Karimunjawa archipelago is a group of islands in the North of jepara, Central Java. They comprise 27 groups of small island, which Karimunjawa is the largest.
“Tour De TN Karimun”. That’s what we called it. It was organized by indonesian backpacker comunity. They are 40 peoples was join in this trip.
We stay in floating homestead . It’s floating in the middle of the sea about 3 minutes boat ride from the karimun island and near by menjangan besar island. The Wisma Apung owned by Pak Joko was really an excellent place to stay also we were treated with delicious foods. the water is so clear, and just 1 meter deep, it’s make all of us excited to swim around the homestad. even it make one of us recover from his phobia and swim in the sea for the first time in his life.
menjangan kecil. its nice island surrounded by white sandy beaches and fringing coral reefs. but it just to shallow, and make me afraid because if u stand up when u do snorkel u’ll step on the reef. also sadly we still found “bulu babi” between some beautifull coral.
tanjung gelam is other part of the main Karimunjawa island, i think it’s the most beautifull place we’ve been visited in this trip. this beach have some rockies between their white sands. also it’s great place for snorkel we can see beautiful reef, beautiful fish, and sure we found no “bulu babi”
June 21st, 2006
ENDHÓG BUMBU RUJAK
(Indonesian name: telur bumbu rujak/bumbu Bali)
It might have come from Bali, the original dish; but the Javanese never says so. To them it is just ‘rujak seasoning’ that is applied to the hard-boiled eggs, although it doesn’t have anything to do with ‘rujak’ either (which is a fruit salad).
The seasoning consists of lots of red chili, ripe tomatoes, ‘kunir’, ’sere’, leaves of lemon, salt, ’salam’ leaves, ‘laos’, and sugar. See the seasoning at the.
ASEM-ASEM CUMI KECAP
(Indonesian name: cumi asam manis)
These are squids (’cumi-cumi’ in both Javanese and Indonesian languages), boiled and then stir-fried with garlic, red garlic, onions, tamarind (’asem’ in Javanese, ‘asam’ in Indonesian) and chili; then some sweet soybean sauce (’kecap’) is poured in, and it’s done. To be served with rice.
SEGÓ LIWET (Indonesian name: nasi liwet)
This dish is the trademark of Solo, Central Java, even more than ‘timlo’ (see another page of this section).
The name ’sego liwet’ or ‘nasi liwet’ means more or less ‘boiled rice’.
It refers to the way the rice is done just for this dish; usually we boil some rice in a pot (’manci’ in Javanese, ‘panci’ in Indonesian), and stir it until the bubbles come out, at which point we take the rice out and put it into the steamer, named ‘dandang’ in Javanese (there is no Indonesian name for it). Both kitchen props are made of alluminium.
That was before the advent of electric rice-cookers.
And this advent is householdwise — until today, a lot of Javanese homemakers still cook rice that way, since electric rice-cookers, though might be affordable to many (as long as it is made in China, it won’t cost more than US$ 15), suck too much electricity and in the end cause a jump of monthly bill.
Anyway, the Solonese ‘nasi liwet’ is dubbed so because the rice is to get cooked in the pot without ever getting transfered into a steamer. So it is considerably softer than the usual.
Of course we don’t eat just rice; the Solonese have fixed what to be eaten with this kind of rice a few hundred years ago: fried ‘jepan’ with chili and coconut milk, which we call ’sambel goreng jepan’ and in Indonesian it is called ’sambal goreng labu siam’ (see the veggies section).
Then some thick coconut milk with a little salt, which is cooked until it got bubbles, called ‘arèh’, is put on the rice. Eggs and chicken boiled in coconut milk are also added. Then a little chili sauce, handmade, is to make the dish complete, plus a large shrimp cracker (’krupuk urang’ in Javanese, ‘kerupuk udang’ in Indonesian).
Nasi liwet is that simple; so it is really beyond comprehension why the Solonese chose it as their character-representing dish, or why other people come to attach it to them.
SEGÓ GUDHÊG (Indonesian name: nasi gudeg)
Another amazing thing 30 miles or so from Solo: Yogya has been calling itself, and being called by other places’ residents, ‘the town of gudeg’ (’kota gudeg’) — with much pride in the part of the natives.
