Monday, February 13, 2006

FOOD QUIRKS

I love food! I'll eat food in any way that it's prepared as long as it's Halal, the recipes don't matter, spicy sour hot sweet tangy salty whatever, I'm adventurous in that way. Malay, chinese, indian cooking, semua blasah. Italian I love, french, japanese, moroccan, arabian pun blasah gak. However, the ingredients do matter. I'm not talking about the Fear Factor's madagascar hissing cockroach kinda icky ingredients, but some normal run-of-the-mill stuff that I can't stomach.

The stomach, for instance.

Aiya, a cow's or goat's stomach la I mean.

That's a common local ingredient, cooked in so many ways like kerabu perut, satay perut, perut masak lemak etc. Probably the indians too have recipes for goat's stomach. But when I was a wee girl, I one day saw a makcik cleaning the stomach of a freshly slaughtered goat, and got so horrified that I barfed up my breakfast. So I guess that experience kinda scarred me hehehe.

As a kid, I used to love eating paru goreng the way my mom prepared it, boiled, then thinly sliced and doused with a whole load of spices, then crisp-fried, yum! One day, I went into the kitchen just as the pot containing the boiling chunks of paru emitted steam, and the smell was so icky, loya tekak. I asked my mom what smelled so bad? And she said, "peparu lembu". You see, up till that point, I just took 'paru' to be 'paru', I didn't realize it was a poor cow's lungs, urgh! Scarred again, I was.

Lembu muka boring

Soon, I couldn't eat any parts of a cow other than it's meat. The thoughts of eating internal organ, or even sup ekor, makes me shudder. Not only bovine, but fowls too. I can't even eat hati ayam or tongkeng ayam (bishop's nose) these days. Ya, ya, I know you think I'm missing a lot of gastronomical delights, but no thank you. Don't get me wrong, the food's not icky at all, but the idea of it is what turns me off.

I think almost all bovine parts are edible sans the horns and teeth. Mom says the brain is soft and rich (lemak). Hati, paru, limpa, perut are very common in malay cooking. The ahem, family jewels, are a delicacy, kan? The tongue is good in soups, and bones are boiled for stock. In some places, even the hoofs are cracked open to get that soft white tissue inside. I suppose the eyeballs are also eaten elsewhere.

Those things, I won't eat, but I don't mind e ating different types of meat though. Some people eat different parts of one animal such as the cow, but I eat the only one part (meat) but from different animals. I absolutely adore lamb (yum!) and mutton. Venison is sedap, and also ___ (what's the english word for daging kerbau?) too, lebih manis although the texture is a bit 'kasar'. Among more exotic meats I've eaten are wild rusa & kancil,



Ooops... wrong kancil


courtesy of a friend's uncle who has a license to hunt these in the jungles of their kampung. And porcupine meat taste good too, walaupun dagingnya tak banyak.




Salai daging landak tu, buek masak lomak, peh! Mak motuo lalu dopan mato pun tak nampak!


Chicken = good. When in uni (I lived in a hostel which had kitchen facilities), I used to stock up on chicken because it's so versatile and easy to cook, habis malas pun goreng aje, sedap jugak.
Eggs are a must too. I like turkey very much, and don't mind ostrich meat. Tapi yang pelik, I cannot bring myself to eat pigeons. I just feel so sorry for them, bukannya ada daging sangat pun, it's just cruel hehehe :-) So when the rest of the family's smacking their lips on mom's crispy fried pigeons, I pathetically retreat to the kitchen to goreng myself a telur mata kerbau *kesian*.

{ Eh Jie, what for to be so picky ha? After all, you never know exactly what parts go into all those hotdogs, and burger patties you scoffed at Mac's, or even what goes on in your favourite mamak restaurant's kitchen }

In this case, I suppose ignorance is bliss la hehehe :-)

A little bit more on food, ya? You can see how I love this topic hehehe. How about wierd combinations of normal foodstuff? Bread for instance. Since I was small, mom often eat durian ice-cream sandwiched in white bread, which in those days was pretty wierd la. I loved bread slathered with tomato sauce, such a simple snack, plus mom dulu kelentong kitorang saying 'kalau banyak makan tomato, nanti boleh dapat rosy cheeks macam orang putih'. Ceh, tipah tertipu betul!

One time, I developed a liking for bread and raw garlic, go figure. Then it's bread slathered with margarine, then sprinkled with Milo, yum! For a sweeter snack, it's bread slathered with condensed milk, then sprinkled with Milo, double yum! By the way I'm using the word 'slathered', so you can see how indulgent I am with food, ha!

Most recently, I was persuaded by a friend to try a chips sandwich - pringle's chips in between slices of bread. The taste is, well OK, but the texture is interesting... that's the first time I've eaten food that's soft on the outside and crispy on the inside, hmmpf. I love to eat fries with ice-cream, but the hot + salty and cold + sweet combo is too pelik for my friends :-(

Some other of my idiosyncrasies are like saving the yolk of a telur mata kerbau for last, just savoring that last mouthful of yolk, yum! And if I'm eating fish, I'd pick out the bones and arrange them all around the rim of my plate. Dunking peanuts into hot tea, then fishing them out and chewing the warm peanuts and washing the whole thing down with the tea. Wheatameal crackers dunked into ice-cold air sirap ros. Half-ripe (mengkal) ciku. Slices of watermelon dipped into kicap. Oh yeah, when I eat Capt Sanders meal, I eat one item at a time i.e finish the coleslaw, then taters, then bun, and last the chicken.

Am I the only one whose taste and eating habits are so pelik?

5 comments:

maklang said...

Slices of watermelon dipped in kicap????? That's real weird. But I sometimes eat goreng pisang dipped with Kicap blended with cili padi and garlic. Yummy delicious!!!

Iskandar Syah Ismail aka DR Bubbles said...

i believe that u are suffering from PFSD (post-food syndrom disorder)..hehehe...

JIE said...

Hi maklang,

Maybe I'll try ur recipe of goreng pisang cicah kicap, bunyi cam sedap hehehe... :-)

JIE said...

Iskandar,

I'm never POST food. With me the food is always in the present-tense hehehe

JIE said...

Kaez!

In my school, kicap was called 'tokyu'. Nasi kawah... nasi kosong bubuh kicap pun, sedap je kitorang bedal.

Hey gimme a call, girl! (NOT gimme a callgirl)