The cooking of West Java's highlands: raw vegetables and fresh sambal, pond fish wrapped in banana leaf, rice packed hot in a leaf, and Bandung's street snacks.
Where it comes from
The Sundanese are the people of West Java, and after the Javanese the largest group in Indonesia. Their cooking is known for freshness: lalapan, a heap of raw or barely blanched leaves and vegetables eaten with a sambal ground to order, and fish from the ponds that sit among the rice fields, often wrapped in banana leaf with lemon basil and grilled or steamed. It is generally lighter and less sweet than the Javanese cooking to the east.
The old Sundanese kingdom had its port at Sunda Kelapa, the harbour that became Batavia under the Dutch and is now Jakarta. The Dutch made the cool Priangan highlands a land of tea and quinine plantations, and Bandung a hill city of villas and boulevards.
Bandung is also a city of snacks. Siomay and batagor, fish dumplings with Chinese roots, are sold from carts and bicycles, and tapioca dough — aci — turns up fried, boiled and grilled in endless new forms.
Where in it
BandungThe highland capital of West Java, once called the Paris of Java, and a city of street snacks: batagor, siomay, cireng and surabi. Sumedang, just east, is famous for its fried tofu.BatagorSiomay BandungNasi timbel
BogorThe rainy hill town south of Jakarta, around the botanic gardens the Dutch laid out, known for soto mie and asinan — fruit and vegetables pickled in a sweet, sour, hot dressing.Soto mie Bogor
GarutA valley town ringed by volcanoes, known across Indonesia for dodol — a sticky sweet of glutinous rice, coconut and palm sugar — and for its rams.
CirebonA north-coast port where Sundanese and Javanese meet, with a cooking of its own: empal gentong from clay pots, and nasi jamblang, rice wrapped in teak leaf.Empal gentong
JakartaOnce Sunda Kelapa, the Sundanese kingdom's port. Its own people, the Betawi, have their own kitchen — kerak telor, soto Betawi — and Sundanese restaurants fill the city.
How it cooks
Lalap
Vegetables and leaves eaten raw or just blanched — cucumber, cabbage, lemon basil, long beans, small round aubergines — dipped in sambal.
Pepes
Fish, tofu or mushrooms rubbed with spice paste, wrapped in banana leaf with lemon basil, steamed and then grilled.
Ngulek
Sambal ground fresh on the cobek for each meal, and often brought to the table in it.
Timbel
Hot rice pressed into a roll inside a banana leaf, so it packs tight and takes on the leaf's scent.
Aci
Tapioca starch worked into chewy doughs and fish pastes — the bounce in batagor, siomay and cireng.