[Kristin]

Lontar plant (Borassus flabellifer), commonly called Siwalan or frond is a plant that widely available in the Tuban area which has many benefits. One of them is to be the producer of the drink called by “legen” by local residents. Legen comes from Siwalan flower buds that are still in their stems. Flower bunches of palm was sliced ??a little in the bud with a knife to remove the water white called sap. The word of “legen” is derived from Java language “legi” which means sweet. Legen is mostly made from palm tree pistil flower that has form like tendril. Flower of tendril is cut little by little to be tapped sap and collected in a tube which is usually made from a single piece of bamboo rod segments. Absorption time is usually overnight when in the afternoon, the bamboo tube (called bumbung) that is placed as a container and the next morning it will be full load. One manggar flowers (palm tree pistil flower) usually produces about three to six tubes of legen. To reduce the sour taste, base of the bumbung is mixed with whitewash. In Indonesian legen called “nila”. Types of palm trees are of two kinds. One is like coconut flower and produce fruit that called palm fruit. The contents of this fruit is like sugar palm fruit that has texture soft, chewy and sweet. The other type of palm tree is shaped flowering vines and especially used for sap tapped into legen.

Legen that has sweet taste and refreshing actually also have health benefits, one of them is for alternative therapies of kidney stones. Not a few of the people feel the benefits of this legen. People are advised to consume legen at least 1 month because the benefit of it will erode the rock of calcium in the urinary tract and kidney. Although it has many benefits, sometimes we will encounter difficulties to get due to the nature legen because once a day it will change be a wine (in Java the change of legen is called “tuak”) and intoxicating if error occurred in the buying and saving of legen. Few tips when buying legen are in general if we could suggest we buy directly from the tappers or farmers of legen, but if not, we must pay attention to color of it. To natural legen, color of it is rather murky and a bit lumpy if we compare it with water. Natural legen is white and thick as water that has been used to wash rice. Legen is only lasts 3-4 hours. Beyond that limit, soon turned into a sense of tuak that has bitter taste and the alcohol content is high enough.

To get natural legen, you can visit in the Boto, the one village in Tuban. The price of natural and fresh legen is about Rp 3500 per 1500 ml bottle size. In the month of Ramadan, many buyers come Boto District to order Legen as a drink for iftar. Quite often in the afternoon, they appear under the lontar tree while waiting for the seller to get the sap harvest of fresh legen and straight from the tree. In the area of ??Manunggal Street and tourism place in Tuban area like Gua Akbar, Sunan Bonang, Boom Beach, Temple of Kwan Sing Bio and so indeed there are many traders who sell Legen in bottles or jerry cans. So, let’s visit to tourism place of Tuban and buy some bottles of natural legen as your beverage and souvenir. Taste and feel the sweet and freshness of legen original from Tuban.


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