Down Under…

Sorry…this isn’t going to be a post about Oz, neither am I going there – not in the near future, at least. It’s just that Stella and her hubby and Lucas came over to Sibu from Melbourne for a few days and so, I asked them out to dinner. However, Stella said she would rather have a simple meal at home and sit around to chat…as long as there’s midin and cangkuk manis. In the end, I decided to cook a few dishes myself.

My in-laws’ durian tree is flowering again (Gone crazy, I think! Just flowered the other day – but everytime, no fruits!)…and they gave us some of the flowers, so I fried those with dried prawn (sambal udang kering)…

…and since Stella wanted midin, I fried that too – also with dried prawns – same recipe, different veg…

I could have fried it with ginger and Foochow red wine but I do not quite like it cooked that way…but for the midin, I added a bit of water, so it could be slightly different. For the cangkuk manis, I cooked freshwater prawns (udang galah) masak lemak (cooked with santan/coconut milk) and I added the cangkuk manis, as well as some sweet potatoes and bean curd sticks. I could have added baby corn, bits of cabbage and so on but I was too lazy to go out and buy…

For the meat dish, I just bought some ayam masak merah from my regular Bandong stall…

…and I also bought some Foochow fried noodles and some charsiew (from the stall in the coffee shop opposite Public Bank) to add to it (kay liao or added ingredient) and I managed to get a few of the typically Sibu Foochow-style sio bee from the stall at Rejang Park. Lucas loved the sio bee, and the durian flowers too! Hmmm…must be the Foochow plus Kpg Nangka blood in him!

So that was the simple dinner that we had. Personally, I thought it was just so-so, not very nice…maybe because I was tired from cooking the whole day, so my taste buds were somewhat adversely affected. Ah well, as they always say, it’s the thought that counts!