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Suburbanpeasant

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Everything posted by Suburbanpeasant

  1. My Teochew grandmother used to have breakfast porridge consisting of a fermented black olives and little crabs - called mua kee... hope this helps. The other kind of olives is the snack type which is sweet and sour...usually yellow but sometimes green. In Singapore it's called Kana.
  2. The beauty of baba malay is it's neither standard malay nor indonesia - but the reference to fighting may be a pun on (ber)gaduh and gado (mix/disorderly). I think the name is probably derived from the "mixture/salad" meaning than "lauk". In Indonesia today, some academics use the metaphor of gado-gado to discuss multiculturalism - various elements coming together under a sauce. my 2 cents worth. That's bergaduh (same in standard Malay -- you can look it up here), not menggado. A search of the Indonesian-English dictionary linked above produces the same result, too. ←
  3. Sorry to get off track: regional variations of Laksa - tell me more... I only know of the 2 types: the assam type in Penang and the lemak type in Singapore. Interested to know the other variations.. ← Uhmm .. I think what ecr meant by the laksa route is that she's wondering whether there are all sorts variations of jackfruit curry in different regions/islands in Indonesia like there is for laksa in Malaysia. Anyway, I am ignorant as to variations of jackfruit curry - only know the masak lemak like what Suburbanpeasant has described and what I ate recently in Bali. Am waiting for the experts Yetty and kew to post . Think there might have been some mention of young jackfruit curry on Indian board. ←
  4. Since you are culturally confused, I thought I should drop a line to give you another perspective. My husband was born in Kabyle and anyone from Kabyle will call himself "un kabyle" and to anyone outside of France, a berber. He will never, ever call himself an Arab. The berbers are trying very hard to reinstate their own identity. For a very very long time, they were not allowed to speak or write in their own language publicly...many younger generation Kabyle were forced to learn Arabic at school. The berber culture is ancient and rich but in recent history has been squashed by the arabisation of Algeria. As far as I know, there is very little Arab influence in Algeria. The influence is primary Turkish. Many of the cooking styles are infact Turkish (or perhaps Lebanese) rather than Arabic. As for your point about the Kasbah...it is far from an islamic city. The kasbah had always been a point of mystery : in french, it is "la kasbah", mysterious like a woman. It is possible to get yourself inextricably lost in this urban labyrinth ; way to the time of Boumedienne, the kasbah was pretty cosmopolitan. There were lots of Jews, Pied noirs, turks, berbers and even chinese. There was a significant number of Jews in Algeria (up to recent times). Many fled during the recent turmoil to Spain and France. Algerian Jewish food is an interesting sub-section of kosher cooking. Their fish couscous is delightful. Anyway, these are my small bits of info. to help you along...
  5. My suspicions are that it is a variation of the Teochew raw fish salad, Hu Say. Like you say, it's paper thin slices of fresh water fish "cooked" with an acid, like vinegar - and served with vegetables like pickled turnip and chinese celery...the dressing includes a delicious Teochew plum sauce called tiam mui...this is the sauce that's used in the Yue sang today. The Singapore yu sang is getting more elaborate and influenced by sashimi...so you can even have a choice of Tuna or Salmon yu sang today.
  6. In Teochew, the dishes are known as "kiam" - which sounds the same as salty - so a mother would complain if a child is a fussy eater with "chiak poong mai chiak kiam" (chiak = eat, mai = negation, poong=rice)
  7. In Baba Malay (at least in Singapore), gado gado means to fight : so in my family at least, if we eat it up, we'll end up fighting. But "gado" also seems to have a connotation of a mixture: But there's no question that doubled words aren't always plurals. To give a food example, "matamata," meaning "policeman," is not the plural of "mata," meaning "eye." One can imagine an etymological relationship (the police are the eyes of the law, or something), but a literal plural it ain't. ←
  8. I'm not sure the variation is along the Laksa route... as least I haven't tasted a sourish/tamarind version of this dish. The Peranakan Singaporean version is the Sayur Nangka Masak Lemak which is cooked in coconut milk (the first squeeze) - the spice paste is made up of belachan (fermented prawn paste), chillies, shallots, and bua keras (candlenuts)... Yummmmmmmm
  9. The ikan bilis fried with sugar, sliced chillies and onions with a dash of fresh lime is basic pub snack in Singapore and possibly Malaysia. The sambal ikan bilis is the dish that has a light coat of sambal. It's a side dish to rice serving that includes fried egg, fish, convulous, etc. This rice serving is called Nasi Lemak because it is rice cooked with coconut milk. To make the sambal for the ikan bilis, you'd want to pound a handful of fresh red chillies (seeds off or on, it's up to you) or presoaked and squeez dried chillies. Pound these with a couple of small onions (shallots). In a separate maneouver, dissolve a teaspoon of tamarind paste in half a rice bowl of water (this is only an estimate). Strain to get pure tamarind juice. To combine this, simply fry the ikan bilis (make sure they are very dry, if not, heat them under low oven heat) in a bit of oil. Once they turn crispy and the room begins to smell, remove. Throw in the pounded chilli and onion. Resist coughing. Quick stirring is the key word. Sprinkle the tamarind juice, lower the heat until the mixture is kinda moist. Sprinkle more tamarind juice if you like it more moist. Return the pre-fried ikan bilis into this sambal. Sprinkle liberally with sugar, the coarser the better. The trick is to get the sugar to caramelise just enough to give the dish the crisp. At this point, you can add in roasted peanuts. Stir a couple of more seconds and remove. There are 10,000 variations to this sambal ikan bilis. This is one that I kinda remember. ← The Koreans do a spicy version as well with red pepper flakes or fresh chilis. We can eat just this with rice of course. Peanuts and coconut milk? Recipe please? ←
