I have had a number of posts already featuring our local kampung (village)-style of cooking this soupy dish that we called sayur rebus. Literally, it simply means boiled vegetables and these are the basic ingredients – some belacan (dried prawn paste), a handful of ikan bilis (dried anchovies) and chillies.
You dump all those in some water and bring it to boil and then you let it simmer for as long as you can to let the flavour of the belacan and the ikan bilis seep into the water so that you will have the most delicious stock for your soup.
The list of combinations that you can put in is endless – you may want to throw in some paku (jungle fern) and young/baby corn…or some cangkuk manis and sweet potatoes or pumpkin or perhaps, you would like some d’rian mentak or unripe durian…
I had some not too long ago that an uncle of mine in Kuching sent to me to cook for my mum as she was asking for it and there was none available around here. I followed my uncle’s way of cooking it which I thought was very nice but my mum did not really like it that way. She prefers it simple – the way we would usually cook sayur rebus.
Then the other day, I got some more from a cousin of mine. Her hubby has a kebun (garden, a fruit garden to be more precise) in his kampung and his durian trees are bearing fruits but since there isn’t anybody standing guard, by the time the fruits ripen, the people in the vicinity would “help themselves” and they themselves would not get to enjoy any. So he decided to pluck some and cook since most of us love to eat it this way.
To cook the d’rian mentak, you will have to split it open to remove the seeds…
…before throwing the flesh into the sayur rebus stock that you have prepared. Once cook, the durian would have turned soft…
…and because the belacan and ikan bilis are already salty and there is the sweetness of the durian, there is no need to add salt or msg unless you so desire…
If you love belacan and you enjoy this kind of simple but exotic ethnic style of cooking, you will love it…a lot, this much I can assure you.
...STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS! 