Asinan

It has already known widely in Indonesia that one of the most famous traditional foods in Bogor is asinan. Asinan is a kind of salad poured with sauce as its topping. Despite having the name asinan (asinan is derived from the word asin, an Indonesian word which literally translated as salty in English), asinan has a unique mixture of sweet, sour and spicy taste. Asinan is made of a variation of vegetables and fruits. For example, we use vegetable ingredients such as bangkuang, sweet potato, sliced cabbage, cucumber, bean sprout and daun antanan, a kind of herb. Meanwhile, from the fruits ingredients, we use kedondong, salak, unripe mango and unripe papaya. On the other way, the sauce itself is made of a blended mixture of red chili, dried shrimps, belacan paste, vinegar, salt and sugar which is boiled in a large amount of water. Sometimes, to enhance its taste, people add fried peanuts, noodle crackers, or raw chili sauce on top of it. People can eat asinan as a single-ingredient dish (vegetables only or fruits only), but also can eat it as a mixed-ingredient dish, and usually most of us eat it mixed. Actually, asinan is made as an appetizer, but mostly the people in Indonesia eat it as a dessert due to their fear that the sour taste of asinan will cause them a stomachache if they eat it before the main course.