Sayur lodeh is an Indonesian

vegetable soup Vegetable soup is a common soup prepared using vegetables and leaf vegetables as primary ingredients. It dates to ancient history, and is a mass-produced food product in contemporary times. Overview Vegetable soup is prepared using vegetables, ...

prepared from

vegetable Vegetables are parts of plants that are consumed by humans or other animals as food. The original meaning is still commonly used and is applied to plants collectively to refer to all edible plant matter, including the edible flower, flowers, ...

s in

coconut milk Coconut milk is an opaque, milky-white liquid extracted from the grated pulp of mature coconuts. The opacity and rich taste of coconut milk are due to its high oil content, most of which is saturated fat. Coconut milk is a traditional food ...

popular in

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Gui ...

, but most often associated with

Javanese cuisine Javanese cuisine is the cuisine of Javanese people, a major ethnic group in Indonesia, more precisely the province of Central Java, Yogyakarta and East Java. Definition Javanese cuisine refers exclusively to the cuisine of Javanese people, ...

Ingredients

Common ingredients are young unripe

jackfruit The jackfruit (''Artocarpus heterophyllus''), also known as jack tree, is a species of tree in the fig, mulberry, and breadfruit family ( Moraceae). Its origin is in the region between the Western Ghats of southern India, all of Bangladesh, ...

eggplant Eggplant ( US, Canada), aubergine ( UK, Ireland) or brinjal (Indian subcontinent, Singapore, Malaysia, South Africa) is a plant species in the nightshade family Solanaceae. ''Solanum melongena'' is grown worldwide for its edible fruit. Mo ...

chayote Chayote (''Sechium edule''), also known as mirliton and choko, is an edible plant belonging to the gourd family, Cucurbitaceae. This fruit was first cultivated in Mesoamerica between southern Mexico and Honduras, with the most genetic diversity ...

, ''

melinjo ''Gnetum gnemon'' is a species of ''Gnetum'' native to southeast Asia and the western Pacific Ocean islands, from Mizoram and Assam in India, south and east through Indonesia and Malaysia to the Philippines, Fiji, and Hawaii in the United States. ...

'' beans and leaves, long beans, green

chili pepper Chili peppers (also chile, chile pepper, chilli pepper, or chilli), from Nahuatl '' chīlli'' (), are varieties of the berry-fruit of plants from the genus ''Capsicum'', which are members of the nightshade family Solanaceae, cultivated for ...

tofu Tofu (), also known as bean curd in English, is a food prepared by coagulating soy milk and then pressing the resulting curds into solid white blocks of varying softness; it can be ''silken'', ''soft'', ''firm'', ''extra firm'' or ''super f ...

and

tempeh Tempeh or tempe (; jv, ꦠꦺꦩ꧀ꦥꦺ, témpé, ) is a traditional Indonesian food made from fermented soybeans. It is made by a natural culturing and controlled fermentation process that binds soybeans into a cake form. A fungus, '' Rhizo ...

, cooked in coconut milk and sometimes enriched with

chicken The chicken (''Gallus gallus domesticus'') is a domesticated junglefowl species, with attributes of wild species such as the grey and the Ceylon junglefowl that are originally from Southeastern Asia. Rooster or cock is a term for an adu ...

beef stock Stock, sometimes called bone broth, is a savory cooking liquid that forms the basis of many dishes particularly soups, stews, and sauces. Making stock involves simmering animal bones, meat, seafood, or vegetables in water or wine, often for an ...

. The '' bumbu'' spice mixture includes ground chili pepper (optional, depending on the desired degree of spiciness),

shallot The shallot is a botanical variety (a cultivar) of the onion. Until 2010, the (French red) shallot was classified as a separate species, ''Allium ascalonicum''. The taxon was synonymized with '' Allium cepa'' (the common onion) in 2010, as the ...

garlic Garlic (''Allium sativum'') is a species of bulbous flowering plant in the genus '' Allium''. Its close relatives include the onion, shallot, leek, chive, Welsh onion and Chinese onion. It is native to South Asia, Central Asia and northeas ...

candlenut ''Aleurites moluccanus'', the candlenut, is a flowering tree in the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae, also known as candleberry, Indian walnut, ''kemiri'', varnish tree, ''nuez de la India'', ''buah keras'', ''godou'', kukui nut tree, and ''rata k ...

coriander Coriander (;

, '' kencur'' powder,

turmeric Turmeric () is a flowering plant, ''Curcuma longa'' (), of the ginger family, Zingiberaceae, the rhizomes of which are used in cooking. The plant is a perennial, rhizomatous, herbaceous plant native to the Indian subcontinent and Southeast ...

powder (optional), dried

shrimp paste Shrimp paste or prawn sauce is a fermented condiment commonly used in Southeast Asian and Southern Chinese cuisines. It is primarily made from finely crushed shrimp or krill mixed with salt, and then fermented for several weeks. They are ei ...

, salt and sugar. There are two main variants of sayur lodeh soup based on its colour; the white and yellow lodeh. The greenish white sayur lodeh is made without turmeric, while the golden yellow one has turmeric in it. Sometimes green

stink bean ''Parkia speciosa'', the bitter bean, twisted cluster bean or stink bean, is a plant of the genus '' Parkia'' in the family Fabaceae. It bears long, flat edible beans with bright green seeds the size and shape of plump almonds which have a r ...

s are added. The ingredients of sayur lodeh are similar to sayur asem, with the main difference in its liquid portion, sayur lodeh is coconut-milk based while sayur asem is

tamarind Tamarind (''Tamarindus indica'') is a leguminous tree bearing edible fruit that is probably indigenous to tropical Africa. The genus ''Tamarindus'' is monotypic, meaning that it contains only this species. It belongs to the family Fabacea ...

based. To add aroma and taste, an authentic Javanese sayur lodeh recipe might include ground old

. This old tempeh is known as "yesterday's tempeh" or "rotten tempeh" ( jv, tempe bosok, script=Latn).

