Years ago…

My cousin in Kota Kinabalu was born in Sibu and spent his early childhood here and was still small when the family moved to Sabah. He was here for my wedding but that was, of course, many many years ago and he was here on a working trip a few years later but he had never been back since. Well, he came over for the weekend to attend our niece’s wedding so I went to pick him and his son up upon arrival at the airport that evening and took them here for dinner…

Unfortunately, owing to work commitments, he could not fly in earlier so they had to miss the traditional Melanau ceremony that I had featured in yesterday’s post.

I managed to get hold of some dabai and terbulus…

…for him to enjoy. Needless to say, he enjoyed both…and the boss of the café was so kind as to let us try his special dabai paste…

…that was simply out of this world! I thought he used those salted/fermented dabai to make that but he told me that he used fresh ones and cooked them, seeds removed, with some other ingredients to come up with this winning combination and the kind and generous guy even gave me some to take home to enjoy.

I ordered some of our favourites here for my cousin and his son including the mushroom roll…

…the Payung rojak…

…and the otak-otak…

…their Bangladeshi lamb curry…

…and the kacang ma chicken…

…and also the ikan keli (catfish) cooked with ginger and soy sauce and so on – I think this is similar to one of the ways my mum used to cook it at home before but she would add brandy to hers. The photograph did not come out very clear and we also had the belimbing prawns and I did not manage to take a snapshot  of that…but anyway, I have had them before in my earlier posts.

I ordered the Sibu specialty, the jelly pisang, for the son to try…

*Archive photo*

…and the durian ice cream for the dad…

*Archive photo*

…for dessert and the two loved the latter so much that they were fighting over it. (In fact, they went back on their own the very next day just for that!!!)

My cousin brought me this…

He told me that it was a special fruit cake made by his sister and no, I did not open it – instead, it went straight into the freezer to join the fruit pudding that I am saving for Christmas or Chinese New Year…but the fragrance, I must say, was absolutely overwhelming!

In the meantime, this came via poslaju…

…from another cousin in Kuching…

…and these two from another one…

…who sent them and also this lovely butter cake that I like a lot…

…through her mum who also flew in for the wedding.

Thank you so much – it certainly was so nice and sweet of all of you.