Indulgences

1. Bakpia

   Small baked pastry with sweet bean filling

   Usage

   The souvenir sweet of Yogyakarta. It began as a Chinese meat pastry, but the Yogyakarta version is filled with sweet mung bean paste. The shops are concentrated in the Pathuk district

2. Gethuk

   Sweet mashed cassava cake

   Usage

   Steamed cassava mashed into a cake, found all over Central and East Java at the market snack stalls in the morning and late afternoon. Nowadays it comes in many flavours, cheese among them

3. Klepon

   Rice ball filled with palm sugar

   Usage

   Glutinous rice-flour balls filled with palm sugar and rolled in grated coconut, usually green or white. The sugar melts and runs out when you bite, so put the whole ball in your mouth first

4. Srabi

   Small thick rice-flour pancake

   Usage

   Also "serabi" or "surabi". It looks like a pancake but is made from rice flour, not wheat, so it stays soft. Eaten with coconut milk or a sweet palm-sugar syrup poured over

5. Wingko babat

   Flat coconut and glutinous rice cake

   Usage

   A flat cake of grated coconut, glutinous rice flour, sugar and a little salt, known along the north coast of Java and sold at stations, bus terminals and cake shops. Often just called "wingko"

   Grammar Note

   "Babat" is the town in Lamongan, East Java, that the cake is named after

6. Jenang

   Thick sweet porridge-like sweet

   Usage

   Flour — rice, wheat or another kind — cooked down into a thick sweet. Because it is soft you eat it with a spoon or a banana-leaf scoop ("suru"), with coconut milk or palm-sugar syrup ("juruh") poured on. There are many varieties

7. Wajik

   Glutinous rice and palm sugar sweet

   Usage

   A traditional sweet of glutinous rice and palm sugar, brown from the sugar. It takes a long time to make, so it is made in quantity by several people at once, and it turns up at celebrations

8. Lemper

   Glutinous rice roll with shredded meat

   Usage

   Glutinous rice wrapped around shredded chicken or beef ("abon") and rolled in banana leaf into a cylinder. The version wrapped in a thin omelette instead is called "semar mendem"

9. Kretek

   Clove cigarette

   Usage

   A cigarette of tobacco mixed with cloves, named for the crackling sound it makes as it burns. It originated in Kudus in Central Java, which has a museum about it. Note that many indoor venues are non-smoking and it is not allowed on public transport

   Grammar Note

   The word is a Javanese onomatopoeia for the crackle of the burning cloves

10. Udud

    Cigarette

    Usage

    The Javanese word for a cigarette, the same thing as the Indonesian "rokok" and "sigaret" — chopped tobacco leaf rolled in paper, lit at one end and drawn on at the other

    Grammar Note

    Also used as a verb meaning to smoke.

11. Nginang

    Chewing betel

    Usage

    The practice of chewing a betel leaf ("suruh") folded around areca nut ("jambe"), gambier ("gambir") and slaked lime ("enjet"). Common among older Javanese women and used in ceremonies. It has been linked to oral cancer; this is a word to recognise when you see it, not something to try

    Grammar Note

    A verb form beginning with "ng-". After chewing, the quid is spat out or swallowed

12. Tuak

    Fermented palm or rice liquor

    Usage

    Liquor fermented from anything containing sugar — palm sap ("nira", "legen") or rice. Java is majority Muslim and drinking has a very narrow place: do not carry it about openly or offer it to anyone. Home-distilled liquor of unknown origin has repeatedly been found adulterated with toxic alcohol and has killed people, so buy only from licensed shops

    Grammar Note

    The sweet unfermented sap is "legen" — a different drink

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