia, so they told me that there will be many people here on holiday buying oleh-oleh, so they have a bigger workforce to handle the needed production. Interestingly, as you can see here in the photos below, these are all rolled and formed by hand. Oh, by the way, there was another room with women working, doing the same tasks.
I didn't get a good photo of the oven room, but it was all charcoal stoves -- which they say is the secret to the taste. But boy it was hot in there! The poor kids (they all looked in their late teens) working the ovens were soaked in sweat. There might have been a fan here and there, but mostly it was in the upper 90s throughout the factory.
You could purchase other snacks here as well, including things such as fried eel, fried intestines, and other things that we in the West simply are not used to eating!
The next stop was an area of town known primarily for selling sweet rice-based snacks. I did see this nice food stand on the way (below), and this Padang style of food is one of my favorites in Indonesia.
Here, below, are the sweet snacks. It seems that all of them are made of sticky rice that has been pounded to a paste, along with coconut milk, and made into various forms and colored. I tried about 8 things off of this table and the one next to it, and everything was tasty!
I was already full, but I did want to try another Yogyakarta delicacy -- Nasi Gudeg. The word nasi is rice, and gudeg is the type of pot used to cook this dish. There are several options, but jack fruit is traditionally included, along with duck eggs and tempeh (which is made of soybeans, thicker and chunkier than tofu). Here we also had the option of chicken heads (!), but I didn't eat any this time :)
To finish up this culinary tour of Yogyakarta, I had a
Ronde drink at the Kraton, the Sultan's Palace square. There is a lot of activity around the square in the evening, with families renting these bright bicycles (see photo below) and many small street vendors selling treats. I had a traditional drink, the ronde, made out of sweetened ginger tea. It is served in a bowl, along with fruit slices, peanuts, and dumplings that are made out of -- you guessed it -- sweetened rice. All and all, a great look at the culinary delights of Central Java. Many thanks to
Via Via Yogyakarta, who put together this interesting cultural tour.
