When we reached the market, we were to seperate and did our interviews alone. We were to meetup at the place where we parked our bikes at 8:30.
My personal project was searching more about Ketela. I was actually interested in Gethuk, and still am, since Pak Ramdan(?) showed us his Gethuk. But Kak Kukuh said that we might not have much time in researching about Gethuk. So we moved the topic backwards toward the bigger picture, Ketela.
I was given a phone so that I could know the time. I found Ibu Sutia, who was 60 y.o and had been selling in the market for 30 years. She sold many types of vegetables and tubers. She got the tubers that she sold from farmers. They sent it to her, sometimes 1/2 kwintal, sometimes 1 kwintal, and the lightest being 25 kg. It just depends on how much she needs.
Each part of the Ketela tree are used. The young leaves will be their vegetable, the old ones for the livestock. The trunk could either be used as firewood, or they could be planted again. While the roots are what we know as Ketela. The flour, known as mocaf could be made into many kinds of snacks. Some examples are Geblek, Tiwul, and even cakes. You also can make tapioka flour.
There are three types of tubers: Singkong (Cassava), Tales, and Ubi (sweet potato). From Singkong, there's Singkong Kuning, Singkong Mertega (this one is from Sumatra). From Ubi there's Ubi Kuning (yellow sweet potato), Ubi Ungu (purple sweet potato), Ubi Merah (red sweet potato), and Ubi Putih (yellowish sweet potato). They are all from Jawa. I'll tell you later how to differentiate which is which.
Those tubers could be made into thousands of different kinds of food. She said the fastest snack to make is Gethuk. Another example was Geblek, which she gave the recipe of how to make it:
First shred the Singkong and squeeze the water out. Mix it with tapioca starch then shape them into what you call Geblek:
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| https://yiskandar.wordpress.com/tag/geblek/ |
I lost Rp.50k (kept in my pencil case. I lost my pencil case too in this case, but luckily I had taken out my pencil and eraser already) on this day. I forgot either I left it in the market or in "Rumah Ketela" (I'm more sure I left it here), the place where we would be going to after this. If I left it in the market, this is the theory of how I left it:
While rearranging my bag to make the the 2 Singkong, 2 Ubi, and 2 Tales fit, Adinda passed and warned me to be aware because there's a pickpocket. I hurriedly put back my things and probably left my pencil case behind, even though as I remembered when I checked again there's nothing left behind.
I planned to go to 2 different places after this stall to buy Geblek and Gethuk, because in the middle of interviewing Ibu Sutia, someone liked the manager of the market came and talked to me, wanting to know what we were doing. I told him the usual stuff "we're homeschoolers, we came here to explore about local food, bla bla bla" and he told me there was Gethuk in one stall, and Geblek in another stall.
There were plenty of customers ordering large amounts of vegetables when I interviewed Bu Sutia so it was quite difficult to interview her. Maybe because she's already rather old, I didn't really understand her well.
I went to the stall in the front first to get Geblek. I interviewed Bu Dah (55 y.o) and Bu Yah(35 y.o). They sold many types of traditional snacks and some vegetables. I asked for Geblek and Gethuk, as I want to see if the other stall sells a different kind of Geblek (I didn't know if there are various types of Geblek at that time). When I got the Geblek, it's totally different from Geblek in the Peyek Industry. It's a snack type of Geblek, not the staple food kind. I got more information about how to make the snacks instead about Ketela, but at least it's related.
Other than the recipes of how to make some of the snacks, she told me that there were 3 types of Gethuk: Gethuk karet, Gethuk Lindri, and Gethuk Ubi Jalar. She also told me that the way to differentiate Singkong, Talas, and Ubi is from the plants.
I felt more comfortable interviewing them because they were so friendly and not..... boring compared to Bu Sutia.
I wanted to go the other stall but I ran out of time, so I just went to walk to the place where we parked our bikes.
Our next destination was Rumah Ketela, but before we left, Yudhis and Andro ordered Andongs first to pick us up from Dusun Maitan to Terminal Borobudur, to catch the bus to Dusun Palbapang, as we're leaving tomorrow.
In Rumah Ketela, we were served with warm sweet tea and 4 kinds of snacks. They was so yummy. I guess everyone was enjoying them really much, until most of us forget what what their names were. All of them were really delicious, but for me, the purple one was the most delicious one.
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| There's Papaya jam in the bottle. They called it Papaya jam, but it's actually papaya mixed with pineapple. They were poured when they're still really hot so that it would be sterile. |
While we were eating the refreshments, Pak Ariswara Sutomo, the founder of Rumah Ketela gave us an introduction of Rumah Ketela and some of it's history.
