Go ahead…

In our local Sarawak Malay dialect, we say gohead meaning to go on and do what one wants to do or to move forward like when one is driving a car or riding a motorcycle. I guess that is derived from the phrase in English, go ahead but to reverse a vehicle, we say gostan. Now how did that come about, I wonder?

Anyway, I’ve noticed that in our local ethnic Dayak cuisine, there is hardly any use at all of wheat flour or soya sauce, so my girl can gohead and eat what she likes without any worries about what may trigger her gluten intolerance…like the other day, when we went back here for lunch, the mum had this…

…while she also had the pansoh babi and the tapioca leaves and she also picked the cangkuk manis with pumpkin, one meat and two vegetables…

…and together with the mum’s one meat and two vegetables, the total came up to RM13.50.

Of course, she cannot gohead and eat what I had – I decided to try something from this stall in that same coffee shop…

…but I did not want the kueh chap – I’ve  had before when they were at their previous location and yes, it was quite good.

I decided to try the lor mee, pardon the spelling but I think that is the transcription from how they say it in Mandarin, to see if it was anything like what we used to know and loved…

…but no, it was like kueh chap minus the white pieces of kueh and adding our not-so-yellow noodles and some strips of kangkong…

…instead. That sure was a huge bowl, the special (RM8.00) with a whole lot of the usual kueh chap ingredients and yes, I would say it was very nice just that it wasn’t exactly like the lor mee I was looking for – the one with the slightly corn starch-thickened, slightly sweet gravy with a little bit of egg and a very mild hint of five-spice powder in it. Of course, my girl can’t gohead and eat this – there is soy sauce in the soup/gravy.

This is all right though – the peri-peri grilled chicken rice (RM9.00)…

…that she had here. The mum also had the same and we noticed that they had gone back to grilling the chicken which we would very much prefer. The last two times, the chicken was fried and though it was quite all right done like that it would be more or less something one would get at those ayam penyet places all over town, nothing really special.

I went to the nasi campur stall beside it and this was what I had…

…for RM9.00, 5 meats and one vegetable – two pieces of fish and two halves of salted egg plus one serving of umai (our Melanau sashimi)…

…and the sambal buah emplam. Yes, my girl would be able to gohead and eat all that I have picked that day and quite a lot from such Malay food stalls, I think but there would be some that she would have to avoid – things in soy sauce or coated with batter and fried…like the very nice nasi kerabu that we had…

…here. The mum went and asked and was told that yes, they would coat the chicken or the fish before frying so my girl had to eat it without the meat…nor the keropok (prawn cracker). Should we go for this again, we probably would ask for one fried egg…or maybe a bit of their curry or rendang for her to eat with her rice.

As you can see, it is not much of a problem and all it takes would be a little bit of awareness and it sure is not so bad after all – there are actually quite a lot of things that my girl can gohead and eat!