Torn…

You would have seen this dish hundreds of times before in my blog as it is one of the regular vegetable dishes that we would order when eating out…and for one thing, my girl loves it a lot and would request for it.

If you have been following my blog for sometime, you probably would have seen this photograph of the plants…

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I can well understand why it is called manis as the leaves are indeed sweet but I don’t know why it is called cangkuk which means grafted…and some people call it cangkul, meaning hoe. It is actually very easy to plant – you just save the stalks after removing the leaves to cook…

…and stick them into the ground. I’ve tried too but of course, I failed – I do not have green fingers and everything I planted never survived. Sobsss!!!!

For some reason or other, other than mani cai, a name probably derived from the mispronunciation of the word manis, the locals here also call it lakia cai, Dayak vegetable. Maybe it is native to this region and thrives really well here or perhaps in the early days, people would buy it from the ethnic Dayak ladies at the market but of course, nowadays, it is widely grown and if you drop by the market, you would see it being sold all over. I know there is a stunted/miniature version of the same from Sabah that they call sayur manis – we loved that very much, along with all the other vegetables from Kundasang until word went round about the excessive use of pesticides and chemical fertilisers but frankly, I think it is more or less the same, never mind where your vegetables come from…unless you plant your own at home.

I’ve blogged about cooking it before…but I did add some chili then which would be something not commonly found in Foochow cooking, especially in the past when they would be put off by anything even a little bit spicy and Foochow cooking is basically very plain and simple. For this vegetable dish to taste nice, you would have to tear the leaves…

…like how tapioca leaves would have to be pounded before cooking so as to bring out the taste and the sweetness and other than that, this would make it easier to chew, especially if the leaves are a tad too old and rather hard.

You do not need a lot of ingredients if you want to cook it the original or authentic Foochow style, just some garlic, finely chopped…

…that you fry in a  little bit of oil till golden brown followed by the vegetables before adding in the eggs…

…beaten well. Lastly, just add seasoning – a little bit of salt and msg, that is, and the dish is ready…

It is nice enough as it is but it is perfectly all right to add other ingredients that you may like to bring the dish to a whole new level. I would add a handful of ikan bilis (dried anchovies) perhaps but if you add some prawns or sotong (squid), that would be very nice too and at the Malay stalls, you may get to see it in their sayur masak lemak or cooked with pumpkin while at some places here, they even serve it with braised pork leg…

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Whichever way you may choose to cook it, there is just one thing that you must make remember not to forget – that the leaves must be torn!