The Icon of Eid Mubarak

Every year in Indonesia, Eid Mubarak celebration become a full festive of the nation. People get busy on preparing anything: new clothes, new shoes, and not forget the tradition itself: feast food fiesta. Traditional Indonesian rice cake made from young coconut leaves is the icon. My friend, a science geek, describing the rice cake in sentence like this: “High density agglomerates of steam-expanded high moisture rice grain.”

The plain taste of rice cake would not be complete without other dishes. There are vegetables and meat dishes which every local has their own style cooking, but the renowned name you could mention are opor ayam (traditional chicken cook with coconut milk and spices) and rendang (extended heating of beef muscular protein in coconut extract emulsion, another scientific translation).

When we are in town, mom usually like to cook these dishes with her own style. This year she cooked bunch (and i really mean a bunch) of rice cake with papaya vegetable also cooked in coconut milk and her tasty tahu tauco (fried tofu cooked with fermented beans and chili in soya soup). Meat dishes were taken from our local Padang restaurant. Usually she cook chokoes (something like squash) vegetables but i asked her this time to made it from young papaya fruit.

Later on, a day before the celebration, i could not help myself drooling while seeing my friends updating their cooking status of this rice cake. Fortunately mom arrived home not for long with her dishes. I prepared my plate in sudden, divided the rice cake into pieces then i poured the vegetables together with tahu tauco served with beef rendang aside. And finally, kering tempe (stir fried tempe with chili and soya sauce) as topping. And this time, somehow her cooking taste much better with young papaya vegetables. I could not help myself eating this for the next 3 days in a row :P