Kedondong Stew

In one get-together event, a lovely friend brought some kedondongs from Malaysia. For a while I was thinking of making rojak, tropical fruits cut out in bite size and served with peanut sauce.

But then I remember I got this kedondong stew recipe from Femina I have been wanting to try.

It is a unique mixture of sweet-sourly fruit with sweet, spicy, and semi-thick soup.
Did I say spicy? Yup, it is spicy alright.
The spicy flavour comes from cloves and my favourite spice in the whole world, cinnamon.
The cloves give warm kind of hot effect while cinnamon gives a lovely aroma and y know, that strange but heavenly taste I even could not describe.

Just yesterday I stumble upon a recipe in one of Chef Wan's book, it's called Pere Cotte Con or Alloro Fragrant Pear. Instead of kedondong, it is pear they're using. The recipe is similar, only that the latter uses orange juice, limerind and vanilla essence in addition.
Maybe next time I try the pear. But for the review of this recipe is:good good good!

Kedondong Stew aka Setup Kedondong bo

(best served chilled)

You will need :
10 kedondongs
1000 ml of water
350 grams of sugar

4 cloves

1 stick of cinnamon
1 tablespoon of cornstarch
water enough to soak the kedondongs
1 tablespoon of salt

First off, peel kedondong and carefully cut to make a flower-like shape. Dissolve salt in water, and soak the fruit for about 20 minutes. Wash them thoroughly.

In a pan, bring water to boil, put the sugar, cloves and cinnamon and cook until sugar dissolves. After that put kedondong and cook for a while.
Lastly, dissolve cornstarch in small amount of water and mix it well in the pan.

Again, they're best served chilled. So you might need to keep them in the fridge overnight before serving.