Sundanese cuisine


Sundanese cuisine is the cuisine of the Sundanese people of Western Java and Banten, Indonesia. Sundanese food is characterised by its freshness; the well-known lalab eaten with sambal and also karedok demonstrate the Sundanese fondness for fresh raw vegetables. Unlike the rich and spicy taste, infused with coconut milk and curry, of Minangkabau cuisine, Sundanese cuisine has a simple and clear taste, ranging from savoury salty to fresh sourness to mild sweetness to hot and spicy.
Sambal terasi is the most important and the most common condiment in Sundanese cuisine, and is eaten together with lalab or fried tofu and tempeh. Sayur asem vegetable tamarind soup is a common vegetable soup in Sundanese cuisine. Common soups containing meat are soto Bandung, a soup of beef and daikon radish, and mie kocok noodle soup with beef meat and kikil.

Ingredients

Fresh water fishes such as carp, gourami, tilapia and catfish are usually either being bakar or goreng and usually served with sambal or sweet soy sauce. Sundanese people has developed fondness for salted seafoods. Various fried salted fishes, anchovy, and salted cuttlefish is popular in Sundanese daily diet. The pais or pepes cooking method that employs banana leaf as the wrapper of food is also common in Sundanese cuisine. Among other, pais lauk emas or carp fish pepes is among the favourite pepes dishes.
Chicken are usually either fried or grilled, also served with sambal or sweet soy sauce. Bakakak hayam is Sundanese style ayam bakar. Sometimes chicken also can be made as pepes or soup. Meats such as beef, water buffalo, lamb, mutton, or goat can be marinated with the mixture of spices and coconut sugar and fried to make the empal gepuk sweet fried meat, sprinkled with fried shallots. Beef and potato sometimes are stewed in sweet soy sauce and spices as semur daging. Cow liver and jengkol stinky bean also can be made as semur as well. Goat, mutton, and lamb meat also can be made as satay in Sundanese style, such as sate maranggi. Gulai kambing, and empal gentong goat meat and offal curry is also popular soup.
If Javanese has developed their fondness for tempeh, Sundanese has developed the fondness for oncom instead, both are fermented products but with different kind of fungi and beans; tempeh is from soy beans while oncom is from peanuts. Sundanese has developed the fermentation method to create distinct foodstuffs. Fermentation was employed either for making fermented food such as oncom, making sauce such as tauco, or sweet snack foods such as peuyeum which are tapai made from rice or cassava.

Sundanese restaurant

In Sundanese cuisine establishments, it is common to eat with one's hands. They usually serve kobokan, a bowl of tap water with a slice of lime in it to give a fresh scent. This bowl are used to wash one's hands before and after eating.
Sundanese traditional restaurants may feature a traditional dining style called lesehan; where one eats on the floor, sitting on a straw or bamboo mat. The dishes may be served on a short legged table or served on the mat. This dining style is quite similar with the Japanese traditional tatami style. The Sundanese traditional restaurants in rural villages may also feature a saung style restaurant. Which features several small eating pavilions that might be built near or over fresh water fish ponds. The fish ponds typically contain live fresh water fish such as carp and gourami, that can be selected and ordered by customers to be freshly cooked.
In popular Indonesian culture, Sundanese restaurants can often be easily distinguished by containing the name "Kuring", thus led to the terms "Kuring"-food or "Kuring"-restaurant. However this name is rather misleading, since in the Sundanese language the word Kuring is a common and colloquial, yet rather coarse form which refers to the first-person singular personal pronoun, and as the possessive adjective. This naming trend was led by restaurants that tried to imitate the famous Sundanese restaurant Lembur Kuring. Some examples of famous Sundanese restaurants are Ampera, Boboko, Bumbu Desa, Ciganea, Dapur Sunda, Laksana, Lembur Kuring, Mang Engking, Mang Kabayan, Ma' Uneh, Ponyo, Sari Kuring, Saung Kuring, Sindang Reret and Talaga Sampireun.

Dishes

Snacks

  • Surabi: a traditional rice flour pancake in sweet coconut sugar syrup or topped with spicy oncom mixture
  • Tahu Sumedang: a fried tofu snack
  • Tahu gejrot: slightly fermented fried tofu snack with slices of shallots, chilli, and garlic in spicy-sweet sauce
  • Bala-bala: a fried dough snack made from various chopped vegetables
  • Cireng: fried dough snack made from sago or cassava flour. The name comes from "Aci goreng"
  • Cilok: flavoured sago balls which are skewered. The name comes from "Aci dicolok"
  • Cimol: sago balls snack
  • Colenak: roasted cassava with sweet coconut dipping sauce. The name comes from "Dicocol enak"
  • Leupeut: compacted rice with or without filling, typically wrapped in young coconut leaf
  • Peuyeum sampeu: a sweet fermented cassava snack
  • Peuyeum ketan: a sweet fermented sticky rice wrapped in guava leaf
  • Comro: fried dough made of finely shredded cassava with spicy oncom filling. The name comes from "Oncom di jero"
  • Misro: same fried dough as comro, but instead filled with melted palm sugar. The name comes from "Amis di jero"
  • Odading: fried sweet bread, some variation filled with banana
  • Dodol Garut: sweets made from sticky rice powder and palm sugar, with added milk, or sesame seed
  • Kolontong: roasted cylindrical shaped rice crackers with either cane sugar or palm sugar coating
  • Opak: roasted disc shaped rice crackers
  • Ranginang: fried rice grain crackers seasoned with terasi
  • Kalua: dried fruit marinated in sugar
  • Ladu: sweets made from part of fine sticky rice powder and part coarse roasted sticky rice grains, mixed with palm sugar then compacted; usually it has triangular cut.

Drinks