I cannot remember whether I have had a post on these…but all attempts to search through the earlier posts failed to show any result. I’m talking about what we call la kia kio or terung dayak, or if directly translated, dayak brinjal. It does not look like a brinjal actually – more like a tomato, but then again, we call the tomato ang moh kio (Westerner’s brinjal), don’t we?
The dayak brinjal is very sour…and the simplest way to cook it is to cut them into slices and throw them together with a handful of ikan bilis (anchovies), a bit of belacan (dried prawn paste) and chillies into a saucepan of water. Bring to boil and simmer till the flavour comes out into the soup. Add salt and msg according to taste. You may wish to enhance the taste by replacing the ikan bilis with prawns or fish…and serai (lemon grass) and kunyit (tumeric) are also optional.
That day, I was too lazy to start from scratch, so what I did was to buy RM3 worth of the pre-cooked dayak brinjal at my regular Bandong food stall comprising just the brinjal and the assam-like gravy…and I added some ikan bawal hitam (black pomfret) and boiled it…
Once the fish was cooked, I had a balanced dish of protein and veg plus soup…
It has a sour taste…and the spiciness depends on how hot your chillies are. If you prefer it a lot hotter, you may use cili padi instead…and with the serai (lemon grass) and kunyit (tumeric), the taste is something like tom yam.
There you have it, a cooking lesson for lazy people. That certainly was an easy way out, wasn’t it? LOL!!!
...STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS! 