Generous…

Last Friday, our no-meat day, I dropped by my favourite fish & seafood stall to buy some or chio/ikan bawal hitam/black pomfret and like what I said in my earlier blogpost, I picked the smaller ones, 6 altogether for RM54.00. That worked out to RM9.00 each. At the restaurants, one would be around RM30.00 each but of course, they are bigger, maybe twice the size and they cook it for you.

There was a bag of half a bay kar/ikan tenggiri/mackerel that an old lady wanted for making fish balls but it was cut into slices and she did not want that. The lady boss said it was all right – she would get another one for her and turning to me, she said she would give me that one. WHAT??? That sure took me by surprise. She wanted to give me half of one fish for free??? That was really so very generous of her!

I took that home and deep fried the slices for lunch that afternoon…

…and not only was there enough – we had a few left that we saved for dinner.

Now if you think that was all, think again! I wanted to buy some of her own-made fish paste but she said there were too many customers and she had not had time to do that yet…and indeed, there were so many people unlike the previous times when I was there and those people really bought A LOT, by the hundred. Gee! Her business is really booming and of course, that is very good. Just as I was about to leave, she threw a small bag of fish paste into my bag – perhaps she had started making earlier and only managed to make enough for say 5-6 fish balls and she told me I could have that as well, FOC! I’ll blog about those when I finally get down to cooking them.

Going back to earlier that morning before I left the house, I took the leftover tang hoon (glass noodles) from the stuffed tofu soup we had that day to fry. I fried a tablespoon of garlic, peeled and chopped, in oil till golden brown, added some prawns and a few leaves of the Brazilian spinach from my garden before throwing in the tang hoon. I mixed a tablespoon of oyster sauce, broke an egg into the pan and threw in a whole lot of chopped spring onion, also from my garden and once it was done, I dished it out and served…

I tried a bit and yes, I thought it was really good. When I came back from buying the fish, the ladies in the house were up and yes, they finished all that I had cooked and yes, they said it was nice. I guess I shall have to cook tang hoon like that again next time.

Going back a couple of days before that, my girl took the packet of frozen minced beef that the mum bought and made this lovely cottage pie…

…enough for the three of us for our lunch and dinner that day.

The filling was so good…

…so delicious! I don’t know what went into the cooking but I am sure it would make really nice beef pies too, using shortcrust pastry.

Sarawak is now under a full lockdown, beginning on Saturday last week. It has been a few days and hopefully, this will help reduce the number of daily cases that keep increasing like nobody’s business. I certainly look forward to resuming our normal lives again, the new normal, that is. Let us pray!

The fish stall is located to the right of CCL FRESH MINI MARKET against the wall at that end of the block to the right of the Grand Wonderful Hotel (2.309601, 111.845163) along Jalan Pipit, off Jalan Dr Wong Soon Kai, if you go in via the entrance where San Len Tyres is located, just before the Petronas petrol station a short distance from Delta Mall.