The dish from the Indonesian island of Java that drove the plague out of town.
According to a legend, when an epidemic broke out in the city of Yogyakarta, the Sultan of that time asked his subjects to cook and eat a meal called Suvar Lodha and remain confined to their homes for 49 days. Thus the epidemic soon ended and with it began a tradition that continues to this day.
Saver Lodha is a simple vegetable curry made with seven different vegetables and the broth is made from deliciously spiced coconut. Nutritionists who have studied the ingredients of this diet are very positive about the benefits of additives like galingal.
Said to be anti-inflammatory, it has anti-inflammatory properties. Experts say that this meal consisting of easily available seasonal vegetables is the best diet for quarantine days.
But the most important thing about the Sultan's order to cook Sewer Lodha was that it was also an appeal for social solidarity. An entire city preparing the same food at a significant time also creates a sense of mutual unity.
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Like many aspects of Javanese culture, one of its purposes is to ward off bad luck," says Javanese heritage researcher Ravi Yanto Bodhisantosa. The removal of an inauspicious omen takes priority over the success of an individual. The people of Java think that there is no obstacle in their life, life takes care of itself.
Javanese foods are also rich in symbolic richness as a whole. For example, 'Nasi Tumping' is a mixed vegetable and meat dish topped with yellow rice. This food is decorated in the same way that the world under the sky is decorated.
'Nasi Koning' is fragrant rice which is said to be a good omen for a new home or new business, and a drink made from turmeric called 'jamu', a Javanese name. Derived from the word meaning 'prayer of health', it is claimed to induce relaxation when drunk.
Sewer Lodha's food is taken as a linguistic symbol as well as a numerical symbol. Its seven ingredients are added to coconut milk. These seven ingredients include melinjo (an olive-like fruit), melinjo leaves, chayote (a squash-like drink), long beans, eggplant, jackfruit, and soybean pods, and all have their local names for their sounds. There is also a symbolic status.
An important purpose is to remove bad omens
In the local language of Java, the word 'wongo' of the eggplant name 'terang wongo' means bright color but also means 'awakening'. While for long beans, the word 'Lanjar' from the Javanese word 'Kching Linjar' means 'good fortune'. When all these seven items are collected in one place, it becomes a kind of good omen.
Sewer Lodha is a simple vegetable curry with seven ingredients and a spicy coconut broth
An example of sever Loda's creation of 'Salamitan', a social ritual, which anthropologist Clifford Geertz says is the primary symbol of Javanese cultural identity. 'Salamitani' actually means the compulsion or fate associated with it. The Sewer Lodha ritual is performed without the expectation that it will bring any benefit.
"It is very interesting that Sewer Lodha is not the name of a commodity," says Santoso. It is the name of a reaction against misfortunes that can overcome them all. This can reduce or eliminate the effect of bad omens.
One aspect of Sewer Lodha's fascinating story to outsiders is its non-magical nature. The ingredients of this dish are items that are easily available in every home in Java. Preparing this meal is very simple. Put all its ingredients in a pot and then put the pot on the stove.
In the past, its cooking originated with two royal heirlooms, a spear and a flag, which were allegedly ordered from the tomb of the Prophet Muhammad. These blessings were visited in the streets and alleys. Nowadays it has become a common food. Apart from the linguistic and numerical significance, it also has a practical benefit which may not be common and which has made the Salamatani ritual popular.
Although cooking sever lodha is a simple task, how it came to be is a complex matter. Some researchers say that it is related to the Javanese civilization that reached its peak in the 10th century. Sewer Lodha dates back to the days of refuge for the refugees during a lava eruption in Mount Merapi in 1006.
Food historians, Fazal Rahman, trace sever loda back to the 16th century, when he believes long beans were introduced to Java by the Spanish and Portuguese. However, other researchers say that it was an ancient tradition that was discovered in the 19th century.
At the beginning of the 20th century, when the nationalism awakening movement started in Indonesia, the intellectuals there started to celebrate this tradition again while discovering many other traditions.
If nothing else, this tradition was greatly enhanced in the twentieth century. The most famous example of this dates back to the reign of Sultan Huming Kobo Wono VIII in the 1930s, when several waves of plague plagued Java for two decades. But according to local records, Sewer Lodha has been built to withstand crises in 1876, 1892, 1946, 1948 and 1951.
Its history becomes more complicated when, at various times, sever louda became a popular dish in Algerian Malaya as a whole. Its popularity in these islands cannot be seen in isolation from when and how it became a popular food here.
