It sure took a long long time…

Sometime ago, on 1st August to be exact, I posted something on my rambutan tree behind my house. At the time, it had flowered and tiny green fruits were starting to appear. I was thinking that they might ripen the following month in time for Stella to enjoy when she came home from Down Under but unfortunately, no. Finally, some two months later, they are ready for the plucking…

It sure took a long long time, I must say…but despite the fact that I never bother about the tree, it will bear a lot of fruits each time and what’s special about it is its thick, crunchy and juicy flesh…

Personally, I am not that crazy over rambutans; I would very much prefer dabai, provided they’re good ones. So most of the time, I would go and pluck and battle with the ants in the process, and give to friends and family.

Now, since we’re talking about time, this will not take long to prepare – steamed meat with cincaluk (fermented shrimps).

It is best with pork belly or chicken but I had neither, so I just used the pork bones in the fridge that my wife had bought for cooking the stock for soups. So what you do is to cut the meat into bite-size pieces, put in 4-6 slices of ginger (You can cut them into thin strips if you do not mind eating the ginger), two tablespoons of cincaluk, half a teaspoon of msg and half a cup of water. Mix thoroughly and steam for 20-30 minutes.

There you have it, a delicious dish for the family with hardly any hassle at all! As for those who have this adversion for the “stench” of cincaluk, you can add two tablespoons of Chinese/Foochow red wine and that will drown out the cincaluk smell. I did it the other day but I think I would prefer to do without the wine. Love that “stench”!

And still on the topic of food, a popular Foochow dish is pek ting eyok duck or chicken. This pek ting eyok is a combination of herbs (Don’t ask me what they comprise!) available in packets at all Chinese drug stores here. My missus doesn’t take duck so I had to cook that with chicken…and since I had some leftover, I cooked this pek ting eyok chicken mee sua for myself yesterday morning for breakfast…

Care to join me, anyone? ROTFLMAO!!!

Anything you can do…

…I can do as well, or perhaps even better!

My daughter loved the sambal kway teow at Lok Ming Yuen, the coffee shop across the road from Mitsu Tea House, and I used to go there for the beef noodles, but the other day, I decided to have the kway teow for a change. When it was served, I had the shock of my life! The portion was so small that they actually served it in a saucer.

And it did not come cheap either. I cannot remember exactly but I think it was around RM3.00. Feeling disgusted, I decided to buy some kway teow (RM1.60 a kilo) and fry my own.

I did not go to the market so I did not have any ku chai (Chinese chives) or taugeh (bean sprouts) but what I cooked up in the end could make up at least 10 plates. Even with the prawns, the eggs, the udang kering (dried prawns) and other ingredients, it would not possibly come up to RM30-35.00. These business people are really having a field day jacking up the prices of everything and reducing the amount drastically. And mine was much more fragrant and much more delicious…

The way things are going, you can bet that from now on, I would just cook my own…and see how long those cut-throats, those daylight robbers would last!

Anyway, to move on from that, I dropped by faisaladmar’s blog and he had a post on a function that he attended wearing a green Indian outfit with a matching sash. Well, in his reply to one of my comments, he asked whether I had an Indian outfit. After all, it was Deepavali yesterday.

The answer, Faisal, is YES!!!

From http://shssibu.edu.my

I have TWO black ones and this one has brown trimmings…

From http://shssibu.edu.my

…while the other one has cylindrical bamboo-like buttons. No, I do not have a sash to go with them, thank you!

Coincidentally, Clare was also into the mood of the festive season and she posted a photo of herself in a blue saree. You can hop over to have a look. Nope! Sorry, nothing peeking out from under her mid-riff blouse! Hahahahaha!!! Well, Deepavali’s over. Those of you across the South China Sea will be back in the office today (to go blog-hopping). Next stop – Christmas!!! Planning anything yet?

P.S.
By the way, anybody recognises the couple in front? Huai Bin? LOL!!!

Together again…

Gee! How time flies! Last year around this time, I attended the annual dinner of my school, SMK Sacred Heart here in Sibu, during which I was a guest-of-honour as I was retiring. In a blink of an eye, a year has come and gone so fast.

