Anything and everything…

My sister-in-law was in Sibu some two or three weeks ago…and she gave us a fish. It had been sitting in the freezer for some time, so when it seemed to me that my missus, for reasons known only to her herself, had no intention of cooking it, I took things into my own hands before the poor thing got fossilised and end up looking like a potential character for “Ice Age 4 – Th4w”.

I was not familiar with this variety and it was very big, so I was not sure whether it would be nice if it were steamed. Considering its size, deep frying would use up a whole lot of cooking oil…so cooking it with sweet and sour sauce or with black or fermented beans and ginger was out of the question – both would entail deep frying the fish. In the end, I decided to cook fish curry with it…

I just used the A1 Mountain Globe curry paste (seafood), so I would not go into the details of the cooking procedure. Well, I’m glad to say that it turned out pretty nice…

…but unfortunately, there weren’t any ladies’ fingers, brinjal or pineapples in the refrigerator, so I could not put them in the curry and come out with an all-in-one dish. As a matter of fact, there wasn’t much in the fridge that day – just one-third of a cabbage, so I would need to use that for the veg dish to go with the curry.

I sliced the cabbage thinly, and did the same to 4-5 shallots, peeled and two chillies, seeds removed. Then I cut some hay bee (dried prawns), soaked…into tiny bits and mixed that with the rest of the stuff….

Having done that, I had to make the dressing. There was a little bit of thousand island salad dressing left in a bottle that had been standing in the fridge since God knows when…and some evaporated milk. I mixed the two but the dressing was not enough and I could taste just the milk. I added a spoonful of peanut butter and some sugar but the end result still was not that nice. I squeezed 4-5 calamansi lime into it and pouring the dressing into the cut ingredients, I tossed the whole thing together…

By George, it turned out to be very well after all. I thought it was pretty good and we finished all of that in just one sitting – my anything and everything salad dish! LOL!!

Not the same (2)…

I had a post on this a long time ago. In the past, we had Indomie instant mee goreng (fried noodles) that were made in Malaysia and even then, people were telling me that the same product made in Indonesia was nicer. Something must have happened along the way…and the Malaysian counterpart has taken on a new name – Ibumie and rebranded its product, Always. I’ve tried it before and it tasted more or less like what it used to – nothing has changed, or at least, not that I noticed.

But the other day, at Ta Kiong in Kuching, I spotted these…

– the original Indomie instant mee goreng, made in Indonesia. Without any second thoughts, I bought some and when I came home, I cooked a packet to try…

I don’t know if it was psychological but it did seem nicer. There were more things inside – the seasoning, the oil, the soy sauce, the chilli powder and even, some fried onions. I don’t recall the Malaysian version having all that.

m2mc also had a post on this the other day and though he did note a difference, he was diplomatic enough not to commit himself and say which he thought was better. As far as I know, my daughter eats this quite regularly in Wellington, New Zealand – the  original Indonesian version and she seems to be enjoying it…