Every year we have always visited Dad's hometown, Cirebon.
So, there we were... meeting his sisters and brother, uncountable nephews, niece & cousins. A traditional handshaking is still used, the younger must kiss the older's back of the hand. One or two is okay, but if you have to kiss fifty hands, all come with their specific odor, hmmmm... that's an adventure in itself. :-)
One specific thing is that everybody sit on the floor during the gathering. Though crammed, we usually manage to chat and enjoy whatever served on the floor in the middle of the circle.
Last year's dish were empal gentong (beef cooked with light coconut milk and spices) in the first round, rujak asem (a salad of cooked water spinach with spicy and hot peanut and brown sugar sauce) as a second round dish and lastly it was rujak soun (vermicelli with spicy and hot peanut & brown sugar sauce accompanied with rice crackers).
This year it was not much but a lot. :-) We had rujak donggala (fermented cucumber with hot brown sugar sauce), docang (a soup made of crushed soyabean cake and beansprout), and of course, nasi jamblang (a one dish meal consisting of rice, fried spiced harshbrown Indonesian style, spicy potato cutlets, chopped and cooked chili served on a "jati" leave). Yum...yummm....
Oh, ya....
Since Cirebon is such a hot city, there is one more Lebaran ritual. Ice cream craving.... :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment