Rats!!

Pagi ni tak dak rezeki la nak makan roti canai dengan gulai dalca Mad Bee. Naya ja penat aku menguli roti canai semalam sampai berpeluh satu badan hahaha. Lepaih uli semalam, aku pon simpan la doh tu siap tutup lagi tapi cilakui punya SiTi pandai juga kerabat meja menusuk masuk bawah tudung. Habis dia guling2 dalam tu 'bekwoh' sakan ngan kawan-kawan dia.
Pagi tadi, aku dan la tangkap sekoq tak puas makan lagi... punya la bengang. Nak tutup mata macam kedai mamak tak la aku sanggup pasai dah nampak bekaih gerit SiTi ngan taik kawan-kawan dia yang bertaburan. Terpaksa la buang!
Mujuq la Cik Mad tak putuih idea, dan jugak dia buat nasi tomato back-up plan habuan makan dengan dalca. Aku pon tambah la buat ayam goreng berempah buat lauk. Kira Ok la.. habuan nasi tomato pagi-pagi.
Besok-besok aku tulih la pasai resepi ayam goreng berempah ngan nasi Tomato Cik Mad. Hari ni dok geli lagi teringat kat cik SiTi.

karipap

I have defaulted on my promise to post the recipe for karipap. Thank you to Sifu Z and Azhar for the crash course. Well here goes:

Curry Puff, make >50pcs (Karipap)

Ingredient for dough
2 kilo flour
2 tea spoon salt
2 table spoon sugar
1-1/2 cups ghee
6 cups water

Ingredient for fillings
½ kilo Meat –minced or diced
4 sweet potato (Keledek) - diced
Curry powder
Cinnamon
Anise seed (Bunga Lawang)
Clove
Cardamom
Garlic
Onion, diced

Method to prepare dough

1) Heat up the 1-1/2 cup ghee till it melts
2) Mix the flour+sugar+salt
3) Pour the melted ghee into the flour and wait till it cools down
4) Mix water a little bit at a time
5) Knead until dough does not stick (clean)
6) Leave it to rest for an hour or so

In the mean time we can start preparing the fillings – Beef curry

Method preparing filling
1) Stir fry onion and garlic
2) Add cinnamon, anise seed, cloves and cardamom, fry till fragrant
3) Add Curry powder,
4) Add meat
5) Add Sweet potato
6) Cook till gravy dries up
7) Once cooked, Leave it to cool down

'klim' process..Lan tunjuk skill...!

Filling method
1) Roll dough into palm size
2) Arrange the filling in the middle of the dough, preferably half side of the dough (easier to fold
3) Fold the dough to cover the filling. Arrange it into half moon shape
4) Flatten the corner with finger and ‘klim’ the edges (English for klim?)
Once ready, fry the karipap. If 50 is too many, start with smaller batches by halving the quantity proportionately.

Lesson learnt
1) Prepare filling earlier so that at least you can rest after tired from preparing the dough, hahaha
2) Use less clove, cardamom that stings your tongue. Easier to remove during filling process. You don’t want to eat karipap and bite on the nasty stuff right?
3) Same goes for cinnamon, shorter sticks might get lost in the fillings and end up in your bite.. destroy your appetite hahaha
4) Avoid too much water when cooking the filling. Takes longer time to dry
5) When peeling the sweet potato, don’t leave it exposed to air. Soak it in water to avoid oxidation.
6) Need to prepare two type of dough to get the twirling effect u get in ‘karipap pusing’
7) Make sure oil is very hot before start frying.

Arous

e, originally uploaded by kopi_kocok.

Yesterday we went to Arous again, this time we have a guest with us who is a professional scuba diver. He also brought along his underwater camera and got this pic.

and this

and this

and this

and this

beautiful ain't it?

If you wish to come here and go snorkeling or scuba dive, check out this site for info.

Manjaria lagi

Manjaria=makan=eat
Probably Sudanese slang for eat. In Arabic actual word for eat is 'ukul' أكل
Tak sama langsung!
Well those are few arabic I learned so far I am here. What a waste kan? Believe me, I am also disappointed with myself at the rate I am learning. Anyhow, at least if i get lost here I think I could at least beg for some food.
Well thats enough word for the day.

Anyway, what so big deal about eating here? The short answer is thats all I look forward to here. The work here are just bonus haha.

Malaysians in general ( I believe I am right and not being stereotyping) are particular about what they eat. Hey, even the Prime Minister asked question relating to makan while the angkasawan was up there some where.

