lentog — Kudus, Indonesia

Lentog is built around lontong, rice cooked and compressed inside a woven leaf casing until it sets into a dense, sliceable cake, served here with a soft, mildly spiced vegetable stew made from young jackfruit simmered in coconut milk. The combination is soft, mild and filling, closer to a savoury breakfast porridge in texture than to a sharp or spicy dish. It is reported specifically from Kudus, where it is closely associated with a particular neighbourhood on the edge of town and is most often eaten in the morning, from stalls that set up early and are usually finished serving by mid-morning. It sits alongside the city's other well-known rice and noodle dishes as one of its signature breakfasts. Rice is cooked, packed into a leaf or plastic casing and left to compress into a firm cake, then sliced. Young, unripe jackfruit is simmered slowly in coconut milk with turmeric, galangal, bay leaf and a little sugar until soft and mildly sweet, and cubes of fried tofu are added toward the end. The sliced lontong is arranged in a bowl, ladled generously with the jackfruit stew, and finished with fried shallots and sometimes a little chilli sauce on the side. Within the broader group of lontong-and-vegetable-stew dishes found across Java, this version is set apart by its notably mild, slightly sweet coconut broth built on jackfruit rather than the more common mixed-vegetable lodeh, and by its role as a morning rather than midday meal. Some stalls add a boiled egg or extra fried tofu, but the soft jackfruit stew stays the constant.