Gudeg (Young Jackfruit Braised in Coconut Milk and Palm Sugar)

Variations

• Wet and dry gudeg: in Indonesia they are gudeg basah (wet) and gudeg kering (dry). Gudeg from the Yogyakarta shops is usually the dry one, packed in a bamboo box (besek) or a clay pot (kendil) and carried home as a gift.
• Solo (Surakarta) style: in the neighbouring city of Solo gudeg is wetter, less sweet and paler. Same name, the opposite end from Yogyakarta's.
• Nasi gudeg: this is the plate in the photograph. Gudeg and an egg on rice, with sambal goreng krecek (beef skin in a hot sauce) and chicken braised in coconut milk (opor ayam). The heat of the krecek cuts the sweetness of the gudeg.
• Tinned gudeg: sold in tins in Indonesia, where it keeps up to a year. Gudeg sent a long way goes that way.

Tips

• A fruit before it ripens is a vegetable. Halo-halo buys jackfruit ripe and candied — "In the Philippines too, kaong, nata de coco, macapuno and jackfruit are normally bought in jars." Coxinha lists, for its vegetarian version, "jackfruit, mushroom or hearts of palm in place of the chicken." The jackfruit in gudeg is picked long before it ripens. Red Red states the principle for plantain: "A yellow plantain is still starch: fried, it is not sweet and tastes like a dull potato." Young jackfruit is still starch and fibre too, with next to no sweetness or aroma of its own, and cooked it pulls apart along the grain. So here the jackfruit takes the place the meat takes in a braise: the body that soaks up the coconut and palm sugar.
• If you buy it tinned, buy it in brine. The jars halo-halo buys are ripe jackfruit in syrup and are no use here. Look for "young green jackfruit in brine".
• The colour comes from a leaf. There is no frying step and nothing is burned. The coconut milk and palm sugar are in liquid from the first minute and never get the chance to brown. As ko.wikipedia puts it, the red-brown is from the teak leaves, which is why they line the bottom and sides of the pot. Without them only the brown of the palm sugar is left and it comes out a pale tan. It tastes the same; making up the colour with soy sauce changes the taste.
• A braise with no acid in it at all. Braising says: "Where a dish here braises a collagen-free ingredient for the same hours, it holds the acid back." Jackfruit is held together by plant cell walls, not collagen, and gudeg has no acid even to hold back — no tomato, no tamarind, no vinegar. So the jackfruit is soft within the first hour, and the hours after that are for the pot, not the jackfruit: the liquid goes down and the sweetness and coconut work in between the fibres.
• Where you stop decides which dish it is. Rendang describes the same fork: "stop at kalio and you have a curry, carry on and you have a preserve." Gudeg stopped wet is a dish for the day, and taken all the way it keeps for days. What differs is what catches on the bottom. Rendang ends with the coconut split and the meat all but frying in its oil; in gudeg the palm sugar catches first. That is why the drier you go, the more often you turn it.
• Turn it, do not stir it. Soft jackfruit stirred round turns to mush. The pieces with their fibres intact are the texture of gudeg. Slide a wooden spoon to the bottom and lift it over.
• Cooled overnight, the eggs take the colour. Tea eggs say why they cool in their liquid: "Most of the colour and the seasoning go in during this time." Gudeg's eggs are the same. After hours of braising only the outside is brown; left in the pot overnight, the colour reaches almost to the yolk.