Coto Makassar

Coto Makassar is documented to the city of Makassar and the Sultanate of Gowa, the Makassarese kingdom that dominated South Sulawesi from the 16th century. By tradition the soup was cooked for palace servants and soldiers before spreading to become an everyday dish, and it keeps an association with weddings and religious feasts. The often-cited figure of roughly forty spices is told locally as a symbol of the diversity and unity of the Makassarese people rather than a fixed recipe; the count varies cook to cook. Today it is most commonly eaten for breakfast across the city.

The broth is thick and clings to the spoon, brown and nutty from the ground peanuts and roasted rice, with a deep spice warmth running underneath. The beef is tender and the offal — tripe, intestine, lung — has lost any toughness and turned soft and absorbent, each piece soaked through with the soup. A spoonful of tauco brings a salty, fermented funk; sambal brings heat; a squeeze of lime cuts the richness. You tear the ketupat into the bowl and let the dense little cubes of rice carry the gravy.

The body of the soup comes not from coconut milk but from two thickeners: peanuts roasted and ground to a paste, and rice toasted dry then ground to flour. Both are starch-and-fat rich, so they suspend in the broth and give it weight without splitting. The aromatic base of shallot, garlic, candlenut and a wide spice mix is fried first so the spices bloom in oil before the stock goes in. The offal is simmered long and slow to break down its connective tissue until tender; classically it is cooked in rice-washing water, said to soften the meat and mellow any strong smell. Tauco and sambal are added at the table rather than in the pot, so each bowl is seasoned to taste.