  10. Is the gemblong hollow in the centre and sundried after it is fried and then glazed?
  11. My potted pandan lived through a Melbourne winter (less10degC) but it's very tiny. I've extracted pretty good pandan juice with frozen pandan leaves from the Asian grocer. Just thaw out the leaves and instead of mixing water, simply cut them up and blend them. Strain through a muslin cloth. The flavour is still there. Forget the bottled stuff. It's just green colour. I think our minimum temperatures are quite a bit too cold for Pandan to grow, and I don't really have anywhere sunny indoors...I'd be curious to know if anybody *has* grown them in climates with minimum temps below 10degC/50degF. ←
  12. Yes...Lightly fried in oil and sugar, and served with finely sliced fresh red chillies and onions and a generous squeeze of (asian) lime. Yummm
  13. I'm glad you started this post. I'm looking for a long-lost recipe from Southeast Asia but I suspect it's originally an Indian dessert. The name is ramamuthia - it's a kind of mithai or mutia. It's deep fried pastry balls the size of ping pong balls (that is supposedly hollow) in the centre. After it's fried, it's dried in the sun. Then it's dipped in a sugar syrup. It sounds a lot like gulab jamun, but I think the pastry has no dairy. Any thoughts? regards
  14. Thank you, Suburbanpeasant! Any suggestions/recipes would be most appreciated! I was thinking that it might be the 'white cheddar' popular in SE Asia (doesn't this kind of cheese also come in a can?). The cheese is pale yellow in colour and the resulting cream is salty/sweet. BTW, have you ever tried the Pandan Cheese Roll? ← No. But I've tasted Bengawan Solo's cakes so I know the texture of their western cakes. For the pandan, my guess is it's some kind of sponge or chiffon. I'd suggest a chiffon since it's got to be rolled in creamy cheese filling. Here's Mrs Leong's recipe for a pandan chiffon cake. Not tested. 1lb grated coconut, no skin 9 egg whites 1 rounded teaspoon cream of tartar 2 tbsp pandan juice from 12 pandan leaves 8 egg yolks 9 oz (about 250g) castor sugar 170ml corn oil vanilla essence 140g "softasilk" flour 2 heaped teaspoons baking powder 1/2 tsp fine salt squeeze coconut for santan. Cook over low heat until nearly boiling. Cool. beat egg whites till light and frothy, sieve in the cream of tartar and continue beating until stiff combine egg yolks, sugar and corn oil with vanilla essence and beat lightly. put flour in mixing bowl. Make a well in the centre and pour in the egg yolk mixture. beat till smooth. add in pandan juice and santan. stir till well blended. slowly fold in egg white. then lay out as you would with a normal swiss roll. bake at 180deg.C For the cream cheese this is a recipe by Marguerite Pattern from Woman's weekly circa 1960s. 1/2 oz cornflour 1/2 pint milk salt and pepper 3 oz grated cheese (the processed ones will be fine I guess) 1 egg paprika powder Blend cornflour with a bit of the milk till you make a kind of runny paste. Boil the rest of the milk, then add in the runny paste and mix well over low heat. Keep stirring until the mixture thickens and starts leaving the sides of the saucepan. (about 3 minutes). Cool slightly, add the egg (without prior beating), grated cheese and seasonings. Mix this well and set aside to cool. Fill your sponge with this cream cheese. I've not tested this recipe. But my guess is that it should be right. If you want a richer taste, use another egg. If you want to take the starchy flavour out, cook it a little longer, but never let the mixture burn. If you want some whole bits of cheese, then grate some of the cheese using the larger grating hole. Good luck
  15. Considering that it's something local (to singapore), my guess it's a chedder cheese. You can make it doing a simple creme patissiere and then add it grated chedder. I'll go through my old recipe books to see if I can find a cream cheese recipe for your roll.
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