It was Tuesday night and my slowboat to China was already setting sail out to sea…when my telephone rang! Tsk! Tsk! It was my friend/ex-classmate, Robert, calling to invite me out to dinner here the following evening. Ahhhh!!! Now that kind of call, I sure would not mind receiving any time of day. Hehehehehe!!!
He had seen my posts on Facebook and here in my blog but he had not gone to try yet so he said he wanted to go there…
…I told him that I would make the reservation and promptly contacted Mika’il, my ex-student, and requested for some of my favourite dishes from their lunchtime selections to be reserved for us and we would order the rest when we got there. He said it would be fine but the next day, he texted me again to tell me that they had different dishes that day on their menu but his mother-in-law, Patricia’s mum, would cook those dishes specially for us. I told him that would be nice but if it would be too much trouble, we could just order what they would usually have in the evenings, all the barbecued stuff and the rest…
Mary and her two Thai chefs were there as well – it was their off night, every Wednesday and Das, Robert’s friend, too…and yes, we had the barbecued pork belly (two plates)…
…and the ribs (one plate)…
…and also the pansoh babi, pork cooked in bamboo (two plates)…
The mother-in-law cooked the kacang ma chicken with tuak (ethnic rice wine), two plates…
…for us and also the tapioca leaves (two plates)…
…that Mary loved to bits and ate most of what was there in the two dishes/servings. LOL!!! The kacang ma dish was nicest the first time we had it, too dry for our liking the second time and this time around, we thought it was a little too watery but still, it was nice and I, for one, enjoyed it. We can’t get it easily here unless we cook it ourselves.
Everyone sang praises of the buah keluak and rubber seeds with cincaluk (fermented shrimps), two plates…
– something they had never had ever before and the lokan (two trays)..
…took their breath away – it was love at first…gulp! LOL!!!
We all had the dabai (our local black olives) fried rice ( I think we had 6 or 7 plates, some of us did not want so much and shared)…
…which I thought was very nice. It had the fragrances of the bunga kantan (torch ginger flower) and everything else used in the cooking but either there wasn’t much dabai in it or the taste was drowned out by all those very strong ingredients added.
That certainly was a lot for the eight of us but yes, we managed to finish everything and licked the plates clean…and enjoyed it all to the max. So how much do you think all that cost – 13 altogether, plus 6 or 7 plates of fried rice? Care to make a guess?
...STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS! 