Kandangan Ketupat : A Unique Culinary From Kandangan

Kandangan Ketupat

Kandangan is name of a town between Banjarmasin and Loksado. It takes about 3 hours from Banjarmasin to get there. Since there is a special cuisine from Kandangan which the material is ketupat, then it is called Kandangan Ketupat.

There’s a recommended ketupat stall in a small town which is the last town before Loksado, named Kaganangan. It’s located on the road side which connected Kandangan and Barabai. The stall is stand together with other ketupat stalls.

Kandangan Ketupat has uniqueness on the presentation, flavor and the way to eat it. Kandangan Ketupat doesn’t have vegetables. “Just eat it with coconut milk and Haruan fish,” said one of the stall servants. The structure of the ketupat is a bit rough and easy to break, different from other kinds of ketupat which is tend to crammed and soft. If it is stirred with fingers or spoon, the complete piece of it will brake to pieces, just like normal white rice. In eating ketu-pat, Banjar people use their hands (not spoon) to dissolve it. For some people that kind of way maybe seem to be a little disgusting, but actually that’s the unique of eating Kandangan Ketupat.

It’s more unique with the Haruan fish. Haruan fish for Kandangan Ketupat are dry chilies, turmeric, soft salt and then smear it to the fish. The fish, then, is burnt with coconut shell.

After it is burned, Haruan fish is mixed with coconut milk sauce which is cooked before with many kind of spices. For ketupat sauce, the ingredi-ents are mixture of  dry chilies, kemiri, turmeric, ken-cur, serai leaf, paste of shrimp, shallot and soft red sugar. Then it’s boiled with the spices coconut milk sauce until bubbled up. Finally, the burned Haruan fish will mix with the coconut sauce. Only with 12.000,00 Rupiah, we can enjoy it.