Author : Rosa
How is your day going foodies? Did you eat well these past few weeks? I hope you are. I have not been able to eat properly due to my busy schedule, snacking has become my meal routine. I ate many snack foods such as chips, bread, and cookies as my daily meal. It is a quite sad reality but the routine reminded me of my childhood snack I had back in my hometown in Central Java, Indonesia.
Janjanan Pasar
For most of you who do not know, I was born and raised in a very small city in Indonesia, called Surakarta or know as Solo. In Solo, cultural heritages is an important attributes in people's life and is still passed down from generation to generation. Aside from Solo's popular and authentic Batik production, our traditional snack is also one of our biggest pride. I will bring you to a short journey to explore the beauty of Solo's traditional snack or often we called it as Jajanan Pasar (Market Snack). Jajanan Pasar is a nickname that people give to every traditional snack foods that is sold in the traditional market (Pasar). That explains why it is translated as Market Snack.
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| Jajanan Pasar Set |
Jajanan pasar sometimes is sold as set which can be found in many celebratory event such as birthday party, wedding, official events and many happy occasions. However, the authentic experience of this snack food is to go and get them fresh from the market. When I was a kid, I remember to always go the the traditional market with my mom and pester her to buy me a lot of Jajanan Pasar. As a kid, I am fascinated with Jajanan Pasar a lot because of their vibrant colour and arrangement is really pretty. As you can see from the picture there are different kinds of snack you can choose from the set or the vendors. Depends from what you like, there are two distinctive group from Jajanan pasar, the savoury and the sweets.
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| Jajanan Pasar Arrangement in Pasar (Traditional Market) |
Most of the savoury group consist of many fried snack which is filled by different fillings such as salted veggies, marinaded meat, and combination of both. There are also a non-fried savoury snack, called lemper ayam which is one of my favourite snack made of glutinous rice filled with shredded chicken meat and it is wrapped with banana leaves.
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| Lemper Ayam |
The distinct characteristic of the sweets group is that many snack often is made with of coconut products (like coconut milk, coconut flakes, or coconut flavour), sweet mug bean filling, and java palm sugar. Like one of the most popular food souvenirs from Solo is Serabi Solo. Serabi is a sweet pancake made of rice flour mixed with coconut milk. What so unique about Serabi Solo are the soft texture of sweet and savoury Serabi and the crispy golden crown surrounding it. The heavenly taste is possible because the pancake is simultaneously made in a charcoal-heated small pan for only about 2-4 minutes. There are variety of flavour you can request while buying Serabi Solo but make sure you have tasted the original one.
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| Upper: Serabi is freshly made based on order, Below: Variant Flavour of Serabi (Original, Banana, Cheese, Chocolate, and Pandan) |
Besides Serabi, another sweet dessert I totally love is Klepon. Klepon is a small green-coloured sweet rice cake ball filled with liquid palm sugar and coated with grated coconut. It is originally from Indonesia, but you can find similar sweet like this in other Southeast Asian Country with different name. What I really like about eating this is the sensation of the sugar filling popped inside your mouth as you bite and burst the ball. There are many other snack I would like to cover such as Lenjongan or Onde-Onde, but I will stop here and continue my story next time. Let me know if you are curious about it at the comment section below. I hope that what I shared is broaden your knowledge about food and you feel interested to learn more about it. See you next time, Ciao!
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| Klepon |
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| Onde-Onde |
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| Lenjongan |
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