Being away from family and homeland, myself and the rest of Malaysian expats here would tend to find our own routine that could take away the forlorn feeling during this 60 days isolation. We do bog ourselves with work, but thats only between 8 to 5 so what do we do in between? Eat and sleep. Consider fishing and swimming bonus lah. The life basics left are eat and sleep. Well, question is how long can one sleep? Answer varies but result are same, sheer boredom!

So, eating is one way that we keep ourselves sane. It goes from just enjoying the food prepared by others or take charge in the kitchen preparing some special food to share with others. One can rest assure that all food made sedap or not will never go to waste.

I think learning how to cook is one way of not wasting my time here while enjoying the company of friends. At least, If I dont get a better job after this with an 'international experience' on my resume, I would be able to cook for my family when I'm back home. Kan? Maybe kot.

Anyhow, I remember my teacher said if you dont take notes of what you learn you probably forget about it the minute you stepped out the class room. Taking her advise, I am writing down here Pau Resepi I learned.

The Pau that we made can be rated OK lah. There are a few critics from the usual suspect but hey, u cant satisfy everyone. Most important is I learned to make them. Kudos to sifu pau, u know who you are.

Well here goes

PAU

Ingredients :
2 cups of flour (use high protein flour)
3 tblspn sugar
3 tblspn milk powder
1 tblspn Planta
1 tblspn oil
1 egg
1 teaspn salt
1 teaspn dry yeast
¾ cup of water

Filling: Meat curry and sweet potato
Sweet potato diced
Meat small cut
Curry powder
Cinnamon
Clove
Onion
Garlic
Salt

Filling: Cook like curry until gravy dries. Like pic below
Method :

1. Sift flour
2. Add in yeast, sugar, milk powder, salt, egg, planta and mix well.
3. While kneading pour in water, a little at a time till well incorporated then add in the oil
4. Continue kneading till smooth and soft dough is formed. Make sure dough is clean i.e. not sticking to the mixing bowl Add more water or oil if needed.
5. Leave dough over night
Dont be alarm if it look like this. Its the effect from the yeast. So punch down and release all air till it look like this.
5. Make into small balls
6. Flatten and put the filling in the middle. Cover the filling with the dough and place the ball on a piece of small paper
Make sure the filling are not wet or too much making it hard to cover with dough
If tak jadi, maka jadi lah macam pizza di bawah... hehehe my first try7. Leave the dough to rest and rise for short while (10 minutes or so)
8. Get the steamer ready and steam the pau until cook.
Dah siap!!
That morning, we had pau daging and nasi goreng kampung...bliss!

Malaisi kullu manjaria tawwali

It means, Malaysian eat all non stop. (I am not sure the correctness of the grammar but it certainly sounds like that to my deaf ear)

I am not sure when the local kitchen helper says it, do they mean to chide us Malaysians or encouraging us to cook some more. I am quite sure that them kitchen helper would appreciate if we wrapped up and hand over the dirty kitchen for their nightly tidying up duty and not continue to make more mess like we normally do.

To recap of what happen over the last 2 weeks, our eating binge was probably at its peak then when 3 of our colleague from Khartoum, Z, Jaha and Lebah Jantan were here for site work. They were not only good chefs but also quite eager to show off their skills to our advantage. Since Pak yah is not around, a few of us (including yours truly) start warming up to recipe websites and simply roll up our sleeves to try out. Not to mention the existing loyal cook like Zul and Cik Mad who between them has feed us their spaghetti and asam pedas. Z and Jaha probably did not start a revolution but their company could be seen as a catalyst by sharing their knowledge and experience with us.

From them, we have learned how to make donut, roti canai, pau and karipap. Wow! The night before they went back, Z managed to trained our Sudanese chef, Ahmed how to cook tom yam, mee goreng and sweet and sour all in one night. Can u imagine the feast we had? Not to mention la the fresh ikan jenahak goreng bertepung special treat by our 'fishermen' when they return from the sea. (Talk about our fishermen; they not only bring back fresh catch but they can also read the moon and tide to tell when they can catch certain type of fish... i'm probably exaggerating but those guys are amazing with their 4m pole)

So, treating this post as a record for recipe I learned over the time, I will post here some ingredients and method learned by 'curi-curi' belajar during chef Ahmed one on one crash course.
Caveat: All the following recipe are not exact like the book due to insufficient ingredient available here in Sudan. Suffice to say that the outcome are simply marvelous thanks to the imagination and innovation by the chef. Kalau tak jadi, pandai la add chicken stock or what ever .

