Go Tell It On The Mountain

Last December, the company conducted the year-end meeting at Mount Bromo.  As ‘queen of convenience’ who grew up and spend most of my life in a big city, the idea of going to the mountain was not appealing to me. If it were up to me, I would love to skip the trip but unfortunately as an employee, I had no choice but joined the trip.

Mount Bromo is the most popular of all East Java’s travel destinations. this active 2,392-metre- (7,85 foot-) high volcano lies 112 kilometres (70 miles), about three hours, southeast of Surabaya. Enclosed by perpendicular walls 350 metres (1,150 feet) high, Bromo’s awesome 2,200-metre- (7,220-foot-) high ’sand sea’ caldera has three mountains within it, craters within one huge crater, the Bromo Semeru Massif. There are also three small crater lakes inside the larger crater

On the appointed date, we left Jakarta for mount Bromo as a group of 140 people. We stayed at one of Bromo resort hotels which is located around 1700 meters above sea level. The temperature was quite cold. The next day, we had to wake up at 3 am to get ready to climb the mountain to be able to watch the sun which rises at around 5 am. I can't deny that the view of the sunrise was so beautiful......

During I was in Bromo, one thing that captured my attention was one of the famous dishes of East Java named Rawon (Dark Beef Soup). Rawon is a special dark beef soup cooked with keluak (fruits of kepayang). The special dark color of rawon comes from keluak as the main spice. Keluak is a dark brown nut from Indonesia about the size and shape of a flattened golf ball. Before cooking, the content of the nuts is white in color. Good nuts after cooking, should be richly dark and oily, with the contents variously described as “opium” or “soft tar”. The nuts come from the Pangium edule or “Kepayang” tree, which grows wild in Indonesia and parts of Malaysia.

My mom came from one of the cities in East Java so since I was a kid I have been exposed to this authentic dark beef soup. My mom cooked very delicious Rawon and she always served it warm to eat with steam rice, boiled salted egg, beansprout sambal and shrimp-crackers. It’s so yummy ……..

When I arrived back home, I tried to find my mom’s old recipe of Rawon and here is her version of Dark Beef Soup:

Ingredients:

500 g beef
1 liter water
6 shallots
Pinch of salt
1 roasted tamarind
2 teaspoons coriander seeds
2 keluaks (fruits of kepayang)
1 piece (around1 cm) of turmeric
1 piece (around1 cm) of galangal
1 stalk of lemongrass

Directions:
Clean the beef and boil it in the water in a saucepan until almost tender
Remove the beef from the saucepan and cut into small cubes.
Grind all spices except lemongrass and galan¬gal then sauté at medium temperature.
Put the spice into the boiling beef stock in the saucepan
Add lemongrass and galangal
Put back the beef cubes into the saucepan
Cook through until the beef is really tender

To make the Bean Sprouts Sambal

Ingredients: 3 red chillies, 5 g of roasted shrimp-paste, pinch of salt and a cup of short beansprout

Grind the red chillies, roasted shrimp-paste, and salt, then add the bean sprouts. Mix well

Complement
Rice
Sambal taoge (bean sprouts sambal)
Boiled salted eggs
Fried shrimp crackers

Serve Rawon warm with steam rice, salted egg, bean sprouts sambal, fried shrimp crackers and Go Tell It On the Mountain........