I am indeed glad that though I have left the school for a year, I have not been forgotten. They have graciously invited me to this year’s event which was a grand affair as it was a combined effort with the PTA (Parent-Teacher Association), with around 40 tables (including the invited guests, parents and students) compared to the usual 10 tables  or so (guests and staff only). The function was held at the Phoenix Court at the Paramount Hotel here…

Here, you can see a section of the crowd…

which included my two godsons, Elias (also my ex-student) and his brother, Kevin…

Those days, I often had students asking me to be their godfather for their sacrament of Confirmation though personally, I would think I make a rather poor spiritual role model. LOL!!! The food was quite nice, starting with the assorted dish – the Four Seasons…

followed by the soup dish…

Hold your horses, Daniel Thong! It looked like sharks’ fins soup, it tasted like sharks’ fins soup but it wasn’t sharks’ fins soup! LOL!!! They had fish maw in the soup instead. Then there was the fish head curry…

It was quite well done compared to the time when I was here with Huai Bin. The gravy was very nice but I did not like the strong fishy smell of the fish. I guess they used a better type of fish the other day when I had it at Sheraton. Next came the honey fried chicken…

…and the vegetable/mushroom dish…

After that, I had to go off somewhere (Again…ask no questions and I’ll tell no lies!) and in the meantime, they served this black pepper lamb dish…

Nobody waited for me to come back to take the photo; they just dug in! Anyway, I do not quite care for black pepper, so I just had a bit of that. It wasn’t that great but then I might be biased! The sweet yam dessert followed…

and along with it came the agar-agar (jelly) and fruits…

Come to think of it, I don’t know why they call it an 8-course dinner when the last two dishes should be counted as one – dessert! On the whole, it was pretty nice…not great, just pretty nice. I did not find out how much it was per table but considering the rising prices of things, that should be around RM300-350. We used to have something like that for RM250…but those were the days.

There were speeches and lots and lots of lucky draws – table and individual. For the table draws, they would pull out a number and everybody at that table would get a prize. I was asked to sit at the SHOSA (Sacred Heart Old Students’ Association, Sibu) table but I went and sat with my ex-colleagues instead…and the SHOSA table won! What rotten luck! LOL!!!

I did not get the individual prizes either. My number was 4343 and they drew 4342 instead. Drats! LOL!!! Neither did I get to sing as there wasn’t much time left for that but I would say that was a blessing in disguise especially with Allan around, an ex-student who was formerly attached to a publishing firm and now to a bookstore here. He had won a number of singing competitions even at state-level and those at the Malay kampung here. He did Search’s “Isabella” flawlessly, hitting all the high notes with perfect pitching…

I remember my karaoke days at the Spice Bazaar here when this song was a hit and how I suffered, with all the agonising screeching like dicekik hantu (strangled by a ghost) by all the Amy-wannabes. With singing like Allan’s, my half-past-six effort would surely pale in comparison. Whew!

Then, to keep to the mood of the recent festive season, they ended the evening with a Hari Raya song by a group of sweet and young Malay lady-teachers who invited the very dynamic, very sporting and very handsome principal, Mr. Vincent Liong to join them…

Ok, Mr. Liong, since I did not get the chance to sing this year, you will have to invite me again next year. LOL!!!

And just when I thought that would be the last of the dinners for the year, I received this…

Jude (blogger Clement’s brother) passed me an invitation to his wedding next month, so it certainly looks like “it ain’t over till the fat lady sings” or in this case, the fat guy! ROTFLMAO!!!

P.S.
Happy Deepavali to anyone celebrating the Festival of Lights today.

Conversations…

FINALLY…after over 36 hours, Celcom’s Broadband connection has been restored…

Every morning, should I drop by the Delta Commercial Centre near my house for breakfast or to buy something, I would meet three ex-colleagues of mine – retirees like me and all three are ladies, so I call them the “First Wives’ Club”. According to them, they have been meeting like this for breakfast for the last 19 years. Gee! I wonder what they talk about in their daily conversations.

They were also invited to Huai Bin’s sister’s wedding  banquet and we sat at the same table. In our conversation that night, I asked them what they thought was nice to eat in the vicinity and they said that I should try the kampua at e-cafe, located directly opposite the back portion of Delta Mall…

From the coffee shop, on the other side, you can see this supermarket that belongs to that famous Kuching blogger…

Well, actually I have been to that place before and I had the kampua special which wasn’t too bad but I did not think it was that great. They also told me that at this same place, I could get nice Sarawak laksa or beef noodles from another stall inside. So I went to try the latter…

Again, I found that it was just so-so. I would much sooner go to that menopausal lady at the coffee shop behind the Sibu Kidney Foundation. Her beef noodles or kampua kosong (plain noodles) with beef soup are definitely nicer…and back to the topic of kampua, I told the ladies that I would prefer the one at Soon Hock Cafe, also in that same area. However, they had never gone to that one as according to them, the kampua lady had such long hair and they were sure a strand or two would drop into the noodles…

There, you can see the lady in black in the photo. That’s the one. Well, I’ve eaten there quite often but never once had I encountered any hair in the kampua. In fact, it is so popular that every morning, it will be quite crowded with people dropping by for breakfast before heading to their offices to work. Of course, if you ask me for my personal opinion, the best is the kampua at the Rasa Sayang Cafe. Period.