Tom yam
Ingredients:
Fresh prawn
Fresh chicken, cut small
lemon grass
tom yam paste
red onion
garlic
ginger
lemon
tomato

The qty not exact

Method:
1) A pot of water cook till boil
2) Throw in the onion+garlic+lemon grass+ginger
3) Add Chicken and Prawn
4) Add Tom yam paste
5) Add tomato
6) Add Lemon juice and salt for taste

Siap!

Mee Goreng Mamak Sentul

Ingredient
Spaghetti
Chicken
Dried prawn pounce till become dust (tumbuk sampai halus)
Tokyu (Soy Sauce)
Onion and garlic
Chili powder add water to become paste
Cabbage
turmeric
Salt
Sugar
Cooking oil

Method:
A
1) Boil spaghetti
2) Add turmeric for coloring
2) Stir fry onion and garlic till
3) once cook, dry spaghetti and mix a bit of cooking oil so that spaghetti do not stick together

B
1) Heat oil in pan
2) stir fry onion and garlic till brown
3) Add Chili paste fry till cook
4) Add chicken and dried prawn powder
5) Add cabbage, stir fry till 3/4 cook
6) Add cooked spaghetti and stir fry
7) Add soy sauce, sugar and salt for taste

Siap!

Sweet Sour Fish
Ingredient:
Fish
Tomato
Chili Sauce
Ginger
Tomato Sauce
Onion and garlic
lemon
Cabbage
Sugar and salt

Method:
1) fry fish till cook, leave it aside
2) For Sauce, Heat oil again and stir fry onion and garlic till brown, add ginger
3) Add chili sauce and tomato sauce
4) Add cabbage and Tomato
5) Lemon juice, Sugar and Salt for taste

I think optional can also add chili paste for spicy taste or add flour to make the sauce thicker.

Siap!

Still I need practice to work out and get the taste right and not be too shy to add other ingredient deem suitable. In other word: belasah je!

More Clams!!

The other day we had clam some more. Delicious. Kena pulak member bawa 'wasabe'. Perghh! Bliss! Its like going to Sushi King but dont have to pay. Yeah right.. I paid with blood. I got bruised all over my body not to mention cuts all over my palm and each finger. Thats what u get for prying innocent clam from their beautiful coral hidings. Still, clam are marvelous.
P/s: Yesterday buat karipap, but pic not yet downloaded, will brag later..

Random thoughts of my boy

Every time I saw a particular type of vehicles like lorry or van or bus, my thoughts would flash with images and excited voices of my eldest son Muhammad Nuaim. Well not all the time, but most of it. If u meet my son, and ask him about car models, I am sure you would be surprise that he can differentiate models like mercedes, vios, waja or many more. Than he was only 2. Hmm, I miss him.

Today as I was lazing about the site, I was surprised to find that there was a massive traffic jams of bus convoy in the mostly laid back marine terminal. There were almost 20 numbers of buses of different color packed with students from the Red Sea University on their site visit. Lucky, my colleague did not waste his time by start taking pictures of the convoy. So I leached from him and dedicated the picture to Nuaim.
What so big deal about bus pictures? Nothing, its my blog so its my choice what junk I can post in my blog right? Anyway, this bus model is consider a common here in Sudan. There are also some weird looking bus, I haven't had a chance to snap a good one each time its pass by..may be next time.
The unusual parade of buses today

Here are also some pictures of vehicles taken during my pilgrimage trip 1427H, always with Nuaim in my mind.
A road sweeper taken in Mina. Its working 24-7 keeping Mina clean for the 3 million odd pilgrims the year of Haji Akbar 1427.
The garbage truck to collect tons of refuse.
I've been in one of this during my university days. But thats another story to tell...

My son also have this infatuation with cranes tower type or the mobile type. The following pictures are also collecting dust in my hard disk.
Tower crane building the new Jamrat bridge in Mina. InsyaAllah in the near future, pilgrims would find it more comfortable performing the stoning rituals. As of January 2007, only one level was completed. I am not sure the current status now...
View at night..