Rumah Ketela was created to return the use of tubers. In the past, not all Indonesian people ate rice as their main staple food. Some ate corn, but the one most known were tubers. But because of the green evolution (you can check my article about it here), they all changed to rice. Rumah Ketela didn't force us to eat tubers as our staple food, they're just showing us one of the ways to make organic food from tubers, and how to reduce the use of wheat flour.
I just knew that importing wheat costs up to 16 trillion! Well, mostly are for making instant noodles, such as Indomie and its friends and more are coming. It's wasting a lot of money while we actually can use tubers (mainly Ubi and Singkong), a food that we can easily get from anywhere in Indonesia, from Sabang to Merauke!
Mocaf is easy to keep and they last a long time. They also don't have gluten in them, which some people have trouble with. They also could be made into ice cream. Not only mocaf, they also made different types of flour such as corn flour, Ubi flour, etc. etc. They all looked really interesting.
Next off we went to watch how the eggroll being made. We were allowed to try making them. I didn't try, because I was afraid I would ruin it. They just put the mixture onto a frying pan, then once it's fried, they just roll it with a stick as guidance:
After that we were showed how they made the mocaf. They used a machine powered by petrol in where they just put in the dried Singkong. The way to make mocaf is: washing them, peel them, cut them into pieces, then dried them up. After that they were immersed in clean waater for 3 days and 3 nights, and every 24 hours the water was changed. After that they were fermented, dried, then grinded with the machine. Mocaf could stay in good condition from 1-6 months. I tried touching them, they felt so smooth, it's hard for me to believe that they were the rough pieces before.
Next we went on a tour around their garden. It was a really big garden filled with all kinds of plants. Not the flowery ones, of course, but tubers, and I saw several fruits too, such as pineapples and durian.
After that we went to their shop because we wanted to buy some snacks. There they sold flour, some snacks (such as eggroll) and ice cream. This was the first time I saw ice cream made out of purple Ubi and corn. I didn't try them though. I bought the eggroll made out of Suwek.
The strange looking thing with a sprout above it is called Suweg.
This is the theory of how I (could) have left my pencil case here:
My bag zipper broke because of the tubers I bought from the market (they didn't really fit! It was hard to put my things in) so while rearranging my things (which means taking out all my things) my friends all were ready to take a photo together, and I'm the only one left behind. So I rushed and didn't check. That's why I'm more sure I left it here.
Next off we went to the Tofu Home Industry. We got lost along the way and in a way or another we reached the Tofu Home Industry in another village, not the one we were assigned to. We completely went out of radar :v. The village we went to is Dusun Kretek, while we actually should go to the one in Dusun Maitan, near the Jetcoolet Home Industry.
We were met by very eager workers there. They were all so friendly.
It was a Home Industry owned from generation to generation, and it had been established for 25 years. The recent generation was Ibu Nafsiyah (45 y.o) and her husband Bpk. Romidi (43 y.o). She has been making tofu for 8 years now (in her Home Industry) and they start working from 3 a.m. and finish at 2 p.m. Before working in their own Home Industry, they worked in someone's place to get experience.
They used American Soy bean instead of local ones because the local ones weren't really good.
First, the soy beans were soaked for 4.5 or 5 hours. After that they skinned and grinded the Soya by a petrol powered machine. Next it was boiled in a big well like place, using clean firewood, or else they would be smelly. It was then strained then put into a rectangular mould. Cut it with a wooden ruler's help to make the tofu's size similar, then fry it. After frying, they were soaked for a day in cold water so they won't be dense.
When cutting the tofu, the sides were cut and they were fried into "Tahu Usus". They were really crispy.
They only sold two types of tofu though in the market, which were fried tofu and fresh tofu.
Next we went to the Jetcoolet Home Industry:
In the Jetcoolet Home Industry, they made both Jetcoolet and Criping Gelombang (wavy chips). First the Singkong was peeled manually, washed, then steamed for 15 minutes. They were steamed on clay stoves, and they could steam from 30-35 kg. After they cooled (I think it was cooled in the fridge, I didn't really pay attention on the fridge part) they were then sliced with a machine, then fried. That's for the normal flavour. For the Balado one, they were put into one giant "tank" filled with Balado seasoning and mixed together by an electric mixer.
I then bought 1/2 kg of the Balado flavoured Ceriping Gelombang.
After that we went back to Gatotkaca. Riding all those distances made me feel unhealthy, so I was allowed to take a nap and skip the next programme, make someone less stranger, which was making friends with the local people around there.
After the refreshing nap, we set off to Candi Mendut in the evening around 6:30.
We intentionally went there to see how the Buddhism monks meditate, but sadly there was no meditation happening. So we just went inside and walked and looked around the statues. Yla told several myths and stories related to the Candi and about Gereja Ayam.
We biked back and packed up our things. I slept late because we dawdled.
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