If I only had time…

When I was young, it would rain a lot towards the end of the year during what was known as the “landas” season. The fruit trees would start to flower and eventually, bear fruit. Thus, the end of the year would be the time when we could enjoy all the local fruits like rambutans, dabai (black olives), durians, lenggeng (mata kuching) and so on.

Lately, however, things have not been so predictable. With global warming and the extreme weather conditions, Mother Nature is utterly confused or so it seems. You probably would have seen in Clare’s post in her blog that the durian trees are flowering again…and so have Kpg Nangka Boy’s and my mother-in-law’s too.

She has been giving us a lot of the durian flowers and if you remember, I had a couple of posts here and here on the ways in which we can cook them – my favourite being frying them with sambal udang kering (dried prawns) or cooking them in curry or masak lemak (with santan/coconut milk). But these need some time to prepare and since my English classes have resumed, I no longer enjoy the luxury.

So, yesterday I decided to take the easy way out and cooked it with tempuyak (fermented durian)…

I just boiled a bit of water and threw in a handful of anchovies (ikan bilis/pusu), a few stalks of serai (lemon grass), chillies and a bit of belacan (dried prawn paste) for the stock…and then I added two or three tablespoons of tempuyak. I sprinkled some sugar in it to counter the slightly sourish taste, and finally, I put in the durian flowers and simmered for a while…

It was very nice but if I only had time, I could have defrosted some of the prawns I got from my brother-in-law in Bintulu (No, not the giant ones from Kpenyu! I’m saving those for my daughter! LOL!!!) and added those as well. I bet that would enhance the taste and make it even nicer…

AmIdol update:
The top 7 will be singing “songs from the movies” today…and I’m hoping Adam will sing “Girl, you’ll be a woman soon” from Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, and please…..dont let Anoop sing “Jai Ho“! LOL!!!