Some more (2)…

In my post two days ago, I mentioned that my friend, Annie, gave me a fish while she was back home in Sibu with her twins during the school holidays.

She did mention that it was an ikan patin…

…from Batang Ai.

Now, Batang Ai is that place in Sarawak where they have a hydro-electricity project and they are using the lakes in the vicinity to rear fish commercially for sale. Normally, if it is ikan patin from one of those small fish farms in the outskirts of town, I would not touch it at all as there would be this horrible mud smell. I was told that if they have free-flowing water in the farm, the fish produced would not have that smell…and you can be sure that there is all the flowing water that you would need at Batang Ai and the fresh fish from there would not have the smell plus more often than not, they are sold at the market in town ALIVE! Now, how fresh can it get!

Well, we had the tilapia from Batang Ai here…

…and it was indeed very fresh and did not have any of the off-putting smell.

I’m not an expert when it comes to fish so I’m usually not too certain which is what but if I’m not mistaken, what we had for our steamed fish dish…

…that night at my alumni’s annual reunion dinner was tilapia and most likely from Batang Ai as well but I may be wrong.

As for ikan patin, the Chinese restaurants here would serve it steamed – as a cheaper alternative to the almost similar ikan tapah – I am pretty sure this was tapah that we had here…

…or they would use it to cook zhao chai (preserved vegetable) soup.

Well, my missus cooked it masak kunyit-style that day…

…and I would say that done this way, it tasted really very good. Thank you so much, Annie, for the fish. I am sure you took a few of those home with you to KL – care to share how you cooked yours?

And talking about people coming home to Sibu, a cousin of mine was back here from Brisbane, Australia the other day and she gave me these…

– a 4XL t-shirt, an Aussie cap…and chocolates…and a can of ham. Thank you so much, coz – that was so sweet of you to cart all that stuff all the way.

Well, that is it – all the goodies from friends and family for the time being…unless there is some kind soul somewhere who is generous enough to send some more my way? Hehehehehe!!!!