What she wants…

When my NZ friend came to Sibu last year, she bought a whole lot of this ikan sepat masin (salted sepat fish)…

– several kilos of it but unfortunately, it did not manage to get through the New Zealand customs so it all came to naught.

When I was growing up, we used to fish in the streams and drains beside our houses and we often managed to catch what we call ikan puyu…and also ikan sepat. However, the ikan sepat that we caught were of a different variety. They were flat, silvery and very attractive…with a red/orange tint at the tip of the bottom fin unlike the black and not so great looking ikan puyu. But I can recall that in those days, in my family, they would cook the ikan puyu in their own special way – what we call masak kuden and they would enjoy eating it a lot…but I would not touch the fish probably because I was put off by the looks. We did not eat the ikan sepat though – those would be kept in a fish bowl and reared until they died and then we would just get rid of them.

Now, this ikan sepat masin…or budu sepat as we would call it in Sarawak Malay, is of a different variety from the ones that we used to catch. If I’m not mistaken, they are actually sepat Siam and they’re black and not exactly pleasant to the eye…

However, the other day, out of the blue, my mother asked for it – the salted ones, that is, so I had to go to the market the very next morning to buy two (RM2.50) and fry them for her to eat…

I tried  a bit and I thought it tasted like…salted fish and did not feel that it was great or anything that I would want to eat again.

Somehow or other, it has its followers, it seems…and my NZ friend, for one, would be drooling away, wishing and hoping that she could lay her hands on some to cook her special masak lemak nenas ikan sepat masin… Slurpssss!!!!! LOL!!!