Eat like a Bogorite (6)

Thanks Uchie, I am forever indebted for your introducing me to rujak!

Recently, I chit-chatted with a fellow Filipino who is now based in Jakarta but used to live In Bogor. We got around to talking about food. Aha. He mentioned that he missed Indonesian food already, and he has only been back to the Philippines barely a week.

I said I missed rujak. He started laughing. But he knew what I meant ... of course he knew what rujak was, but to miss something as simple as rujak really shows how enamored one can get with Indonesian cuisine.

Enough with the suspense. Rujak is simply a "hot and sweet fruit salad" or a "pungent fruit salad." Personally I think that whoever thought up this dish may possibly have been me in another life ... it's sweet, sour, salty, nutty and hot, all in one go. Like those spicy hot tamarind candy from Thailand. And it's healthy because it's all fruit. These Indonesians are pure geniuses. Basically it is just chopped up raw (and mostly unripe fruits) like guava, pineapple, singkamas (jicama; in Indonesia its called bangkoang), and tart apples. Those were what I could figure out ... truth be told, I wasn't sure what some of the other fruits were! But based on more article on the web, you can also get a nice mix with cucumber, kedongdong (hog plum - those green fruits in the left of the picture), raw red sweet potato, belimbing (star fruit), jeruk bali (grapefruit).

But the clincher is the dressing which is made right before your eyes! A fabulous mixture of water, gula jawa (coconut sugar), asem jawa (tamarind), ground peanuts, and terasi (shrimp paste) and red chili - it's all ground and mixed together on a traditional stone mortar and pestle. On the side, there is rough salt and some whole chilis - up to you how to customize your rujak!

Usually, the dressing is poured on the fruits. But we ended up eating it like dipping fries into dips instead. Food for sharing!