Come as you are…

It was Friday yesterday, so as usual, I was not having meat…but Cooking4stp was in town and going out would probably mean we would end up eating that. So for a change, I decided to cook a few dishes and ask her over to my place for dinner. Another advantage of having dinner at home is you do not have to dress up nicely and can just come as you are.

Now, what did I have in store for her? I cooked this cempedak masak lemak…

I do not know if cempedak has an English name but it is a fruit like nangka or jackfruit. I had it cooked with the usual ingredients and milk in place of santan (coconut milk). I also fried this vegetable dish of daun bandung (tapioca leaves) and anak jagung (baby corn)…

So sorry about the steam; I took the photo when it was piping hot! Then for my main dish, I conjured up this special dish of udang galah (freshwater prawns) cooked with tempuyak (fermented durian)…

I know others have cooked it before and if I remember correctly, my missus has tried it once as well…but I never bothered to find out how to go about it. For one thing, I can never follow recipes and when I do, the dish will turn out to be a disaster! So I just added what I thought I should…and by George! It turned out very very nice indeed. You’d probably say I’m bragging but I think it was nicer than Ruby’s butter scotch prawns!

Other than my own home-cooked dishes, I also bought this Thai-style mihun with sambal petai from 3Q-Takeaway…

and some kim kua koi (Chinese-style pumpkin cake) for dessert…

…and it being the dabai season, of course, we had some of those as well. Cooking4stp brought along some cheesecakes from the hotel where she was staying like this one, for instance…

There were two other slices but by the time I remembered to take the photographs, we had finished almost all of one and the photo of the other turned out rather blur, so I have decided against posting it.

Well, what was her verdict on all the stuff that I had cooked? In case you’ll think I’m trying to blow my own horn, I’ll just let her comment personally herself. I think she should be back online on Monday when she gets back to the office. LOL!!!