Every time i see food I would think of Nu'man. Miss him too. Well tonight, project Pizza. Someday dad would cook 'em for you, OK

Kuah Dalca

Today I made another attempt to perfect my kuah dalca (dal gravy) I learned from Sifu Zul. Twice I would say it didn't quite meet my own expectation. I would give 40% mark for the first try and maybe today 47-1/2% for my second attempt today. Teruk! Although my friends are polite enough to either give a thumbs up of approval or going for second round 'roti canai banjir'.
The recipe I followed were quite easy, but inexperience and lack of creativity probably results in 'kira ok lah' kuah dalca.

The ingredients are as follows:
Prepare for 14 hungry stomachs

Main ingredient
2 cups kacang dal (dal?)
1/2 kilo meat

spices
3 bijik (bijik omputih kata apa?) cardamom (buah pelaga)
5 kuntum (buds) bunga lawang (??)
5 kuntum (buds) bunga cengkih (cloves)
10 cm kulit kayu manis (cinnamon)
3 big onions (bawang besar hehe)
2 garlic
1 tblspoon tumeric
3 tblspoon curry spice for meat
1 tblspoon chili powder

extras
3 Green paper diced
5 chilis, sliced
2 tomatoes diced
1/4 keledek diced (sweet potato)
2 sticks of carrot diced

Salt
oil

Method:
1) First and fore most wash the kacang dal and soak in water for whole night.
2) Prepare the ingredients above
3) When starting to cook, boil the kacang dal until it become soft.
4) Add meat or chicken to the boiling kacang dal
5a) On the side, heat up a pan of oil. Tumis (english?) the spices until fragrant.
5b) Add Onion and garlic into pan and continue until brownish and fragrant
5c) Add curry spice, chili powder and tumeric and a little bit of water and continue to heat (tumis) until oil appear (pecah minyak?)
6) Add Item 5 into the boiling dal and meat
7) Add the rest of the extra ingredients and vegetables. Make sure carrot and potato goes in first.
8) Cook until meat, dal and potato are soft and cooked
9) Add salt for taste

Easy right? Yes and no. If I strictly follow the ingredients from Myresipi or Mesra.net the method are slightly different, plus I am short on items like ginger or Air Asam (english??). Anyway for today, I did not use the sliced meat as suggested but instead I used minced meat the only thing available in the fridge at that time. So that probably result in not so fine taste. The following are some lesson learnt:-
1) Use sliced meat. Boiled the meat and used the water from the boiled to add to the gravy for the meaty sweetness taste
2) The dal have to be soak in water for longer duration, presumably up to 24 hours in advance. So my friends who 'gian nak menguli' (feel an urge to knead soft dough while thinking of certain something...) have to plan in advance so as to get softer dal in gravy. In fact I boiled almost 2 hours today but still not cooked enough (crunchy dal). Happened on both occasion!
3) Remove the first boil water for dal to reduce the effect of uric acid inherent in the bean species.
4) Don't be too shy on the curry powder. I was saving it for future cooking.. Baba's are impossible to find in Sudan..
5) Use chicken stock to mask tasteless gravy result from ones unskilled hands.

Anyway, I will try to continue refinishing the recipe i followed above until I get the perfect dal gravy to go with roti canai. Thank you for all the supporting hands and patient stomach awaiting for the late dal as usual. (takes too long too cook..must be my fault). Thank you also to the critics, appreciate that for my 'continuous improvement effort' .

Picture below of my dal.. tak lawa la tak pandai hias...
Next time I'll post some more stories about my Pau making course (Steam buns) and Donut. In fact today while cooking dal I was also busy making donuts. Lesson learnt: concentrate one task at a time... tamak!

My english also very bad shape to write a decent recipe worth for a cook book. I remembered I got 4/10 for the same english grammar exercise in school years ago. The topic: write a recipe to make your favorite dish, i.e making curry being my choice of writing.

Crescent moon

I love em moon..
Waxing crescent moon 25%full 4th Zulkaedah 1428 or 14/11/08. Location Bashayer, Port Sudan.
Crescent moon 2nd Muharram 1428 or 21/1/07. The clock is off by one month. Al-Basha Mosque, Jeddah. Overlooking the Red Sea.

Seashells 101

My earlier post was about our picnic trip to the Arous beach where we 'lonely' man managed to get our rough hands on 'oysters'. All those 30 odd seashells creature eventually ended up in our stomach. Amidst the oyster we also managed to grab 2 'snails' which was delicious.

When we returned to our camp, the Sudanese cooks and cleaners who missed us their 'saiyidi' for a whole day greeted us with a disgusted look for bringing home such weird smelly shell thingy and start cleaning it in their 'tidy' kitchen. One guy got interested but cringed when we tried to hand it to him to help us clean it. Another nicked name 'prawn' in his language almost scream when i scared him with one.

