Hello Asean Hive Community
Let me share my $1 lunch saga again. It's part of my brutal frugal life, trying to live with the minimum expense with the best value spending. Today I won't share about fast food like the last one, or ready to go food. I will go with this traditional food, Gudeg
Gudeg is a traditional javanese dish from central java. If you search from google or ask GPT, mostlikely they will say Gudeg is from Yogyakarta. The fact is that it is a popular dish around central and east Java, however it is Yogyakarta which tried their best to make this food as their iconic dish. That place is even well known as the city of Gudeg.
Gudeg itself is actually made from Jackfruits, which cooked slowly with coconut milk and palm sugar until it become soft and caramelized. IF you order Gudeg, it won't come as a Jackfruit dish, they tend to be served as a package, which is a mix rice, together with Gudeg and other side dish such as shredded chicken, tofu, sweet soy braised egg, tempeh (soy cake) and krecek.
The Cheap Lunch Hunt
This time I will not have my lunch as the main focus here. I will share how to identify a good place to hunt cheap street food here. The easiest way is to find some office or commercial area which many people gather there to work. People need to eat, else they will die lol.
This is a perfect place to hunt for street food. It's on a small street behind two districts, one is shopping arcade and another one is an office buildings area. Many people either workers, staffs or just visitors will be around, and they will need food for their lunch.
The street is already full with many street food stalls. We can walk or wonder around seeing what kind of food they are selling, see how good they prepare it for others and check how they maintain their cleanness and tidiness of their cart.
It was raining that day and there weren't many spot to sit on and not getting wet from the rain. I sat there first before somebody else took the spot. In front of me there were two cart, the bigger one on the right was a fried chicken and duck cart. They looked delicious, but I saw only a few ordered them because they were pricey.
As usual, the stingy spirit possessed me and I just walked to the cheaper one, the green cart.
It was a cart with name Gudeg Krecek Samin. Samin was their brand, they operated in BSD area, western part of West Jakarta. So this was not in Jakarta, but this place was an elite area. I could not buy any houses in this area, it costed me more than 20 years of salary lol.
It was written 15.000 (0.9 USD) for a Nasi (rice) + Gudeg + Krecek + Tahu (tofu) + Ayam suwir (shredded chicken). It would cost me an extra 5000 rupiah (0.3 USD) for an egg, and I would not spend 5000 for an egg although it was decent price for an egg.
Oh ya Krecek, I kept saying it but I haven't explained about it. Krecek is a spicy stew made from dried and fried cow skin. In some area, the stew is not very spicy, which this was the case for this cart Krecek. There were people who made Krecek very spicy, mostly came from northen and eastern Java.
And this was my Gudeg dish. The white one was white rice, on top was the shredded chicken, the bottom one was a tofu, the left one was the Gudeg or Jackfruit Stew and the above one which a bit reddish was krecek or beef skin stew.
Honestly the taste was not great, well I would not complain regarding the price was actually very cheap for a Gudeg. It was not bad but in the past I often ate a very delicious Gudeg, so my standard for Gudeg is pretty much high.
Anyway this was a gamble lunch for me. I supposed not to eat any Jackfruit regarding my stomach issue, well I have digestive issue that some medical experts prohibit me from eating jackfruit. I have mentioned it in some posts months or years ago, but luckily I did not get sick the day after.
Anyway that's my food story today. Thank you for your visit here, and God Bless You all.
Thank you for coming and reading my post. I live in Jakarta, Ex-Capital City of Indonesia. I used to live by making money online, that's why I like being here, on HIVE, and in #PIMP - (Paper In My Pocket) community.
