Rujak Cingur is a kind of mixed vegetable salad from East Java. Rujak means salad itself and cingur or congor means lips in Javanese. Rujak Cingur is served with peanut sauce mixed with fermented prawns sauce (Petis in Javanese) and added with the best cow lips (Cingur) that makes it delicious meal both in sunny or rainy days.
This dish contains a variety of chopped vegetables like spinach, cabbage, sprouts, string bean, cucumber etc. Tofu and tempeh are usually added along with cingur. People mostly like to eat this meal accompanied with krupuk (snack). Krupuk is a deep fried snack made from wheat flour. It is very rare people enjoy this salad without this crunchy snack.
The sauce is made of fried peanut, fermented prawn sauce, ketchup, onions, tamarine, a bit slice of young banana, and chilli. Fried peanut, tamarine, young banana, onions, chilli and tamarine are grinded in a big stone plate (cowek) with a carved stone (uleg-uleg) by adding a little water. If you never see uleg-uleg, just imagine a revolver but you grip it not on the handle but on the gun barrel (front part). After being minced, fermented prawn sauce is added and stirred with kecthup. Then the sauce is poured on the chopped vegetables, tempeh, tofu, and cingur.
The very special thing of this salad is on the cow lips. Boiled cingur without any herbs or spice is sliced into small size and served in Rujak Cingur Dish. People are always looking for this, since it tastes good combined with the sauce especially the sensation of jelly like texture inside the mouth.
Most people like Rujak Cingur added with Cingur. However, people who are still imagining the real live cow trying to kiss them on the lips will avoid to enjoy this salad with cingur added.
/// Written by Gigih Dwiananto, Indonesia
Rujak Cingur: A Kiss on Cow’s Lips
