Though I love to eat, I don’t normally disclose what really whets my appetite – for the fear of revealing too much about my deeper self, my inner desire, my intimate lust. After all, “We are what we eat”, are we not? I have heard about some freaks people who claim that they can tell how good one is in bed just by what one eats. Oh yeah! So, to cut the carrot short, I won’t pretend to be surprised if they can rate my performance by the brand of meehoon (rice noodle) I have in my pantry! Rate all they want, I won’t wound their stomach or get angry. I promise.
But then, let me just quote Edrick’s latest favorite expression to show you what I think about my fear of revealing too much, “Oh foooeeeyyy!”
There is an adage in Bahasa Malaysia:
“Kalau takut dilambung ombak, jangan berumah di tepi pantai.”
(It literally means, that if you are afraid of being thrown about by waves, do not build your home on a shore.)
To this blog of mine, where I house my stories and my thoughts, the web is an unimaginably big ocean. And unfortunately fortunately to my limited knowledge, I am the only subject known to me well. No, not just well. I know me best. I know me the wellest! Therefore, my front door is where the water is and I am testing it all the time when I write about myself. I don’t just write. I reveal. I open myself up to your judgement. But then, judge all you want. Criticize to your heart’s content. I know I’ll bypass all your judgement and criticism with a byword: “If you be yourself, no one can tell you you’re doing it wrongly.”
Anyway, it wasn’t a part of my plan to sound philosophical today. I was going to show you this:
Oh yeah, if this is any indication of what I like and what I’m like… I like it hot, baby. And I am like… ooohhh hot hot hot!
Since I had run out of the liquid Vietnamese Mắm Tép, yesterday I finally opened the block of Malaysian belacan I successfully smuggled through Domodedovo Airport in November. Two months and 60 degrees Celcius later, my mind just could not shake the craving off. I was on a mission to stink the whole house. I started with the sambal. As a preventative measure against poison-gas emission, and for preservation, I cut it up in cubes, store them in a glass container and into the freezer it went. Such dangerous item this belacan is, it has to be handled with care. This is how the belacan cubes look now, frozen, ready for my Sambal Belacan.
Oh yeah, the stinkier the better!
(Oh, just remembered that I haven’t labeled the jar. I hope Mr. Johnson wouldn’t mistake them as chocolates – as I don’t normally keep chocolates in the freezer. And that is because I have a much bigger and more powerful freezer in the backyard! It’s a solar-powered seasonal -25°Celcius open freezer.)
And here’s the whole dish for you to judge me by:
Yes, the gold/silver dead object you see on my plate is the tail of a very unlucky fish. I bought a Russian (lightly) salted dried fish last week in the hope that it would taste similar to the Malaysian Ikan Masin/Kering. Fish is fish and salt is salt you know. Salt is salty and fish is… uh, fishy. How wrong can one go? In Sakhalin, Vladivostok or Moscow, what’s fishy will smell. You can dry ’em, you can smother tomato sauce all over ’em, you can hide ’em, you can can ’em, and you can even can’t ’em if you can. A fishy affair, though has nothing to do with fish, will inescapably smell.
Well, back to the fish. The verdict is… “Pretty Darn Close”! I had a tough time, however, trying to gut the fish. It’s tough enough doing it when the fish is fresh. Tougher when it’s tough. But I am not complaining. What I did was, I basically just cut the whole middle section out with a pair of kitchen scissors. (I know I am grossing you wayyy out, Neil!)
The fish tastes like a cross between a salted dried and a fermented fish (pekasam), though the meat is a bit harder and firmer than the real McCoy. I suppose I can, for next time, fry the poor fish and then soak it in lime juice with some chopped shallots and chilies for a good half day or so. See if I can restrain myself that long. Or will I go all soft, fermented and as fishy as a fishy affair can be. We’ll see.
All said and revealed, and after all the discursive paragraphs above, here’s what I originally had in mind for this post:
When I was a little girl, I remember, my Mom used to do this everytime she made sambal with her Lesung Batu. I now call it Nasi Lesung. While she never had a name for this special ‘dish’, the intention was clear. To clean the lesung, and not to waste any remaining sambal sticking to it. She would put a scoop or two of just-cooked rice into the mortar and gently rub the pestle around, ‘cleaning’ the lesung in the process by mixing the rice with the sambal. There is this distinctively fresh taste to the mix, so to speak.
And this, ladies, gentlemen and notsogentlemen… is to die for. I am not equipped with a term in any languages I speak to explain why this is worth flying 8157km home for (or driving around in a city of close to 15m people looking for sambal-material megahot chilies for). So I won’t waste my your time trying to cook up any description. Well, maybe it is just my excuse to cut this short, so I can run downstairs to enjoy my cucumber sticks with sambal dip-dip lunch. It’s for you to judge.
Judge away!
Postlude:
By the way, if you ask me what my favorite cooking smell is, my answer will be:
Freshwater fish (in this picture it is Trout) rubbed with salt and turmeric powder, fried on a woodfire stove. What can beat that? Signing off, a homesick kampung girl having a fishy affair in her kitchen in a mega city of Moscow. I kan fishy!
Glossary for Neil:
ikan = fish
I kan fishy? = Aren’t I fishy?
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