Instead…

The other morning, I saw my missus taking out the minced meat from the freezer and I asked her what she was going to do with it and she said she was going to cook her usual steamed minced pork with soy sauce. Hmmm…I felt like something different for a change so I asked her to leave it there and let me cook it…instead.

What I did was to chop one small Bombay onion and slice a few pieces of ginger and add those to the minced meat. There was a little bit of cincaluk (fermented shrimps) in the fridge, about one tablespoon, so I threw that in, plus a pinch of msg…and after breaking an egg into it, I mixed everything well. There wasn’t any need to add any salt as the cincaluk would make it salty enough already. I also had some leftover century eggs in the fridge from dinner the previous day so I mixed a bit inside and arranged the rest of the slices on top…

Then, I steamed it until it was cooked…

It tasted good…

…but I would prefer a bit more cincaluk as I could hardly taste it at all, another tablespoon perhaps.

For the soup, I cooked some pumpkin, masak rebus kampung style…

I boiled a handful of ikan bilis (dried anchovies), a cube of belacan (dried prawn paste) and a chili, seeds removed, in some water and let it simmer to bring out the fragrance and the taste of the ingredients. Then I added some shrimps and pumpkin cut into bite-size pieces and bring it back to boil. That was easy, wasn’t it? And the best part was there was no oil used, no added salt necessary and no msg – all the ingredients used would make the soup sweet and salty enough.

So that was our simple lunch (and dinner) that day…