P.S.
Checked my Google Page Rank the other day…and hey! I’ve gone up from 3/10 to 5/10, same as anilnetto.com (So far I have only found one that’s higher – a 6…malaysiakini.com!) while many who had a page rank of 5 have dropped to 4 or even 3. Hehehehehehehehe (*evil laugh)!!!

On and on and on…

Oh dear! They say I am putting on weight…and my perut buncit (protruding belly) is getting very prominent. Sigh! It must have been all those dinners with Cooking4stp and on Saturday night, I was at Huai Bin’s sister’s wedding banquet at the RH Hotel here. It was a grand affair at the very posh venue but the place was somewhat dim, so I could not take nice photographs. That is why I will not put up anything on it but you can always hop over to Huai Bin’s blog to see his post. Be forewarned though! Do NOT click on the video clip of him singing, if you know what’s good for you. ROTFLMAO!!

Then, on Sunday night, I went for the annual dinner hosted by the centre where I am presently teaching, at…

The dinner started with the usual assorted first dish…

Everything was delicious but I did not think there was anything really sensational. The not-to-be-mentioned soup followed – no pic of that, of course, and then we had the celebrated Sheraton curry fish head (Finally, Huai Bin! Finally!!! After all this time, I had managed to get to eat it. Hint! Hint! LOL!!!)…

It may not be very photogenic (OK! OK! It was my lousy hp camera and my poor photo-taking skills! Hahahahahaha!!!) but the exquisite taste will simply blow you away! The dish was served steaming hot with the special fragrant rice from Bario in the hill regions of Sarawak. Personally, I do not like having it together with a full 8-course Chinese dinner as one would be too full (and satisfied) to enjoy the rest of the dishes…but since I had not had it for a long time, I literally sucked (Oops!) everything out of the cranium and licked the plate clean! It was that nice, believe me! And it was a lot better than the curry fish head at Paramount that I had with Huai Bin and the others sometime back. A sea cucumber and abalone dish followed…

…but I just had a bit and did not think it was anything to shout about. At this point, I stepped outside for a bit of fresh air (Ask no questions, and I’ll tell no lies! LOL!!!) and in the meantime, they served the next dish…

Hey! How come nobody notified me?…I got back just in time to snap this photo of the waiter wrapping the last few rolls of the Peking duck! The duck was very nice and even though the skin/wrapper was different from the popiah-look & taste-alike in other restaurants elsewhere serving this same dish, it was just as good. Next came this impressive looking dish…

On one side, they had some pie-like things made with a thin piece of bread as the base and egg white as the cover. For the filling, they had some minced meat and prawn…and I think they deep-fried them. Not bad…but the base had the taste of french toast! On the other side, they had abalone again on a bed of broccoli. The sweet yam dessert (or-nee) came next… 

I loved the small ones – the sweet mashed yam sandwiched in between two pieces of cheese crackers and coated at the sides with sesame seeds and deep fried. Very  nice, very nice indeed! Finally, there was a fruit platter but I was already filled to the brim and could not stuff anything in anymore.

Kongkay went for dinner at this same place recently and except for what he called the stuffed egg pastry, everything else was different…but looked equally delicious. You can click this link to go and have a look. Huai Bin’s best friend, Ting Chuan had his wedding lunch reception here too and the dishes were mostly quite different too…except for the nutritious herbal black chicken soup that Kongkay also had.

After feasting on and on and on over the last few days, I am hoping to cut down on my food intake this coming week but the fact that dabai and terbulus are in season and available in abundance certainly is not going to help much! I have been invited to my former school’s annual dinner on Saturday but I guess I can always spend the evening croaking karaoke-ing away to the captive audience, just to make sure that I will not be gorging myself with too much food. LOL!!! 

Love you inside out…

Dabai is a seasonal fruit that if I’m not mistaken, is native to Central Sarawak and is something that Sibu town is noted for (even though the fruit may come from towns upriver like Song or Kapit). When I was younger, it used to be available around year end only but these days with the global climatic changes, we may get it a few times in a year.

Discerning dabai consumers will be very picky when buying the fruit. There are some very cheap ones going for a song while the good ones may cost up to RM20.00 a kilo. The prices will fluctuate according to the supply, so when there is a deluge in the market, it may be cheaper but the good ones may still linger around RM10 a kilo or more. Good dabai will usually have thick yellow flesh, thin skin and a very rich taste (lemak) owing to the high fat/oil content.

