Melinjo

The mere mention of the word melinjo will conjure up a particular yellowish cracker with a salty taste often found in dishes with peanut sauce dressing, such as gado-gado, although it is also common to find the cracker in Indonesian style fried rice. The cracker, called emping melinjo, is the end result of a process that begins in a 20-meter high gnetum tree in the wild. When the tree bears its fruit, what comes out is a small oval fruit with orange skin to indicate its ripeness. The color becomes more intense and turns red at which point the fruit is now overripe. The fruit and leaves of the tree are both edible, as commonly found in sayur asam (literally ‘sour vegetables’), a mixture of boiled melinjo seeds and tamarind juice. Other uses of melinjo are as a garnish, sprinkled over dishes or dipped in sambal.