It is amazing because gudeg is nothing spiffy; it is a very sweet dish made of young jackfruit (’góri’ to Solonese, AKA ‘tèwèl’ to Yogyanese; see the veggies section again), cooked with palm sugar and the usual seasoning until it turns dark brown and can’t get distinguished from cassava leaves, which are boiled together with it, and from the red beans, which are its optional ingredients.
JANGAN GÓRI / JANGAN TÈWÈL
(Indonesian name: sayur nangka muda)
The picture above is of young jackfruit cooked in coconut milk, with some ’so’ leaves (’daun melinjo’ in Indonesian; see the veggies section again). The material is the same with gudeg. But ’sayur nangka muda’ must be eaten on the day it is cooked. Gudeg can be re-heated or left to get constantly simmering in the pot for days.
That’s what gudeg really is. No one can eat it the way it is; and nobody ever does. It must be served with rice. And this rice must be given the same thick coconut milk named ‘arèh’. Plus ’sambel goreng krècèk’, i.e. some dried inner skin of cows, cooked with a lot of chili, ‘tahu plempung’ (’floating tofu’; see the earlier food pages), and small pieces of ‘tempe’ (soybean cakes). But that is not yet ‘gudeg with rice’. Eggs and chicken, the first must be hard-boiled and the second can be either deep-fried or boiled in sweet coconut milk, are added. Now it is ‘nasi gudeg’.
To impress tourists (any Indonesian from out of town is a tourist to us in this matter), we make such a fanfare of dressing gudeg up in ‘exotic’ containers made of smooth terracotta (that’s what ‘gudheg kendhil’ is).
The gudeg vendors, which are occupying every nook around the town, make much of their ‘lesehan’ method (i.e. you have to sit on the floor, on thin mats made of woven natural fibers, named ‘klósó’ in Javanese or ‘tikar pandan’ in Indonesian), as if people can sit there all night (most gudeg vendors only start selling the dish after 6 PM) even after finishing their meal.
Artists, poets, dramatists and ‘intellectuals’, which have been Yogya’s main export materials and main denizen, added much force to this campaign in 1970’s by actually besieging gudeg vendors all night for years, and loudly claimed it to be spiritually enriching.
I have no idea if it was all a neat cultural conspiracy, or spontaneous but not random, wholehearted but not conscious, campaign. The fact is just that it happened that way, and today you will get tired of being told “You aren’t in Yogya yet if you haven’t eaten some gudeg”.
The most famous and official restaurant selling gudeg is ‘the restaurant of Mrs Tjitro’ (’Gudeg Bu Tjitro’). There is the gudeg vendor right in front of the Yogyanese landmark Tugu, too. And the ‘lesehan’ deli at the Kuncen Street, ‘Gudeg Mbak Sri’ (’the gudeg restaurant of Sister Sri’). All along the Malioboro Street, there are dozens of gudeg sidewalk tents.
As long as the cook doesn’t fall asleep, or in the middle of a nervous breakdown, the gudeg of whichever place tastes okay — i.e. the same as other places’.
But tour guides and everyone else (this is probably the only thing that ordinary people agree with tour guides about) will give you the pyramid of ‘best places of gudeg’ when you arrive in this town, and they would insist on the ‘romantic’ side of the pic. Forgive them; they know not what they’re doing. They have come to believe in the stuff their older siblings and dads and moms and uncles and aunts campaigned for.
JANGAN BÓBÓR CÈMÈ
or ÓBLÓK - ÓBLÓK GAMBAS
(Indonesian name: sayur lodeh oyong)
The Javanese vegetable that is called ‘ceme’ (pronounced ‘chay-may’) by the Solonese and ‘gambas’ by the Yogyanese is exactly the same with what the Sundanese of West Java and the Betawinese of Jakarta call ‘óyóng’ (I don’t think you’d be able to pronounce this).
The Solonese ‘bobor’ or Yogyanese ‘oblok-oblok’ (’lodeh’ in Indonesian) is actually anything cooked that way — in coconut milk, with ‘tumbar’ (’ketumbar’ in Indonesian) — while the traditional ingredient is spinach. But in another dish named ‘jangan bening’ (see previous food pages), spinach is inseparable from ‘ceme’; so they are often cooked together.
Source : www.geocities.com/omimachi2/food12.htm
June 21st, 2006