Martabak Indonesian Street Food

12 December 2013

Browsing through They Draw & Cook, one of my favourite sites, I found this of Martabak (Mar tha bha k).

The drawing is by Matahari Indonesia (Indonesia’s sun) what a lovely name.

Martabak is a must try Indonesian street food. There are two types of martabak, asin (Ah – shin; salty) or manis (mah-nees; sweet). They are basically pancakes, however the batter for the sweet one has to have yeast in it and the mixture have to be left to one side for at least 1 hour to work. Whereas the salty one they usually use duck eggs, and I think it is an influence from the middle east.

Here are pictures of a man making martabak asin.

My favourite and definitely the one you should try is Martabak manis special, which means the filling is chocolate sprinkles and grated cheese (indonesian cheddar). What?!? cheese and chocolate you say? Yes cheese and chocolate. The toppings/ filling are a spread of butter, sprinkle of sugar, chocolate sprinkle, cheese and then condensed milk. Heart attack inducing, but so good!

Here are some pictures of a martabak maker in action.

If you can see in the picture they are using a special pan to make it so I thought I will never be able to make that at home until I found this video. They are making it with toblerone, mm I am not sure, generally though it looks like a good method.

I am definitely going to try to make my personal heart attack inducing pancake. 😀

Have you had martabak before? what do you think? or have you got something similar to this in your country? because I can’t find any reference on where the sweet martabak as food came from.