Khair Johari, a food historian, believes that such questions about Sewer Lodha are meaningless.
According to Johari, 'Peranakan, a community of Chinese in Singapore, add sever lodha to their food with rice, while the Javanese people living in the same country cook without turmeric.'
Benefits of traditional foods
According to Johari, the preparation of Sewer Lodha in different forms in these islands has nutritional, cultural, social, societal and environmental effects on it. While in the lush plains of Yogyakarta, such vegetables are grown, from which the local villagers have been cooking them during the days of eruptions of lava mountains or epidemics.
The entire region is open to several sea routes where quarantine means keeping the newly arriving traveler completely isolated from all of them.
It is also possible that Javanese sailors may have popularized this Yogyakarta dish in other areas. Dishes such as yakhni, fish soup, and sever loda were much easier to cook for those living on ships. .
And of course the dishes keep changing. Sewer Lodha dishes have today been rediscovered as a health food in urban areas of Southeast Asia.
It is also becoming popular with the local middle-class people here as a food symbol of their heritage: in the Instagram generation, colorful pictures of Sewer Lodha are very popular in attempts to compare, compete and grab people's attention. More are being used.
"When I first opened this place, people would come here drinking jam to share on social media and say, 'Look! How connected I am to my culture. But now Indonesians are beginning to realize how many health benefits these traditional foods have. We are generally not aware of the medicinal benefits of its ingredients, such as the sedum leaves, lemon grass or bark used in it.
Saver Lodha may have lost its true meaning outside of Yogyakarta, but even now the dish is not just considered food. 'Loda is just a diet, but there is a great philosophy attached to it, there is a wisdom behind it,' says Nova. Its real secret is its fresh ingredients.'
Currently, the changing food trends in Jakarta have nothing to do with the popularity of Sewer Loda. When the recipe for cooking sever lodha was shared in a WhatsApp group during covid-19 as an order from the current Sultan of Yogyakarta, the majority of the city accepted it wholeheartedly and people started cooking it and Presented to his neighbors too.
The city of Yogyakarta has changed a lot in the last twenty years due to the rapid construction of hotels, shopping malls and the airport, but the need for social rituals still remains. If anything, the advancement of technology in communication has made people's emotional attachment to old things even stronger.
However, in the Yogya Karta, no one can say with certainty whether the order for the cooking of Sewer Lodha was issued by the Sultan or not. A palace spokesman told a local newspaper that no such order had been issued by the Sultan, but no one believed the denial.
Now that the Sultanate of Yogyakarta is a rarity in the Indonesian system, i.e. a kingdom within the republic, the current sultan wants to show himself as an innovator, so he is breaking away from the old superstitions and rituals associated with this food. Wants to keep away. His refusal to acknowledge this tradition may pose a political threat to him.
In the wake of the current outbreak, public health officials believe that when thousands of people travel across Indonesia after Ramadan, they may inadvertently cause the spread of Covid-19. Although the number of confirmed cases of the virus in Yogyakarta is low, it would not bode well for the kingdom that this order to cook sever lodha is a central part of the measures against the virus.
While one can sympathize with this logic, it does not necessarily mean that the local people's emotional attachment to Sewer Lodha is wrong. The natives of Yogyakarta have coped with the current epidemic crisis in the same way as they have done in the past, that is, by cooking sever lodha and it does not matter to them whether the order was issued by the Sultan. went or not Now they will wait 49 days.
Recipe for cooking Sewer Lodha
Prep time: 15 minutes, cooking time 20 minutes and serving time: four minutes
Ingredients
50 grams of millanjo
100 hot milanjo leaves
200 grams of chayote
100 grams of long beans
One eggplant
A single number
A patty made of soybeans
100 ml of coconut milk
Spices
Six Indonesian onions
Three cloves of garlic
One spoon of coriander powder
A spoonful of salt
A spoonful of sugar
Besides that
A pinch of red chili
Three green chillies
One centimeter thick
A quick number
Vegetable recipe
Cut the chayote into cubes
Cut the long beans into 2 cm pieces
Also cut the eggplant into cubes
Peel and chop the cucumber
Recipe for making spices
Mix onion, garlic, coriander, salt and sugar together.
Finely chop the red and green chillies.
How to cook
Stir the coconut milk into the spices and bring to a boil.
Add kholjan, kathal, chayote, milanjo and long beans.
Add milanjo leaves, chillies, brinjal and soybean paste to it and cook till it all dissolves.
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