Compressed Rice Cakes

In this cookbook, I have used ‘lontong’ interchangeably with ‘ketupat’. These refer to the compressed rice cakes which are the staple for gado gado, lontong and soto ayam. ‘Ketupat’ refers to compressed rice locked in square-shaped dumplings wrapped in a criss-cross matrix of coconut leaves. ‘Lontong’ is more easily achieved by cooking rice in specially designed metal cylinders lined with banana leaves. The cylinder of rice would be sliced like a loaf of bread and then each slice is quartered before serving. Nowadays, you also find plastic packets of measured rice, technologically designed for quick boiling and then served as ‘ketupat’.