Somebody in his blog said that to cook it, you pour boiling water in it. That is definitely grossly incorrect. You do not boil it in water either for it would only become harder than ever. The fruit is soaked in warm water until it softens. The water must not be too hot or it will cook too fast and become too soft and the taste may be a bit sourish. Once the dabai is ready, you can add salt to it or alternatively, a bit of soy sauce and a sprinkling of sugar. Others may dip it in bottled fish sauce or the salty brine from buduk aur (fermented salted fish). 

Some people preserve dabai by soaking them in salt water but I do not fancy that at all. Other than that, the seeds are in fact edible as well…

You keep the seeds and after you have had a fair amount, you boil them in water for a while and then you drain away the water. After that, you have to cut the seeds open and that is the difficult part. My mother (and for that matter, my grandma and aunties) would hold each seed between her thumb and forefinger and chop the seeds open using a meat cleaver on a wooden chopping block. That, of course, is no easy feat as you will need to be pretty good at the skill or you may be in danger of losing either your thumb or finger.

Well, all is not lost. I love eating the kernels and where there is a will, there is a way. What I would do is to take a plastic chopping board and place the seed in the hole for the handle. A bit of the seed will be higher than the level of the board so when you bring down the cleaver, it will split the shell of the seed open without cutting it completely into halves. I usually put a towel or something underneath so that it will not be so slippery and the seeds will not fly all over the place…and the counter will not end up defaced or damaged.

The kernel inside is oval-shaped with a brown-coloured skin, looking something like hazel nuts. You remove the skin and you will find the edible part that is light green in colour and tastes something like pistachios.

They are very nice, no doubt about it…but cutting the seeds open can be be a chore, as well as a challenge. If only somebody will invent something like a nutcracker to split open dabai seeds. It certainly is a hard nut to crack! LOL!!!

Picture…

Now, before I get to the main focus of this post, please let me run through some bits and pieces of interest first…like this adaptation of the nyonya kuih serimuka, for instance…

Available at the 3Q-Takeaway, they use black glutinous/sticky rice (high in antioxidants) instead of the usual white ones. Rich enough and not too sweet, it’s only RM1 for one huge chunk of it (that I have cut into five pieces…so it’s 20 sen for a piece like that). The usual kuih serimuka in Sibu would be rubbery and not lemak at all…and the ones I got from the old lady along Green Road in Kuching (that used to be super delicious) were a disappointment too. Then at the coffee shop at the back in the same Sibu Medical Centre vicinity, you can get some pre-packed homemade nice kuihs too like this kuih wajid/wajik…

I had bought some from the Malay stalls at the Central Market and also those by the roadside in the kampungs, but so far I had never come across one that I would say was as nice as what I used to have when I was young…until I came across this one. Very nice and fragrant, not too sweet…and sold at RM1.20 per packet of three. I would feel that’s a bit expensive – 40 sen per piece, so I guess I won’t be having that too often.

But we did not have those for breakfast on Saturday – Cooking4stp and I. Since she saw my last week’s post, she had made up her mind to go for dim sum at the Mitsu Tea House while she was in town…

We had all that my friend and I had during my previous visit…except the chicken claws, and we had these nice looking buns instead…

I did not think they were very nice though as I did not like the strong ginger taste (For this same reason, I do not like their siaw long pau!)…but Cooking4stp said they were very nice…and the best part was that she picked up the tab! Well, since she insisted, I did not resist! LOL!!!

OK! Now to get on with what I was going to share with everyone in this post, Cooking4stp and I went to Delta Mall to drop by Popular Bookstore as she wanted to get a magazine for her in-flight reading pleasure. And when we went browsing through one of the shops there, I spotted this…

If not for the picture on the box, I would never have guessed what was inside…

I wonder who the artist was…Lee Na Dor…or Tai Bing Chi? ROTFLMAO!!!…Have a nice Sunday, everybody!

Come as you are…

It was Friday yesterday, so as usual, I was not having meat…but Cooking4stp was in town and going out would probably mean we would end up eating that. So for a change, I decided to cook a few dishes and ask her over to my place for dinner. Another advantage of having dinner at home is you do not have to dress up nicely and can just come as you are.

