Let’s try again…

My girl bought two packets of this…

…batter mix for making plain cucur (fritters) but she did not think it was very nice. In the meantime, she bought another brand for cucur udang (prawn fritters) and it was very much nicer. Since then, she would buy that one.

Well, instead of letting it sit there in the pantry till kingdom come, I went and plucked some of the cangkok manis…

…growing in my garden. A West Malaysian friend corrected me on Facebook that day saying that the vegetable is called cekur manis so I went and googled to check. What I found out was it is called cangkok manis in Brunei Malay so I guess because of our close proximity, we call it by that same name in our Sarawak Malay dialect, different from how they call it in the mainland. There is a stunted variety exported from Sabah – they call it sayur manis. It looks the same, tastes the same…except that it is very small.

My girl was telling me about how the canteen people in her school would make some very nice cucur cangkok manis for them to enjoy during their tea break everytime when they had a meeting or workshop outside school hours. I had never seen that being sold anywhere so I had not had the chance to try it before.

Of course, I had to tear the leaves first into tiny bits and pieces for use and I also added a bit of this bubuk…

…or dried krill shrimps. However, I only added a bit, one table spoon, as I was afraid that the smell/taste might be too strong.

The process was very simple, real easy – I just had to add 200 ml of water to the batter mix…

…and mix well. I added a little bit more, actually – 250 ml and when it was ready, in went the cangkok manis and bubuk…

I heated some oil in a pan and when it was hot enough, I scooped the batter with a spoon and dropped it in one by one, letting each fritter cook till golden brown….

There you are, all done!

Yes, it was nice, a little bit spicy – I guess they had chili in the batter mix and with the added ingredients, we all thought it was much nicer than just cooking it straight from the packet. Perhaps the next time around I could be more generous with the bubuk – couldn’t put my finger on it in the cucur and perhaps I could add prawns, spring onions, shallots or whatever to being the taste to a whole new level.