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ou would be hard pressed to find someone who hadn’t tasted ketupat here.

This delicacy, boiled rice wrapped in a pouch of woven palm leaves, is usually served around Idul Fitri.

Another traditional dish cooked over the festive season after Ramadan is jenang salak, a soft fruit fudge only found in Banjarnegara regency, Central Java, one of the poorest regions in the province with a population of 33 million.

Although the jenang salak tradition is only 10 years old, and hasn’t spread across the region, Madukara district — the production center for this fudge cake in Banjarnagara — is Central Java’s largest producer of salak. Salak is a fruit from a species of palm tree native to Indonesia,
and one of the main ingredients of this fudge.

In fact, Madukara’s jenang salak businesses are flooded with orders in the leadup to Idul Fitri, with families eager to serve these fudge cakes to their guests.

Interestingly, local residents are also determined to maintain salak as an icon of the district.

Salak is very popular in Indonesia and available in nearly all parts of the country. With its sweet and astringent taste, salak is normally consumed when it is ripe. In Madukara, the fruit is processed into a soft fudge to increase its sale value.

Out of the district’s 50,000 people, 70 percent work as salak farmers. During the harvest season, Madukara produces 30 tons of salak a day.

Not surprisingly, the prized product, now sold in various major cities, has often dropped in value to a level far below the normal market price.

“The price received by farmers was at times incredibly low, down to Rp 500 per kilogram. We should sympathize with them,” said 50-year-old Azizah, a resident of Madukara. As the head of the district’s family welfare program at the time, she racked her brain to find a way to increase the price of salak.

“Finally, with the help of my husband, I came up with the idea of using salak in another dish. And the outcome is this jenang salak,” Azizah told The Jakarta Post recently.

Thanks to Azizah’s smart thinking, the price of local Banjarnegara salak began to rise and didn’t decrease during bumper harvests. Salak is now sold for direct consumption as well as to make this fudge.

“At present, local salak sells for at least Rp 2,500 per kilogram. It’s remarkable because this used to be thought of as an expensive price,” added Azizah, noting that the local variety had indeed been used for fudge production.

“We make the fudge cake with local salak instead of pondoh salak, because this [Yogyakarta] variety is not suitable and too pricey,” she explained. Pondoh, according to her, lacks viscosity and aroma.

On the days approaching Idul Fitri, her jenang salak production triples. On ordinary days, Azizah’s home industry uses 3 tons of salak a month for the snack. “By Idul Fitri, we need about 8-9 tons to produce it,” she said.

One hundred kilograms of salak mixed with coconut milk, glutinous rice and palm sugar will produce 40 to 50 kilograms of jenang salak. “Coconut milk, palm sugar, ground salak and glutinous rice flour are stirred in a big wok on a stove for about 10 hours,” explained Azizah.

Thereafter, the mixture of jenang salak is cooled for one night, then cut and wrapped in small plastic containers the size of a thumb. “The fudge cakes are then packed and ready to be sold,” she pointed out.

When purchased directly from sellers, the sweets only cost Rp 20,000 per kilogram. “In cake shops they sell for Rp 25,000 per kilogram,” Azizah went on.

Jenang salak can now be found in several cities besides Banjarnegara, like Kudus, Central Java, and Jakarta.

“An entrepreneur in Kudus offered to buy 5 tons a day if I removed the branding [Jenang Salak Azizah]. We certainly rejected the offer,” she asserted, adding “We’ve recently had this brand patented as we don’t want this product to be reproduced and owned by other fudge-producing cities.”

Meanwhile, she is looking into other processing methods that would cut down the time spent stirring the batter on the stove, which is currently 10 hours. “Any faster way of cooking would surely save a lot of energy and time.”

Kusworo (40), a resident of Banyumas, Central Java, said he was impressed by Banjarnegara’s jenang salak. “It really has a different taste. It’s very typical, perhaps because of the salak.”