Now, what did I have in store for her? I cooked this cempedak masak lemak…

I do not know if cempedak has an English name but it is a fruit like nangka or jackfruit. I had it cooked with the usual ingredients and milk in place of santan (coconut milk). I also fried this vegetable dish of daun bandung (tapioca leaves) and anak jagung (baby corn)…

So sorry about the steam; I took the photo when it was piping hot! Then for my main dish, I conjured up this special dish of udang galah (freshwater prawns) cooked with tempuyak (fermented durian)…

I know others have cooked it before and if I remember correctly, my missus has tried it once as well…but I never bothered to find out how to go about it. For one thing, I can never follow recipes and when I do, the dish will turn out to be a disaster! So I just added what I thought I should…and by George! It turned out very very nice indeed. You’d probably say I’m bragging but I think it was nicer than Ruby’s butter scotch prawns!

Other than my own home-cooked dishes, I also bought this Thai-style mihun with sambal petai from 3Q-Takeaway…

and some kim kua koi (Chinese-style pumpkin cake) for dessert…

…and it being the dabai season, of course, we had some of those as well. Cooking4stp brought along some cheesecakes from the hotel where she was staying like this one, for instance…

There were two other slices but by the time I remembered to take the photographs, we had finished almost all of one and the photo of the other turned out rather blur, so I have decided against posting it.

Well, what was her verdict on all the stuff that I had cooked? In case you’ll think I’m trying to blow my own horn, I’ll just let her comment personally herself. I think she should be back online on Monday when she gets back to the office. LOL!!!

All that she wants…

Well, Cooking4stp flew into town this afternoon amidst the storm that caused flash floods and massive traffic jams all over town as a result of which it took us more than an hour to get from the airport to the hotel where she was staying.

Still, nothing could stop us from going out for dinner to the place of her choice and having read all my posts on all the delicious food there, she wanted to go to the Ruby Restaurant, no less! She would like to have the bitter gourd with salted eggs that she had the last time she was in town years ago…

Prior to this, she never had bitter gourd all her life, so the fact that she actually wanted to have it again is testament to its superior taste. Then, she wanted to have the butter scotch prawn balls…

Somehow or other, she did not have that the last time, probably because she was too lazy to remove the shell or did not like to get too messy whilst wrestling with the prawns. She did not like lamb, so we decided to have a go with spare ribs instead…

The mayo with lime sauce that we usually had with lamb actually blended very well with the pork. C4stp commented that she never really liked mayonnaise but she found the sauce very nice indeed. Then she wanted to try the Thai-style midin that I had last week…

…and to wash all that down, we had the sea cucumber soup.

My missus tagged along for the dinner and for the three of us, that came up to RM39.00 for the food alone – RM13.00 per head, that is…and the advantage of going out for dinner with ladies, they nibbled like mice and guess who ate the lion’s share! LOL!!!

Where have all the flowers gone (2)…

If you may recall, in my previous post under this title, I was talking about durian flowers. Well, it looks like my mother-in-law’s durian tree is flowering again, so I get to eat the flowers. The other day, “inspired’ by the midin I had at the Ruby Restaurant a couple of nights ago, I decided to make some Thai-style durian flower salad. I boiled some water and after putting in the durian flowers, I brought it back to boil and after simmering for a while, I drained away the water…

Then I pounded some pre-soaked udang kering (dried prawns) with chillies and a bit of belacan (dried prawn paste) and mixed that with the durain flowers. After that, I cut some shallots into thin slices and some chillies as well, and added all that in as well. Having done that, I cut some kalamansi/lime and squeezed the juice over everything and mixed it all thoroughly. Finally, I deep-fried some ikan bilis/pusu (anchovies) and put that in too…

It was nice – sour and spicy, fragrant from the dried prawns and the anchovies…but something was missing. I know! They usually have roasted peanuts in the Thai-style salad and I did not have any of that. Never mind! Next time I’ll just grab a tin from the shops and sprinkle some over it.

Then, yesterday, my in-laws gave us some more of the flowers, so I decided to cook something different this time. I pounded two shallots, four cloves of garlic, 1 cm ginger and 1 chilli…and I got some serai (lemon grass) and crushed the ends and some curry leaves. Then I heated up some oil in a wok and fried the pounded ingredients until golden-brown and fragrant before adding in the lemon grass and some of the curry leaves. After a while, I put in the durian flowers. Incidentally, I had also added some baby corn, so there would be enough to go round…

I added half a tablespoon of curry powder to that and after mixing it well into everything, I added water and some ikan bilis (anchovies) stock. Finally, I added a bit of evaporated milk (in place of santan/coconut milk) and let it simmer for a while for the gravy to thicken. Then it was ready to serve…

It would definitely be nicer with a bit of udang kering (dried prawns) and belacan (dried prawn paste), but I wanted to give some to my mum and those stuff would trigger off her allergy. It was still very nice though and went perfectly well with rice. Perhaps you would like to give it a try?