authentic.sundanese.cuisine

i realize after reading back all the post, that i haven't mentioned anything about the best place to eat in the whole wide world (for me at least.) let me introduce you the one and only, indonesia.

first city i would like to tell, well supposely bandung.. but not for now.
i will start with it's neighbour, garut. i went there in 2006 with my bestest friends and we-eight quite a lot. first place that we visited is an area named kampung sampireun.

like bandung, garut is a part of west java. the people in west java are mostly sundanese, so you can also find any sundanese food you want here.

eating sundanese food never be complete if you don't have these items, kerupuk emping (melinjo-nut crackers), sambal ulek (crushed chili paste), and jambal roti (salted dry fish). sweet-thick soya sauce also very important, along with lalab (raw vegetables).

about this lalab thing, there's a proverb i found in the web, it says sundanese people will never be starved even if they were left in a jungle as long as there are plants for them to eat.

this is only a joke, but it's true that the sundanese people have been used to this habit of eating plants, such as lalab, for generations until today. sunda is just a land of paradise for lalab lovers.

talking about vegie's, for appetizer i immediately ordered karedok. gosh, this is just the best salad for me. only a simple mix of traditional salad with peanut sauce. but you know what they said, you don't know what you are missing until it's gone and that is exactly what i felt these day. i miss indonesian, specially sundanese food, so much.

anyway, we also ordered nasi liwet, nasi tutug oncom, ikan bakar, sate, sayur asem, tempe and tahu goreng. i'm not sure how to explain these food, but let's try.

nasi liwet is a traditional steam rice dish with coconut gravy and vegetables. we ordered nasi liwet ikan asin (with salted dry fish). very tasty hmm...

while nasi tutug oncom, as the name itself nasi (rice) tutug (mix) oncom (similar like tempeh), so it's a grill rice-mix-with-oncom dish served with traditional fried chicken, fried tofu, sambal hijau (green chili paste), lalab, crackers, and also ikan asin (salted dry fish). see, sundanese food never complete without all these simple-but-very-impotant items.

ikan bakar is grill fish (we ordered gurame fish), sate is satay. you can ask for chicken, beef, or lamb satay. sayur asem is a sour tamarind soup, a popular vegetable soup in sundanese food, while tempe and tahu goreng is fried tempeh and fried tofu. overall, the food was excellent.

i told you before, we-eight quite a lot in garut ... so we have not done yet, next stop was a place called mulih ka desa (return back home to village).

here, we wanted to try a very traditional sundanese food and snacks. so we ordered singkong goreng (fried cassava), another tempe goreng (fried tempeh, we just LOVE tempeh), rujak buah (fruit rojak), and tutut bumbu kuning (snail in yellow gravy), with complementary kerupuk rangginang (traditional crackers), sambal terasi and sambal hijau (dry shrimp chilli paste and green chilli paste). for beverages, we choose tea in pot and two glass of cingcau hijau (jelly with syrup). all served in a very traditional way. but bottom line is, all these food are just amazing.

amazing food, amazing place, amazing friends... that's just about everything.

*one of the delights of life is eating with friends*
second to that is talking about eating.
and, for an unsurpassed double whammy,
there is talking about eating while you are eating with friends.
-laurie colwin 'home cooking'-