Better this time…

I’ve tried eating it before in my younger days but I did not like it at all. I guess it is an acquired taste and not everybody can appreciate it. What I am talking about here is tapay,or tapai as some may call it…

I got some for my mother from the Bandong stall that I frequent at 4 for RM1.00. It is actually fermented rice wrapped in leaves and it tastes something like tuak, the rice wine made by the ethnic people in Sarawak (…and don’t some people call that tapai too? In Sabah perhaps?). That’s all there is to it – rice to which some yeast has been added to make it ferment… 

I wouldn’t say that I didn’t like it this time around. As a matter of fact, I thought it tasted all right. It left a lingering sweetness in the mouth, and that was what I particularly liked.

It certainly does not have the offensive stench and strong taste of belacan (dried prawn paste) which can turn off those uninitiated individuals who have never had the chance to try it before. When I was in the UK, everytime I cooked curry, the English kids walking past the house would go “ooh” and “aah” – they loved it! But whenever I was frying something with belacan, they would go spitting away, wondering where that horrible smell came from. But don’t we all love belacan regardless whether we use it to fry vegetables like midin or kangkong or as a dip for our ulam?

Anyway, getting back to the tapay, I guess I would regard it more favourably from now on but given a choice, I think I would opt to just stick to my piansip kampua mee pok…

What about you?