Gudeg, Traditional Food From Yogyakarta, Indonesia
Gudeg is one of the typical Indonesian dishes which is famous for its delicacy. This dish is a traditional and typical dish of the Province of Yogyakarta and Central Java, Indonesia.
In its development, people know the famous gudeg from Yogyakarta, making this city known as the Gudeg City.
The history of gudeg in Yogyakarta began with the establishment of the Islamic Mataram kingdom on the base of Mentaok in the Kotagede area in the 1500s. Gudeg actually does not come from the kingdom but comes from the community.
In the 19th century, not many were selling gudeg. Gudeg became popular and widely traded in the 1940s when President Sukarno built Gajah Mada University (UGM) until now.
Gudeg is made from unripe young jackfruit (Jawa: gori). It takes hours to make. Gudeng is cooked with palm sugar, and coconut milk. Additional spices include garlic, shallots, candlenut, coriander seeds, galangal, bay leaf, and teak leaves, which impart a reddish-brown color to the dish.
With various mixtures of these spices, gudeg becomes delicious and has a distinctive and delicious taste according to the tastes of the Javanese people in general. The brown color is usually produced by teak leaves that are cooked together.
Gudeg is usually eaten with rice and served with thick coconut milk (areh), free-range chicken, egg, tempeh, tofu, and krecek fried chili sauce. There are several types of gudeg; dry, wet.
The dry gudeg only has a little coconut milk so it has a little sauce while the wet gudeg has a lot of coconut milk.
The most common gudeg comes from Yogyakarta and is usually sweeter, drier and reddish due to the addition of teak leaves as a colorant.
Gudeg Solo from the city of Surakarta is more watery and thick, with lots of coconut milk, and is whitish because teak leaves are generally not added.
Gudeg Yogyakarta is usually called “red gudeg”, while Solo gudeg is also called “white gudeg”. The typical East Javanese gudeg has a spicier and hotter taste than Yogyakarta's gudeg, which is sweet.