Cravings...

Warning: If you're fasting you'd better skip this till tonight.

I've been having cravings for the past few days. I have a very diversified palate... cheap to expensive, poor to rich, halal and non-halal... but definitely 'no spare parts' (otherwise known as offal) for me. I had a rather tough childhood and I am quite accustomed to poor and cheap food. Back in the days... my late father would send me or my elder brother on a bicycle to the Indian shop to take-away fish curry.  RM1.00 for the fish curry which would have 1 piece of tenggiri (Mackerel) and we would ask to add RM0.20 more worth of gravy. Then at home we would fry some omelet with onions and that's what all 5 of us would eat. We grew up eating more rice than anything else... rice with gravy.

Among the things that I had cravings for were:-

1. Hot rice drenched in assam pedas gravy with salted ikan sepat, some spicy sambal belacan and kacang botol. I'm hungry already...

2. Beef rendang... specifically the one that the makcik behind Starhill sells in the evenings.

3. Steamed salted chicken... steamed chicken is a common item in any Chinese household.. especially when we have a festival or prayers. My mom used to always stow half a chicken away in the fridge but she would rub salt all over the chicken before doing so. Then the following day, she would cut the chicken to bite sizes and place the pieces in a deep dish. She would then place it in the rice cooker at the final stages of the rice being cooked. The steam, salt and jus from the chicken makes an excellent gravy and is just superb with rice. A dash of Shaoshing wine before steaming would make it even better.

4. Then there's the leftover dish.... my favourite. Translated from Cantonese we call it 'Sour and Spicy Vegetables'. All the leftovers are plonked into a large pot together with dried chili, asam keping, Chinese mustard greens and filled with water to the top  and braised for a few hours then seasoned to taste with salt. Absolutely heavenly and I could finish the whole pot.... and it was a large pot... probably a 10-liter pot.

5. Yong Tau Foo... oh my... how I miss this... especially the ones my mom makes. Ooohlala...

6. Porridge... I grew up on this too. There are many variants that we used to have. The common one would  be with spinach and ikan bilis (anchovies). If we were lucky then we would probably get chicken porridge or minced meat with preserved vegetables. Sometimes it would be just plain porridge with a can of fried dace. Yummy... I love porridge.

7. Sambal Hae Bee... I don't know if other households do this but my mom used to buy dried shrimps... soak them for a while then pound the hell out of it and she would then stir-fry this with lots of oil and sambal belacan. She would make a large batch and store it in an air tight 'tupperware' in the fridge. This was our multi-purpose condiment. It's nice as a spread on bread... goes well with steamed rice and also goes very well with plain porridge.

8. Taw Eu Bak... this is a non-halal dish. Literally it means Soy Sauce Meat in Hokkien... but in Hokkien when we say bak which by definition is meat, generally the Hokkiens understand it as pork... just like how daging means meat but daging is generally understood as beef to the Malays. The meat is braised with soy sauce and dark soy sauce together with whole hard-boiled eggs, lots of whole garlic bulbs, mushrooms and beancurd skin with a hint of spices like cinnamon and star anise. Very much like daging masak kicap but way better... in my opinion. Anyway... I usually just hantam the gravy and the egg white with steaming rice and you must have sambal belacan with a generous squeeze of lime juice. I tell you... cannot describe the syiok of this. One day I'll make a halal version and invite everyone to try... Perghhhhhhh...

There are many more things that I'm craving for but just these 8 are already making me absolutely hungry so I'd better stop here. I also miss my kitchen a lot... especially my oven. I miss roasting whole garlic bulbs for my garlic mashed potatoes... I miss roasting beef... I miss roasting chicken... I miss making pizza... I miss making my own sun-dried tomatoes... I miss baking cheese cakes... I miss baking muffins... meatloaf... sigh... so many things that I crave for and so many things that I miss... : (