Origin

The origin of the dish can be traced to the

Javanese people The Javanese ( id, Orang Jawa; jv, ꦮꦺꦴꦁꦗꦮ, ''Wong Jawa'' ; , ''Tiyang Jawi'' ) are an ethnic group native to the central and eastern part of the Indonesian island of Java. With approximately 100 million people, Javanese people a ...

's tradition of

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...

. According to Javanese Kejawen beliefs, ''sayur lodeh'' is an essential part of the ''

slametan The slametan (or selametan, slamatan, and selamatan) is the communal feast from Java, symbolizing the social unity of those participating in it. Clifford Geertz considered it the core ritual in Javanese religion, in particular the abangan vari ...

'' ceremony and it is believed as ''tolak bala'', to ward off possible danger and disaster. The people and the

Keraton Kraton or keraton ( jv, ꦏꦿꦠꦺꦴꦤ꧀ or ꦏꦼꦫꦠꦺꦴꦤ꧀) is a type of royal palace in Java, Indonesia. Its name is derived from the Javanese ''ka-ratu-an'', meaning residence of the '' ratu'', the traditional honorific titl ...

(court) of

Yogyakarta Yogyakarta (; jv, ꦔꦪꦺꦴꦒꦾꦏꦂꦠ ; pey, Jogjakarta) is the capital city of Special Region of Yogyakarta in Indonesia, in the south-central part of the island of Java. As the only Indonesian royal city still ruled by a monarchy, ...

often communally cook ''sayur lodeh'' for the ''slametan'' ceremony. It is believed this can deter disasters such as wind

storm A storm is any disturbed state of the natural environment or the atmosphere of an astronomical body. It may be marked by significant disruptions to normal conditions such as strong wind, tornadoes, hail, thunder and lightning (a thunderstorm), ...

earthquake An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, fr ...

, volcanic eruption, drought and plague. It is well known in

and has spread throughout Indonesia and the region. Because of Javanese migration to neighboring countries, today ''sayur lodeh'' is also popular in

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federal constitutional monarchy consists of thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two regions: Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo's East Mal ...

and

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...

Serving

''Sayur lodeh'' can be served with

steamed rice Cooked rice refers to rice that has been cooked either by steaming or boiling. The terms steamed rice or boiled rice are also commonly used. Any variant of Asian rice (both Indica and Japonica varieties), African rice or wild rice, glutinous ...

(separated or mixed in one plate), or with sliced ''

lontong Lontong is an Indonesian dish made of compressed rice cake in the form of a cylinder wrapped inside a banana leaf, commonly found in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. Rice is rolled inside a banana leaf and boiled, then cut into small cakes as ...

'' rice cake. Although ''sayur lodeh'' basically is a

vegetarian Vegetarianism is the practice of abstaining from the consumption of meat (red meat, poultry, seafood, insects, and the flesh of any other animal). It may also include abstaining from eating all by-products of animal slaughter. Vegetariani ...

dish, it is popularly consumed with ''ikan asin'' (

salted fish Salted fish, such as kippered herring or dried and salted cod, is fish cured with dry salt and thus preserved for later eating. Drying or salting, either with dry salt or with brine, was the only widely available method of preserving fish unt ...

), ''

opor ayam Opor ayam is an Indonesian dish from Central Java consisting of chicken cooked in coconut milk.Patrick Witton and Mark Elliott (2003)''Lonely Planet Indonesia'' Lonely Planet Publications, p. 108 The spice mixture (''bumbu'') includes galangal ...

empal gepuk Empal gepuk ( Sundanese) or sometimes simply known just as empal or gepuk is an Indonesian sweet and spicy fried beef dish. This dish is commonly popular in Java island, but can trace its origin to Sundanese cuisine of West Java, Indonesia. Ingr ...

'' or beef ''

serundeng Serundeng refers to a side dish or condiment to accompany rice in Indonesian and Malay languages. Serundeng may taste sweet, or hot and spicy according to recipe variants. Its best known variant is an Indonesian preparation of sautéed grated ...

''. '' Sambal terasi'' ("

shrimp Shrimp are crustaceans (a form of shellfish) with elongated bodies and a primarily swimming mode of locomotion – most commonly Caridea and Dendrobranchiata of the decapod order, although some crustaceans outside of this order are ref ...

paste chili sauce") is usually served separately. In Malaysia and Singapore, when ''sayur lodeh'' is served with ''lontong'' (''nasi himpit''), it is known as ''lontong''. Dried

squid True squid are molluscs with an elongated soft body, large eyes, eight arms, and two tentacles in the superorder Decapodiformes, though many other molluscs within the broader Neocoleoidea are also called squid despite not strictly fittin ...

sambal, boiled egg and coconut ''serunding'' are often added to ''lontong''.

References

External links

{{Singaporean cuisine Javanese cuisine Indonesian soups Vegetarian dishes of Indonesia Foods containing coconut Vegetable dishes of Indonesia

Ingredients

Origin

Serving

See also

References

External links