Have you ever…

Well, have you ever eaten buah dabai? These are black olives available mostly from the central parts of Sarawak…

The other day, I saw some at the market. They had come all the way from Song and when I asked how much it was, I almost fainted. The current price was RM22.00 a kilo. Normally, the good ones would go for around RM15.00 a kilo. There are cheapers ones but most of the time, they are not very good…unless for some reason, there is a deluge of dabais in the market. The good ones will have very thick flesh that is yellow in colour and have a delicious creamy (lemak because of its rich oil content) taste…

People who do not know will try to boil them in water and they would wait forever for it to cook…as the longer they boil, the harder they get. To cook it, wash the fruits and soak them in mildly warm water until they become soft. Sprinkle salt and toss and they are ready to be eaten…but I prefer it with fish sauce or the gravy from budu’ aur (I don’t know how to describe it but it is more or less some fermented salted fish in brine) or I would add black soy sauce and sugar and toss.

I do not really care for durians or other seasonal fruits but once it is the buah dabai season, I will be making the beeline for the market to stock up and enjoy as long as the season lasts.

And have you ever tried Taiwan sweet potato porridge? In my younger days, when I was younger and staying in Singapore, everytime my late grandfather dropped by for a visit, he would take me to this Gold Leaf Restaurant, a Taiwanese joint somewhere around the Orchard Road area, where we would have without fail, Taiwan sweet potato porridge…..

You can just cook porridge the way you normally do but you put in a few slices of ginger, sweet potato cubes and chicken stock (in place of salt and msg). This is optional but you can add a dash of sesame oil and pepper and sprinkle chopped spring onions, coriander leaves (daun sup/ketumbar) and fried onions before serving. In fact, you can replace the sweet potatoes with canned tuna…and then, you will have very delicious fish porridge. A friend tried it once when I cooked it for him and loved it so much. When he went home, he cooked it for his family and they all liked it. They even thought it was chicken porridge!

Anyway, moving on from there, have you ever tried Malay kampua? Well, instead of the slices of pork, they used chicken breast meat instead…

I think they use the stock from boiling the chicken for the soup…and to be fair, there are many Chinese stalls that do not serve very nice kampua either. I would just give it a 3 out of 10, and personally, I feel that they should just stick to doing what they do best…

I love the Malay fried noodles, for instance, at this Happy Garden coffee shop at Sungai Antu here. I think I’ve posted a photograph of it before…but I did not like the one at Normah Cafe at Jalan Kpg Datu Baru. Nevertheless, they are anytime better than the Chinese fried noodles (dried) which is heavily-laden with msg. The nasi lemak at these two outlets are ok too; you would have seen the photographs in my earlier posts.

Well, I guess that’s about it for this food post which is actually an excuse for me to clear some photographs that I’m presently stuck with! LOL!!!

STOP PRESS: I’m now in Sungai Petani…with my daughter. The good news is I can blog from here but I’ve been taking a lot of photos and I’ll need to sort them out first. In the meantime, I’ll just keep you entertained with some of my backdated reserved posts!!! Happy reading!