Semanggi Suroboyo, The Authentic Surabayan Food
Semanggi Surabaya
Semanggi or sometimes being called as pecel semanggi, is one of Surabaya traditional culinary. This food is rare to be found, and tends very difficult to find. The problem is about the limitedness of the semanggi or clover leaves as the main ingredient.
The sellers who sell Semanggi is commonly middle-aged ladies who walk around the menu by lifting up the basket while making some particular noise like “Semanggiiiiiii” in order to let the people know their existence.
The ingredient in pecel semanggi is, of course, Semanggi leave (Marsilea crenata) or boiled clover leaves, there is also boiled bean sprouts. Those leaves are completed by the seasoning sauce that made of boiled sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) mix with palm sugar, salt, shrimp paste, little bit peanut and chili. Mix all the ingredients until it formed of sauce.
This pecel served without rice, only clover and bean sprouts vegetables which sprinkled the seasoning sauce and served in banana leaf Pincuk, it is kind of banana leaf that folded and used as kind of plate. There is no spoon or fork to eat this food but krupuk. We can eat this pecel semanggi using particular cracker called kerupuk puli. This cracker is made of rice, some Javanese people call this cracker as kerupuk gendar. This cracker is large enough, and we can just chunk the cracker to be the spoon and eat together with the dishes.
The price is similar between those walking ladies, which is cost around Rp. 3,500 per pincuk. But if we buy semanggi in restaurant or stalls it will cost Rp. 8,500 – Rp. 10,000 per pincuk. Convenient takes more price.
