Bubur Kacang Hijau (mung bean porridge)

It was the first breakfast food I tried in Indonesia. Not that it was my first breakfast.
I had awoken to find myself in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar country the two previous mornings already. This was to be my third day with my host family in Yogyakarta and I woke up with an almost familiar feeling of unfamiliarity— everything around me sharp and overwhelming in its newness. Even the sounds of the morning were different here: the squawks of roosters right outside my window (which was actually a glass panel door that would open onto the patio, in theory, but was actually always locked); the personalized jingles of food vendors who rolled their carts through our neighborhood; the voices of neighbors talking outside, speaking in Bahasa Indonesia and Javanese, occasionally using a word that I recognized—or one that thought I did. On this morning I heard voices from inside, as well. Ibu, my host mom, and two new (even less familiar) voices were talking amicably in an elusive exchange of sounds and meanings.

I stepped out of my room and was greeted by an Australian-Indonesian husband and wife, good friends of my host parents, who were visiting from Down Under. They had gotten up early and walked to a nearby morning market. Small black plastic bags in their hands and on the counter suggested that it had been a successful trip. Ibu ushered me to the small, marble-top table in the kitchen. With the curiosity and bewilderment one might expect from an infant, I watched as plates were pulled from the drying rack next to the sink and unfamiliar foods unwrapped from their plastic veils. Of everything, Ibu thought the porridge would be the best, gentlest thing for me to try, and I happily agreed to try it. The wife, whose name I have now forgotten, expertly untied a plastic baggy ballooned with richly colored porridge—amber mixed with olive green, and subtle hues of dark purple—and poured it out into a bowl. I had never seen anything like it.

"That's probably too much," Ibu intervened with a second wide soup bowl and began to spoon out a smaller portion for me.
"Her stomach is still adjusting." And it was.

"With coconut milk?"

"Yes! Please."

The Australian man explained, speaking in English now with a comfortingly familiar accent, that his wife wanted to avoid the rich milk, so they had asked the vendor at the market to package everything individually. We sat down with our bowls around the kitchen table where their potpourri of market goodies was now on display.

During our arrival orientation in Jakarta, the week before, I had eaten crispy fried tempeh, spicy stir-fried green beans, whole fried fish, and stuffed tofu fritters. These had been my first tastes of Indonesia and they were mostly new and strange to my New England-cultivated taste buds. All of the sights, sounds, smells, schedules, and people surged through my faculties of perception, with me, overwhelmed, frantically trying to process and understand it all that was coming at me. Part of me just wanted to cozy up to a warm bowl of plain oatmeal with milk. Even the smallest recognizable thing could bring a lot of comfort in a wholly new and unfamiliar place.

There hadn't been any porridge at our arrival orientation, but here I was in my host family's kitchen with a breakfast not much different from the rolled oats we subsist on at home. The first spoonful was still very warm when it reached my mouth. It was creamy and rich, and sweet, but just subtly so. Perfect. I sampled bits of the other market foods, but I can't remember now what they were or even if I liked them. The porridge stayed with me. The sweet topaz stew and sangria grains of sticky rice were mysterious, and comforting. It was as if I was developing nostalgia for something I was trying for the first time.

Ibu told me what the porridge was called but my inexperienced tongue couldn't swallow the name. It spilled out of my mouth and floated away from my memory's grasp, lost somewhere among my foreign surroundings.

The couple invited me to join them on their next trip to the market before they left. Two days later, on the last morning of their visit, I woke up early to walk with them to a small outdoor market not far from our house. "Hati-hati, ya" Ibu called from the front door as we left. As we made our way along the edge of the road, I remember asking them what Ibu had meant. Hati-hati, after all, would translate to "hearts," wouldn't it?  No, no... they explained that it was close to "take care" or "be careful." Still feeling a bit puzzled, to myself I conceded that pickpocketing was an issue here and perhaps that was what Ibu wanted me to be careful about. (Later I would learn that "hati-hati" is used more commonly than one might use "be careful" in the U.S., applicable anytime someone departs.)
On our way to the market we passed a few people working in the flooded rice paddy down the block, and here and there vendors were preparing food and shop owners opening storefronts. The streets weren't busy yet, though; only the purr of the occasional motorcycle and the creak of passing becak predicted the bustling traffic that would soon crowd these streets.

The market was a modest neighborhood affair, but everything about it was exceptional to me. "Careful. Hati-hati," warned the kind Australian man pointing to the sloping metal roofs that I had barely missed with my forehead. The roof provided some shelter to the open-air marketplace, converging over the walkway that ran down the middle, but wasn't constructed for the unusually tall. Ducking down to keep my head intact, I started to notice my surroundings: bunches of leafy vegetables and towers of root spices, rows of packaged foods folded up in banana leaves and deep metal cauldrons whose escaping steam suggested hot (but indiscernible) contents.

As I looked around, I could see that people were looking at me. Their chatter was mainly indecipherable, but I could understand that I was attracting attention for more than just my height. I tried to smile at everyone who looked my way, but inside I just felt sheepish. All I could do was follow behind the couple and wait for their guidance. They led me to a woman seated behind three large pots and ordered something from her. Then I watched her swiftly prepare little bagged portions from each of the pots in succession. As she whipped the ladles from bag to bag, the sweet, milky smell of porridge wafted and recalled to memory the breakfast I had loved two days before.

The couple reminded me of the name of the porridge, but I wouldn't be able to recall the words later. And wouldn't try the dish again for many weeks.

I came to realize that breakfast foods aren't really a thing in Indonesia—at least not in the way I was used to. For the most part, my morning meals were similar to lunch and dinner, consisting mainly of rice topped with a stir-fry, fried tempeh and tofu, or soup. Bubur (porridge, oatmeal, gruel, or congee) is a meal for babies, the ill, or perhaps for a special treat on the weekend—not necessarily for breakfast.

Bubur kacang hijau is mung bean porridge, but isn't complete without a few necessary flourishes. It is usually served together with a black sticky rice pudding and topped with coconut milk. The ensemble is sweetened with the wonderfully rich-flavored palm sugar. Shavings from a deep red block of this Javanese sugar gives the porridge its amber glow. Pandan leaves are added while the beans boil, adding a subtle yet distinctive note of a leafy vanilla mixed with, perhaps, almond? A dash of salt and sometimes a gentle touch of ginger are the only other spices, leaving room in the bowl for the mellow earthiness of mung bean and the sweet and nutty black rice.

Sweets are perhaps the only food group in Indonesia not graced with a loving and fiery blend of spices and peppers—although even this exception warrants exceptions (like rujak es krim, a mixture of freshly diced tropical fruits topped with coconut milk ice cream and liberal drizzle of chili sauce—sweet, cold, and spicy!)

Many warung, small restaurants open to the street, sell bubur—mung bean, black rice, rice flour, savory congee and other varieties of porridge. Bubur kacang hijau, known colloquially as bubur kacang ijo and thus often shortened to burjo, can be harder to find. Once I knew the name, I told practically everyone who would listen how much I loved the porridge, perhaps hoping that the more times I said it the sooner I would find a chance to try it again. (Some people were flattered that I knew such a quintessentially Yogyakartan dish, most were amused.)

Eventually I would find burjo again. One morning at the small village home of my friend's host family I would help her host father boil mung beans and chop up a small mound of palm sugar, to make a simple and unassuming, but perfectly delicious rendition of the porridge.
Riding through the city one night with friends we would stop at a warung that specialized in burjo, offering it hot, or cold with crushed ice, late into the evening. My friend insisted that it was one of the best you could find in Yogyakarta; and, as if I'd already tried a hundred bowls myself, I wholeheartedly agreed.