The Making of Umai

Heard of the term "Umai" before? I guess most Sarawakian would know what does it mean. It is actually a cuisine which is synonym to Melanau people in Sarawak.

I am sure lots of people are quite familiar with Japanese sashimi? Ya! If you know what Japanese sashimi is, then Umai is "Melanau's sashimi"! It is thinly sliced fish either eaten raw by dipped into a specially prepared sauce or marinated with calamondin lime, onions, chillies and some gingers.

Few types of fish can be used to prepare Umai, but the most common one is this Empirang fish with gold body color. It is not too hard to recognize this fish in the market. Why this fish? Well, honestly I am not sure. Maybe is because its flesh textures suitable to make Umai?

Basically preparing Umai is not too hard because at the end of the day, you just need to soak everything together for a short while before you can eat it. However, the hardest part is to prepare the fish! Yes, it certainly needs a very good skills to do so.

To prepare the fish, first of all of course you need to clear and clean the fish. Then the toughest part is here - fillet the fish! If you not use to carry the knife, well I guess it is difficult to do this. If I am doing this, I think I will end up cutting my own fingers!

After filleting, it is time to slice the fish into tiny pieces. Make sure you slice the Empirang fish in the correct direction or else you will end up eating sashimi with a lot of fish bones!

These are the finish-sliced fish meat ready to make Umai...

...but before that, here are some other ingredients you need to prepare...

.. and don't forget the calamondin lime juice! It is not easy to prepare as you can imagine how much juice you can get from a tiny calamondin.

Is there any easier way beside using this traditional and out dated technology to squeeze the lime juice? How much juice needed? Well, as long as it is enough to marinate everything in.

After the hard work... jeng jeng jeng... here is the final product! Just soak for a short while...

... and the delicious and unbeatable Umai is ready to be eaten!

Some people like to eat Umai as a dish for lunch or dinner but some prefer to eat it with Sago seeds/pearl.

A Brief Story Of Duanwu Festival

For Chinese, today is Duanwu Festival, one of the important festival in Chinese culture. Duanwu Festival or in Mandarin 端午节 (Duanwu jie) falls on the fifth day of the fifth month of Lunar Calendar.

It was believed to be a festival to commemorate a true patriot as well as great poet named Qu Yuan who commited suicide by drowning himself in the Miluo River when his state Chu was conquered by their ally Qin. Qu opposed the idea of forming that ally yet being accused of treason/disloyal to his country.

The local people who respected and admired Qu paddled boats out to retrive his body and throw foods into the river to avoid fish from eating Qu's dead body. These were said to be the origin of dragon boat and chinese dumpling called "Zongzi". That is why, Duanwu Festival also being known as Dragon Boat Festival or Dumpling Festival.

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duanwu_Festival

Zongzi or rice dumpling is the most significant food in this festival. The celebration looks not complete without it. Anyway, making Zongzi is not easy. It needs good skills to produce a well-shaped and delicious Zongzi. I tried to wrap the Zongzi myself before, but it failed! What a shame! Maybe I really need more practice before I can manage the real skill of wrapping Zongzi.


The main ingredient of Zongzi is glatinous rice and it can be stuffed with different fillings. The most common fillings are red bean paste, peanuts and pork. The shape of Zongzi can be vary, depend on the culture. The most common shape is tetrahedron or triangular.

That is my brief story about the festival. Wish everyone especially my fellow blog followers Happy Duanwu Festival and hope you have a great time celebrating it with your beloved family!

Tang Yuan and Happy Dong Zhi

Today is Winter Solstice (冬至) celebration for Chinese. It's the time where Chinese family will prepare tang (soup) yuan (round), which implies reunion and also full satisfaction. It's one of the most important celebration in Chinese culture.

The main ingredient to make traditional tang yuan is the glutinous rice flour. Mix the flour with water then stir it with hand until the flour become enough glutinous and sticky. (How glutinous should it be? Well, I think this question is for my mum, honestly I don't have idea! ）

[Glutinous rice flour - main ingredient]

[Stir rice flour with water]

Then, you can choose not or add in some white sugar into the glutinous mixture. However, my mother choose to use some sweet potatoes to get its natural sweet flavor. Mix them well.

[Add some sweet potatoes into the flour mixture]

[Properly mixed ingredients to make tang yuan]

After the ingredients are properly mixed, it is time to roll the mixture between your palms to make it into round/ball shape.

[Rounded glutinous balls ready to be cooked]

The glutinous balls will then put into the boiled water to cook. This boiled water will then become the soup of tang yuan. Therefore, you can add in some pandan leaves or ginger or both when boiling the water to add more aroma to the soup. Floating glutinous balls indicate they are properly cooked and ready to be eaten.

[Cook glutinous balls in boiling water with pandan leave]

There are two method to serve traditional tang yuan. First, is the most traditional and original way which is tang yuan in soup. This is why it's called "Tang Yuan", where tang means soup and yuan means round - rounds in the soup.

[Tang Yuan]

2nd method will be cover the cooked glutinous balls with grind peanut mixed with sugar. Serving tang yuan in this way is more tasty and delicious in my personal opinion.

[Mixture of grind peanut and sugar]

[Tang yuan covered with peanuts and it is delicious! ]

Wish everyone, especially Chinese Happy Dong Zhi and enjoy your tang yuan with family!

Mini Cucumber

Let me ask you a pretty easy question. What kind of vegetable shown in picture above? Emmm.. sorry, no prize for a the correct answer. 5 seconds from now!

5... 4... 3... 2... 1... time's up! Did you answer cucumber? But next time please answer louder so that I can hear you.

Well, your answer is partially correct. It's from cucumber family, but I will call it mini cucumber instead of just cucumber. Why? From how I called it, you should know why.

