The Asam Sunti is an Acehnese language if which in Indonesian, asam sunti is referred to as a vegetable starfruit. A vegetable starfruit that has been soaked in salt water and then the vegetable starfruit it dried in the sun until the vegetable starfruit becomes dry.
The dried a vegetable starfruit is called as asam sunti. Before becoming to asam sunti, the vegetable starfruits will go through for several processes, first, including a ripe vegetables starfruit is picked from the tree after all the picking is cleaned then it is soaked in salt water.
It is aged for a period of three or five days, when it is seen that the color has turned to yellow, then it is removed from the salt water and then enters the next stage of the process, which is drying it for one week and must to dry it under the hot sun.
The dried a vegetable starfruit will change a color to brown and the taste will also change. If he is still just a vegetable starfruit, it will only have just one a kind of the taste, namely a sour taste. There is no other taste than that. Just a sour taste.
There is only just a sour taste, but if it becomes to asam sunti, the taste will increase, from the beginning it was just a sour, now it a tastes the sour and a little salty. Because before it becomes asam sunti that in the process it is soaked in salt water so when it becomes to asam sunti it tastes a bit salty.
The asam sunti is one type of a raw spices, between than the other types of a spices raw. When you want to cook a broth or to cook something like that, then the raw spices are mixed with another a raw and then they are will grounding together. After that, that a spices become to the perfect spices for used.
Only a vegetable starfruit can be made into the asam sunti, the star fruit cannot be made into the asam sunti, because a starf ruit is not included in the vegetable starfruit category but it is just included into the star fruit of fruit category.
The asam sunti can be stored for a very long period of time, one month, two months and can even be stored for months, the taste and a shape will never change at all. Can be stored for a long time because it has gone through for a very extraordinary process, so it can be stored for a long time.
The old women in the villages all of them can process it, can making a vegetable starfruit into asam sunti. In fact, if you look at the way of making it, it is very easy, but you need to know that the slightest way of making it is wrong, then the vegetable starfruit will not become asam sunti, but will rot.
The young women in the villages today they are not can for make a asam sunti, they not necessarily for that. And they not out of concern. There are almost no a young women who care about this knowledge anymore. Maybe, because that science is considered trivial by them.
Thank You
April 14, 2023
Kind Regard
Thayeb Loh Angen
Author’s asst. Syukri Isa Bluka Teubai.
Photo by Jamaluddin-Lodin LA. With the Nikon D7000 Camera, Nikon 18-55mm Lens.
Captions for All Photos: The Asam Sunti, April 13, 2023.
