Puasa Special: Jeruk Belimbing

Edit: Right....so I made a boo-boo. Apparently, you do not use baby starfruit. Apparently, its a completely different belimbing altogether. Erm, the informal Brunei nickname for it is quite... hmm... but apparently, the Malaysians call it belimbing asam? familiar anyone? Anyways, what you use for the jeruk belimbing is the mature fruit, not the baby one...

And, if it it helps any, just last night (during a tahlil thing at my grandmother's) I saw someone praising this jeruk with my own eyes ;) Ibu had brought over the jeruk to serve at the table. At the end of the tahlil, the lady was saying how nyaman it was, and took a plastic bag to tapau some of it. So yea... if you try your hand at making this, I'm sure you won't be disappointed! :D

Jeruk belimbing (or preserved starfruit) is something I do not eat, I have to admit. But our relatives really like this, and there have been repeated requests for the recipe, so why not feature it here? :D

What you need:
Young starfruit
Salt
Sugar
A lot of water

What you do:

1. Like all fruit, wash the starfruit, no matter where you got them from.
2. Chop them up into large pieces, maybe 2 or 3 pieces per fruit.
3. Soak in salted water for about 10-12 hours. At this point, the green fruit would have turned yellow.
4. Transfer the fruit pieces into jars filled with concentrated sugar water. This should be a very thick solution. Store in the fridge, and serve whenever you want! :D

And that's it! This recipe actually came about because unfortunately, our starfruits do not develop into ripe starfruits easily. They either just fall of the tree, or are hijack ed by the monkeys as soon as they are ready to eat (or maybe even a little before!) Which is a pity, because I do remember picking the ripe starfruits a few years back. It seems as though circumstances have changed, sigh. Here's how the baby starfruit look like ^^

If you want, you can add chillies into the final step, to give the jeruk a bit of a zing! Cut them up and just stir well to mix. Serve the jars straight from the fridge, with little bowls so that people can take what they want :D I'm sure this will be very popular, particularly with adults. Children might not quite be so fond of it. :P Another jeruk we sometimes make is jeruk manga... But that's another recipe for another day ;)