Welcome to the jungle…

My uncle and his family and everybody who came that day drove all the way from Kuching and like what I used to do before here and also here, they stopped by the little bazaars and towns along the way and by the time they reached Sibu, they had already bought quite a lot of stuff including things that came from our jungle where they grow wild and are sold by some ethnic women at those places, and are not that easily available in the big towns and cities in the state.

He gave me this durian mantak (unripened durian)…

…to cook for my mum. I’ve cooked a more complicated version here once but my mum prefers it simple so this time around, I did it the way she likes it.

It is actually very easy. All you have to do is to remove the seeds and cut the flesh into bite-size chunks…

My mum does not like it cut too small so that explains the rather big size of the pieces ready to be cooked.

To start off, you need to cook the stock. Just boil some water in which you put these ingredients…

– a bit of belacan (dried prawn paste), a handful of ikan bilis (dried anchovies) and chili. Simmer awhile to let the flavours come out of the ingredients before putting in the durian chunks.

Bring it back to boil and let it simmer for sometime and soon, it…

…is ready to be served, no added salt and no msg required.

My uncle also brought me these seeds…

…that are actually the kernel of what we call buah pelajo here. Probably that is in Melanau or Sarawak Malay for it appears that some people know them as melinjo or maybe that is in the national language. There are quite a lot of differences between the two, like for instance, we call an aeroplane bilun here but that is a balloon to them and their plane is kapal terbang, literally translated as flying ship.

I also cooked these in a similar way, what we call our sayur rebus (boiled vegetables) in our ethnic Melanau kampung-style cooking. As in the above with the durian mantak, I had the belacan and the chili but this time around, I had left out the ikan bilis as I had some prawns…

…and wanted to use those instead.

What I did was, I boiled the belacan and the chili for the stock before adding the seeds, leaving it to boil for a while before I added the prawns. I brought it back to boil and let it simmer some more to bring out the taste and sweetness of the crustaceans. Then I added some baby corn…

…and added a pinch of salt since I did not use a lot of belacan nor did I add any ikan bilis so it would not be salty enough. When everything was almost done, I dropped in the paku (wild jungle fern) and turned off the heat the instant the soup started boiling again. Do not leave the paku to boil in the soup too long as it will become discoloured and will not look nor taste as nice.

This soup is best served piping hot…

…and goes absolutely well with rice and yes, it is msg-free.

Since it is not easy to get those seeds, we would have to do without those usually but we can cook a lot of other things this same way and it will taste just as great.