Maritime Southeast Asia · Volume 44, The Long Reduction, the Merantau Road and the Veranda of Mecca

Kuah beulangong

Name: Kuah beulangong
Total time: 2 h 30 min
Yield: Serves 6 to 8, scaled down from communal cauldron quantities
Cuisine: Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula and the Melaka Strait
Ingredients: 1 kg bone-in goat, plus 500 g offal if wanted; 500 g young jackfruit (nangka muda), cut into chunks; 15 dried red chillies (or 20 fresh); 7 shallots; 3 garlic cloves; 1/2 tbsp turmeric, chopped; 1/2 tbsp ginger, chopped; 2 tbsp coriander, toasted and ground; 5 candlenuts, toasted; 1 tsp cumin, toasted; 1 star anise, toasted; 1/2 tsp fennel, toasted; 2 cm cinnamon stick; 1/2 tbsp white pepper, whole; 2 cardamom pods, toasted; 3 cloves; 2 lemongrass stalks; 15 curry leaves (daun temurui); 1.5 litres coconut milk

Aceh

Kuah beulangong, goat and young jackfruit in a rich spiced gulai: chunks of bone-in goat and pale young jackfruit sitting in a deep bowl of thick, brown spiced gravy, a curry leaf and a shard of cinnamon bark visible at the surface.

An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.

Time: 2 hours 30

Researched: 11 sources cited
Reviewed: Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
Cooked: Not yet cooked and reported

A communal, festival-scale gulai of goat and young jackfruit, its indigenous rice-field ancestor layered onto by an Islamic-festival role, cooked exclusively by men at cauldron scale.

by Aceh

The better-evidenced culinary vector is Gujarati and Tamil Indian trade, not Arabia directly. Gujarati merchant networks dominated the Cambay-to-Melaka run through the sixteenth century, trading cotton textiles for pepper and spices, with documented commercial links to Acehnese ports including Pidie and Pasai, and those traders are credited in the historical record with carrying Islamic teaching alongside their goods. Acehnese society today still recognises a resident community of Indian descent, mainly Tamil and Gujarati. This is the actual mechanism behind curry leaf in kuah beulangong, the curry-masala spice grammar in mie Aceh and kari, roti canai's presence in Acehnese street food, and even a piece of Acehnese vocabulary: martabak Aceh's name is credibly derived from the Indian maharaj-ba, "the king's cake." The chapter's honest correction to its own spine claim: "heavier, more Middle Eastern spicing" is the popular shorthand, but "heavier, India-inflected curry spicing, on routes that also carried Arab and Persian traders and, later, Ottoman diplomatic and military contact" is the more accurate one.

Read the history

As tradition built it

Serves 6 to 8, scaled down from communal cauldron quantities. 2 hours 30 minutes.

Ingredients

1 kg bone-in goat, plus 500 g offal if wanted
500 g young jackfruit (nangka muda), cut into chunks
15 dried red chillies (or 20 fresh)
7 shallots
3 garlic cloves
1/2 tbsp turmeric, chopped
1/2 tbsp ginger, chopped
2 tbsp coriander, toasted and ground
5 candlenuts, toasted
1 tsp cumin, toasted
1 star anise, toasted
1/2 tsp fennel, toasted
2 cm cinnamon stick
1/2 tbsp white pepper, whole
2 cardamom pods, toasted
3 cloves
2 lemongrass stalks
15 curry leaves (daun temurui)
1.5 litres coconut milk

Method

Toast the whole spices, coriander, candlenut, cumin, star anise, fennel and cardamom, then grind with the fresh chilli, shallot, garlic, turmeric and ginger to a paste.
Fry the paste out until fragrant.
Add the coconut milk, cinnamon, white pepper, cloves, lemongrass and curry leaves, and bring to a simmer.
Add the goat and offal, and simmer gently, covered, for around two hours, until the meat is tender.
Add the young jackfruit for the final thirty minutes, until it has softened and taken up the sauce.

What a modern chef changes

The cauldron's scale, honoured at home rather than shrunk into a saucepan.

Rung 6

Method

Cook the goat sous vide separately, low and long, for guaranteed tenderness, then combine with the spiced coconut base reduced on the stove, finishing the two together over direct heat.
Run the finish on a Big Green Egg indirect at low, even heat, the closest a home kitchen comes to a belanga's retained, communal-scale warmth, and cook a genuinely large batch if the occasion allows: this dish's whole logic is abundance cooked at once, not a portion for two.
Toast the whole spices properly before grinding, exactly as the household reference recipe behind this method already does; there is no modernist shortcut here that improves on a technique the tradition already gets right.

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