Yes! It's very small in size that's why I called it MINI cucumber. How mini can it be? Emmm.. as small as a thumb... I have picture to prove!

[Size of mini cucumber in relative of a thumb]

[Mini cucumbers on an adult's palm]

Maybe some of you may see this vegetable before but it's hardly found in the market. The size is really cute, it is just like a normal cucumber being shrunk by the shrinking machine taken from the movie "Honey, I shrunk the kids". The scale is about 20:1 of a normal cucumber.

[Mini cucumbers compare with a normal cucumber]

If you slice the mini cucumber into half, you will see the inner part is almost the same as a normal cucumber with plenty of seeds and juicy. If you bite it, it's crunchy.

[Sliced mini cucumber and its inner look]

How to eat it? Well let me ask you, how you eat cucumber then? Yes, you can eat it uncooked or it is just nice to fry with eggs. If you prefer more flavor, you can fry with eggs plus chinese pork sausage (not halal) as the mini cucumber itself doesn't have much taste. Cooking in this way will make the vege very tasty!

[Mini cucumbers, a normal cucumber and a thumb]

Buah Dabai

Sarawak Olive is a kind of fruit which can only be found in Sarawak. It is called Buah Dabai in local Iban Dialect.

[Buah Dabai]

Dabai is a seasonal fruit, just like Engkalak. Therefore, you can only taste this fruit in certain period of a year and normally it is around durian season (Ya! same as Engkalak!). Now it is the season of durian thus season of Dabai as well. When you happen to go to native market, you can easily see natives selling this fruit everywhere.

[Dabai selling in native market]

The older generation native hawkers are still using "Kong" (cupak), a hollow cylindrical object, usually tin of can food as a measurement when selling Dabai. Meaning saying "I want to buy 1kg of Dabai" is not really appropriate. The more appropriate way should be "I want to buy 1 Kong of Dabai". Anyway, the newer generation started to use typical scaling method (Kilograms) for measurement .

Each "kong" will price at RM3 or higher depends on quantity of Dabai available on the market and also the quality of the fruit sold. The fruit quality will depend on the thickness of the skin and also creaminess of the fruit. Thinner the skin and more creamy the fruit will make it more tasty.

[Tin is used as measurement to sell Dabai]

Dabai cannot be eaten instantly because it is hard. To eat the fruits, first of all you need to soak them in warm water for about 15 to 20 minutes to soften them. Don't use hot water to speed up the process of soaking! This will spoil the fruits.

[Soak the hard Dabai fruit in warm water to soften it]

If you are worry if the fruits are enough soaked, you can take one and press it with your fingers. If it's soft meaning the fruits are ready to be eaten. So, pour away the soaking water.

The fruit itself not really tasty. Therefore, in order to eat them, you need to add some flavor. There are 2 types of flavor people usually add in:

1. Salt - just soak the fruits in salty warm water instead of plain warm water as explained just now. The fruits will taste salty and ready to be eaten when they are soften.
2. Soy source + sugar. This method is recommended and tastier. After the soaked fruits soften, mix with soy source and sugar then eat it.
   

[Dabai mixed with soy source and sugar]

Dabai has yellowish flesh and it tastes very creamy.

[Creamy yellowish flesh of Dabai]

Engkalak

Have you see this fruit before? I am sure a lot never or maybe you did come across it at native market but you never care to pay a look at it before.

It is actually a fruit that can only be found in Sarawak area. Usually local called it Buah Engkalak (Iban language) while the Melanau called it Buah Tebuluh. It's the fruits from a wild plant.

[Buah Engkalak]

Therefore initially it was a favorite dishes for the native like Iban and Melanau, but these days more people including Chinese families love to eat it. Yes! I am talking about dishes. Actually this fruit is more to vege type rather than fruits like papaya, banana or water melon. Thus, people usually eat it together with their lunch or dinner.

How to eat? Good question! No cooking is needed here. It's very simple.

First of all, take off the stalk on top of the fruits. You just need a gentle pull to remove it. Then, of course wash it with plain water to clean up the fruits.

[Engkalak with stalk removed]

Now you have 2 choices how to manage the fruits.

First, soak them in the warm and salty water until the fruits are soft enough to consume. The fruits itself are soft actually, but without some simple process like soak them in water, they are still not suitable to eat. However, I heard if the fruits are soaked in the water, their taste will be washed away as well. Therefore, it is not as tasty if you process them in this way.

I more recommend the second method. Just take a spoon, smash around the fruits gently with it. This is to make the fruits softer and looser so that they are good to eat. Then, apply some salt on the fruits. Leave the fruits aside for about 15-20 minutes or more. Then, they are ready to be eaten.

[Smash the fruit gently to soften and loosen it]

[A plate of ready-to-eat Engkalak]

The taste? The fruit itself has no strong smell but it tastes mild sweet. With the salt applied to it, it tastes a bit salty with little sweety, just nice as dishes. It's delicious!

There is a perfect match when eating buah Engkalak - the "Sago seeds"! It's not the real seeds from Sago plant but is a snack type of food made by Sago flour. You can get it in native market as well.

[Sago "seeds"]

To eat Engkalak with Sago seeds, first press gently Engkalak from side to push out the big round seed inside the Engkalak fruit, then put some Sago into it. Put it into your mouth and chew it!

[Big round Engkalak seed inside the fruit ]

[Sago "seeds" eat with Engkalak - a perfect match]

++++++ p/s: ++++++

Oh ya... Engkalak is a seasonal fruit, meaning you cannot get it throughout a year. Just certain time in a year you can have chance to taste it and now it's the season! Usually, it's almost the same season with durian.