Central Sulawesi offers exotic seafood dishes

Maria Endah Hulupi, The Jakarta Post, Palu, Central Sulawesi

Rich in flora and fauna, Central Sulawesi -- just like the rest of the Sulawesi island -- has a variety of popular seafood dishes, rich in fresh local fish as well as seafood items.

Seafood dishes are commonly offered at restaurants as well as roadside food stalls, especially along busy streets in the capital city of Palu.

Most of the seafood items -- pelagi and demersal fish, shrimp, squid and others -- are chargrilled, fried or boiled in popular local dishes, as well as Chinese-influenced dishes.

Among the traditional seafood dishes are paku mara (fish in spicy sauce), uta dada (fish in coconut milk) bau tunu (grilled fish), lamala (spicy shrimp), duo sole (anchovies with chili) and pariah kambu (pare or bitter gourd stuffed with fish).

Many of these traditional dishes use local herbs and spices, in addition to modern seasoning.

These seafood items are mostly served with rice or even rice mixed with corn -- which could lead to indigestion for those with a sensitive stomach.

One of the most popular local seafood items is a dish with local sogili eel, a kind of big eel the size of an adult's thigh, weighing around 25 kilograms each.

Sogili can be cooked into various kinds of local dishes and one of the popular ones is fried sogili. This simple delicacy is prepared by cutting the eel into thin slices, dipping it in batter and frying it until crisp.

The best sogili dishes are said to be in the restive Poso regency.

The province is also famous for its rich traditional soup of kaledo, short for kaki lembu Donggala or Donggala's ox legs.

It's a piping hot soup with a big cut of ox bone, served with rice or boiled cassava.

A knife is usually provided not only to separate the succulent meat from the bone but also to remove the juicy marrow from inside the bone.

Apart from its famous kaledo and seafood dishes, Central Sulawesi also boasts a simple vegetable-based soup, called uta kelo, a mildly sour soup with several pieces of buah kelor (the fruit of an edible fern).

Actually there's not much to tell about this soup but it has a special place in local culinary scene because local people believe that domestic and foreign tourists who have eaten this soup are sure to return to the area in the future.

Thus, if you enjoy your visit, you should try uta kelo.