Javanese

Where it comes from

Java is Indonesia's most populous island, and the Javanese its largest people. Their cooking grew among rice fields and around the courts of Yogyakarta and Surakarta, heirs to the old kingdom of Mataram, where palm sugar — gula jawa, 'Javanese sugar' — and kecap manis give the food its famous sweetness. Why the centre came to like it so sweet is often explained by the sugar plantations of the colonial era, though that is a story more than a settled fact.

The north coast looked outward. Ports such as Semarang and Surabaya traded with China, India and Arabia for centuries, and Chinese communities there brought tofu, noodles, soy sauce and spring rolls that Java made its own. Tempeh — soybeans bound into a cake by mould — is Java's own, and among its best-known gifts to the world.

Go east and the food changes: saltier, hotter, darker with petis, a thick black shrimp paste, and less sweet. Madura, across the strait from Surabaya, sends its sate sellers all over Indonesia.

Where in it

1. YogyakartaThe sultan's city and the capital of sweet cooking: gudeg by the kraton, and angkringan carts selling nasi kucing — 'cat's rice', tiny packets of it — late into the night.Gudeg
2. SoloSurakarta, Yogyakarta's rival court city: nasi liwet cooked in coconut milk, selat Solo — a Javanese take on a Dutch beef salad — and bacem tempeh and tofu at every warung.Tempeh bacem
3. SemarangA north-coast port with a long Chinese community, known for lumpia, for bandeng presto — milkfish pressure-cooked until its bones are soft — and wingko, a coconut cake.Lumpia Semarang
4. MadiunA railway town in the west of East Java whose nasi pecel, on a banana leaf with a peanut cracker, is the version most Indonesians name first.Pecel
5. SurabayaEast Java's great port, where the food turns saltier and hotter: black rawon, rujak cingur dressed in petis, and soto from nearby Lamongan on every corner.RawonSoto ayam
6. MaduraThe island across the strait from Surabaya. Madurese sellers carry their sate, and their soto, to towns across Indonesia, fanning the grill as they go.Sate Madura

How it cooks

Bumbu dasar

Base pastes kept to hand — white, red and yellow — of shallot, garlic and candlenut, with chilli or turmeric, ground and fried before anything else goes in.

Bacem

Simmering tempeh, tofu or chicken in coconut water, palm sugar and spice until the liquid is gone, then frying: sweet, dark and sticky.

Slow simmering

Gudeg and other court dishes cooked for hours over a low fire, until the sugar deepens and the colour turns brown.

Ulek

Sambal and peanut sauces ground by hand on the cobek, the stone mortar — coarse, fresh and made to order.

Petis

In the east, a spoon of black shrimp paste stirred into sauces and rujak for a deep, sweet-salty savour.

Always in the kitchen