Rostiana reveals all about her 'kaledo'

Maria Endah Hulupi and Hera Diani, The Jakarta Post, Palu, Central Sulawesi

If you ask people at random here about the region's special dish, one answer will likely come up repeatedly: kaledo.

It sounds exotic enough, but the term is an acronym for kaki lembu Donggala, or literally, the legs of a Donggala cow (Donggala is a regency northwest of Palu, about one hour's drive away).

So, basically, kaledo is cow leg soup, where the meat is still united with the gigantic bone, making it a vegetarian's nightmare.

But for the rest who have tried the dish, their mouth will water as they recall that the succulent meat and juicy marrow soaked in clear soup tastes both spicy and sour.

If you wish to enjoy a good kaledo, try the small restaurant, Mutiara Indah, located on Jl. Translik Dupa, Layana Indah subdistrict. Despite the humble facade and interior, the restaurant serves a delicious kaledo, and has an idyllic view of the hills and Tomini Gulf.

There is a wooden board in front of the kiosk saying that it sells Kailinese food (Kaili is one of the province's major ethnic groups) but in fact it only sells kaledo, with several varieties of drink.

Here, a bowl of steaming hot kaledo served with hot rice is sold for Rp 12,500, but customers can also eat the soup with boiled cassava, available free as a rice substitute.

Every table is also provided with small bowls of sliced lime, sweet soy sauce and sambal (chili sauce) along with a big plastic bowl to discard the bones after the meat and the marrow inside the bone have been eaten.

Every day, kiosk owner Rostiana, a Buginese, starts her routine activities at 6 a.m. She usually buys around 10 kilograms of cow legs from a nearby traditional market and has them cut up into smaller servings.

She has developed her own recipe and cooking method to prepare a less fatty version of the soup, which emphasizes the delicious broth extracted from the cow legs and, of course, the tender meat.

Basically, to make her famous soup, Rostiana believes that less is more.

"I keep my recipe simple, unlike other vendors. I don't use too many spices in it. My soup is easy to prepare and doesn't need hours of cooking to make the meat tender," she said proudly.

In her small kitchen, she marinates the cow leg pieces in salt and tamarind juice and lets the seasoning penetrate before she boils them in a huge cooking pan along with green chilies and more salt.

Asked about the secret of her recipe, she said in all seriousness that cooking the meat with a steel or aluminum spoon in the pan was an effective way of tenderizing it.

"The spoons help speed up the cooking process. I need only one -and-a-half-hours to cook the cow leg, but other vendors take around four hours, to make sure that the meat is tender enough to eat," she smiled.

During the cooking process, she occasionally removed the fat from her broth so that the end result would not be too oily.

"Cow leg contains a lot of fat and many people like my soup because it's not as oily as the soup prepared by other vendors. I know many people avoid fatty foods because it's not healthy," she explained.

Rostiana's special cooking method has made her kaledo famous and her small kiosk is open every day until around 2 p.m., when the last bowl of kaledo has been sold.

Among her regular customers are students from nearby Tadulako University, tourists and local administration officials.

"It's good to know that people, including the mayor, come all the way here to try my kaledo. Some Jakarta residents also like to take back my kaledo all the way from here," she said.

She doesn't mind sharing her cooking secrets with her curious customers, who eagerly want to prepare the soup at home.

"I tell them everything, the ingredients ... and to add a few steel spoons to it."

But it remains a puzzle that, despite her honesty, complaints have flowed in, including one from her German guests, who, after carefully following her instructions, failed to get the desired result.

"I guess it's the (traditional, charcoal-fueled) stove that makes the difference," Rostiana claimed.