My walking mate, Mari and I had a dinner at my place. I cooked Nasi lemak Sambal Tumis Udang, prawn in hot chili gravy. Mari is my only American friend who could take hot food as we do back home. "Please don't make it mild, I'd like to see how hot can I take it." Mari reminded me over the phone.
Mari and I met over the softball game seven years ago. Well, actually it wasn't a game. I saw a flier on the front door of a building where I live. A group of woman was organizing a softball team. There were three names and phone number to contact at the bottom of a flier with. I called a second name, Mari. A thick southern accent answered my call. "You have an accent." said Mari. "That makes two of us," I responded.
Mari thought it was hillarious the way I said it. We ended up chatting for two hours. The softball team was never actualized, but Mari and I have become good friends.
Over the dinner I told Mari, back in Malaysia we eat Nasi Lemak for breakfast. But over the past ten years Nasi Lemak has become popular among the locals, street hawkers serve it for lunch and dinner. It's like bagel here, people eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
When I was a kid, nasi lemak was served in a wrap banana leaves. They scooped the rice in a cup while the rice was still hot. Press the rice all the way to the rim of the cup. Turned the cup upside down on a piece of clean banana leaf. A banana leaf is layered on top of a piece of an old newspaper. The banana leaf served as a wrapper. Lift up the cup, you get a solid cup-shaped Nasi Lemak. Topping with a slice of cucumber, sambal tumis ikan bilis (anchovies)and deepfried peanuts. Hard boiled eggs, squids and shrimps sambal tumis are popular too.
The banana leaf was folded in four steps that formed mountain like shape. When you unwrapped the banana leafs, the scent of banana leaf and a combination of fresh ginger root, lemongrass, clove, cinnamon stick cooked coconut milk is enough to make you drooling before you taste it. As for ingredients I have them all, except for Daun Pandan, a pandan leaves (a screwpine leaves). pandan leaves has this sweet aromatic scent and used in a lot of Malay dishesfor coloring too. Since I've been living here, I've never come across daun pandan yet. I hope I will one day.
We started with seaweed salad. Mari told me she had seaweed with sushi before, but she likes to learn how to make it. A prepared seaweed they sold at sushi food store is too expensive. I told her about fresh-right-from-the ocean seaweed kerabu I used to eat the years my family lived with grandmotherwhen my father was away. My grandmother's house was about a mile from the beach. There was always a fisherman who had known my late grandfather dropped in at grandmother's kitchen and dumped a basketful of fresh mackerels, anchovies or stingrays or crabs or promfits, clams or just fresh seaweed.
I remember the scent of roasted rice wafted in grandmother kitchen prepared by my sister KN over wood stove. The roasted rice was ground with stone mortar and pastle and added a fresh coconut grind, chili paste and tamarind juice. The seaweed was rinse thoroughly and chopped. Added all the ingredients in big bowl and we got Kerabu Seaweed. I still could tasted a crunchiness of seaweed exploded in my mouth. Boy..........it was heaven. I could tasted an ocean in my mouth.
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