Pak Min's Chicken Soup from Klaten or Why Won't a Food Magazine Publish a 900-Word Essay about Chicken Neck and Donuts?!

This blog is also available in an audio format! I couldn't upload it to this page (technology will always elude me), but I'll be happy to email the mp3 for your entertainment :)

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I'm sick. So I've positioned myself at the Dunkin Donuts directly across from Sop Ayam Pak Min Klaten, or Mr. Min’s Chicken Soup from Klaten. Though chicken soup is a Jogja specialty, this just-out-of-town style has an unbelievably fast turnover; they open at 2pm and are often sold out, or habis of their delicious soup by around 8. Many a time I’ve tried to buy Mr. Min’s Chicken Soup from Klaten only to be confronted with big red-lettered ‘HABIS’ signs. My logic tonight is that since I'm not hungry now, I will be able to watch the soup store while I use the internet and then make a mad dash across the street as close to the time of habis-ing as possible. Of course now that I am in Dunkin Donuts I realize this strategy is flawed because surely I will only know if Mr. Min’s Chicken Soup from Klaten is going to be habis by the 'HABIS' sign that will eventually fill the front window (does it have to be such a BIG sign? and two of them?). There is also the conundrum of the donuts; eating a donut will delay the time at which I want to eat Mr. Min’s Chicken Soup from Klaten, thus placing me closer to the ETH—estimated time of habis—and yet their multi-colored reflection in the nearing night-time window is so tempting.

I eventually decide that the time is nigh and (cleverly getting a donut to go) rush over to Mr. Min only to realize that I was little prepared for the moment at hand. The menu is unreadable, and instead there are bunches of small plates with different categories of chicken in them—I have forgotten about this peculiarity of Mr. Min’s since Jogja style chicken soup is usually of one variety. In my haste to obtain the goods, I point to the two top bowls this and this and, after an awkward moment where I realize I don’t have enough money and have to fish around in my bag for change, am on my way back home, Chicken Soup from Klaten by Min secured.

The first soup contains large chunks of a dark colored meat that at a glance look like liver, but the consistency is not dense enough. I settle for flavorful ‘dark meat’ but on reconsideration decide it may be congealed blood, if chickens have that much blood. Dessert by DD: Honey-glazed chocolate.

The next couple day are a bit of a blur; in between 104 fevers, coughing up strange material and vomiting every last iota of pocari sweat out of my body, I manage to see a doctor (and see Die Hard—ain’t being sick great?!). On the first day of meds I’m finally in the land of the semi-lucid, and when my next-door neighbor offers me a donut from the local bakery ‘Kuki Donuts’, it’s enough to get me to leave my room, a veritable struggle. As I bite into the doughy goodness, I understand why Indonesia has a Dunkin Donuts in every hospital—because when you haven’t eaten for several days, what could be more delightful, more hopeful, than a frosted cloud of sweetness with sprinkles? All of a sudden there is sweat pouring down my body and I realize (1) that it’s awkward to sit at a table with five other people and be visibly dampening your clothing and (2) my fever has broken.

The next day, I’m not sure that the anti-biotic isn’t making me more ill, but in a different way. Again I’m unable to eat, but mostly because my body refuses to process anything in a normal fashion. Gross. At around 4pm, I’m starving and the memory of that divine donut is fading. I remember my genius in buying two soups from Mr. Min from Klaten, and gleefully dump the congealed refrigerator goo into a pot for reheating. While I’m stirring the essence of poultry, cilantro, and a yellowish lime, I try to identify the parts of chicken swimming around in my peppery broth. (A fun and absolutely commonplace game for the American foreigner in Indonesia. Just the other day at lunch Nicole ordered something that seemed quite normal but showed up with small pieces of furry-looking translucent material covered in hot sauce. I popped one in my mouth. Intestine.) I closely examine the chunks until I conclude that this is a chicken head, split open with half an eyeball still visible in each socket, and the sliced segments of chicken neck, commonly known as ‘crab food’ in my homeland.

Though not usually slight of stomach, I’m hesitant to push my luck today, and toss the chicken head in a bag, half-eyeball still glaring. The neck turns out to be the most delicious part of the bird, a fact my mother knew long ago, but I have somehow overlooked until fate and Mr. Min intervened. After scraping the last bit of tenderness from gritty spine, I wonder why I haven’t caught more crabs in my life. This thought is quickly replaced by a calculation of how much energy it might take to walk the one block from my house to ‘Kuki Donuts’—it’s no Severna Park Donut Shack, or Gibson’s apple fritter, but I swear there’s still magic in those sprinkles.