Fruits And Pestle

A peddler was squatting on the side of the road in Jakarta. Several fruits can be seen in a box on the ground with a carrying pole. This peddler seemed to be hawking fruit. Interestingly, the man was not only carrying and selling fruits but also selling a combination of spices.

In Thailand, it is customary to eat fruits with dips, and I guess it is a similar custom here in Indonesia. A man squatting down had a mortar in front of him, and he was grating something with a pestle in his hand. I didn't know what he was grating, but he was probably making a kind of spicy condiment called sambal.

I had seen sambal being made at a food stall, but seeing that fruit vendors are also making it, I guess they eat it with fruit as well. You might think that fruits are best eaten as they are, but when I think about it, sprinkling salt on watermelon is common in Japan as well.

By the way, Indian cuisine also has a dish called sambar with similar pronunciation. While Indonesian sambal is a condiment, Indian sambar is a soup with spices, so it is completely different.