Last night, my friends and i were discussing about it and one of us suggested that what we have eaten was abalone and that made me feel like a loser for not catching some more. Even my wife thought it could be a clam, and when I suggested to the group, none could agree that its either oyster or clam or abalone. Last night I was already imagining the fortune I could make by harvesting some more of those abalone.

This morning as usual with no useful thing to do and a fine internet connection Sudan style, I started to search for the keywords and hey! Look what i found.. so this post today is just an introduction to myself and the rest who are interested about sea shells or those yummy aphrodisiac thing you would lose an inch on your right ass after leaving the fancy restaurant serving it.

First, the abalone. Abalone if u might find one only has one shell.. err ye ke? Well, thats what it says on this internet page here about abalone.
Certainly the picture above did not fit the description of what we brought home the other day here.
Next I lookup for oyster and again the picture above turned out on the internet here disappointed me as well as it does not look so much of what we got. Then I learned that there must be a slimy texture one sip with the oyster body which is part of the oyster profile. Our catch certainly did not have those slimy thing going on. So Oyster officially strike off out.

While I was browsing thru, I found a neat website here showing all the different seashells familiar on the beaches back home in Malaysia. I went thru the archive and still none match the creature that we caught but for education purpose I am posting some pictures here courtesy of the website for the different seashells likened to the one that I have brought home to the amusement of Nuaim my beloved eldest son(previous post).
The above is call tiger cowrie. One can spot a few of this along the coral where I normally go stingray spear fishing.
I have a few of this in my collection too.
These are angle wings. I remembered I found a lot of these during my honeymoon in Pulau Rebak Langkawi. I think I picked up a couple of those but I forgot where I throw them away.
The above is a Ramosus shells. I picked this up during my escapades to Tokar. They say its tasty but I never tried one yet.
This one is a spider conch. I had one of this or 'snail' mentioned earlier. It taste like squid and very the yummy one lah.
This volutano balls also taste like squid. the one i got the other day do not have those fancy patterns, but i guess they are the same family.
The above is a mussel shell. Very common. The smaller version would be called etok. Read it here to.
Makcik jual etok.
I found this quite a few in the waters also near where i go stingray hunting
Do u know what is this? Shell! Yes, but not the household name for fuel supply but its actually is a sunset scallop. Scallops are nice..Ive eaten 'em.

Finally back to the question that still linger in our brain what in gods name have we eaten? I finally found this perfect description. Its actually a clam, but from the giant clam species. Because, clam kecik looks like below..
Notice, how come the shell not same? My untrained eye also can tell that its not what we eaten. Giant clams actually can grow up to 1.2m.
The profile by NatGeo fits the description of the ones i find i.e. its stuck to the coral bed and its very the colorful that I notice that each one has different color. The one i found are either red, green, blue and orange. What a bliss to my goggly eyes that day. One fact not so music to my ears is that, it's even on the endangered list in some places. Hmmm now I have second thought of going hunting for it again. But, if we leave the baby one is not so bad kot? Hey wait a minute, the one we got are the baby one kan? Please do not report this post to the greenpeace ok.

Luk-luk wal marjan

The much hyped Arous coined the jewel of the red sea 50km north of Port Sudan did not disappoint 14 odd Malaysian last Friday. Some of us woke up early to organise for the day including preparation of food. I volunteered to menebar roti canai. The dalca gravy was prepared earlier and our Macha prepared mihun mamak to have for picnic. Kendi kerajaan Langit Ayah Pin found here in Port Sudan. No wonder the police are baffled by his "disappearance". Or are the police too busy catching innocence civilian campaigning for free and fair election?

The road
The journey took almost 2 hours thru back alleys and winding roads as our guide only remembered the route he took several months ago. Since the rest of the groups never set foot there, we have to oblige with the guide’s antics. Few fuss and complaints were heard but our irritation simply vanishes once we reach our blue coral sea destination. I forgot if I did ever thank my guide for bringing me to the place. Thanks Mad B!

Blue wonder scenary An eagle disturbed by our presence

The beach
The sight of the white sandy beach and azure blue sea was just remarkable. The guys who brought their camera were already snapping away and few were seen picking up seashells strewn about the sea side. Unfortunately, the first spot we arrived did not have a suitable shelter for a comfortable picnic. After a few inquiries with the locals, we decided to drive a little further to the private beach dotted with colorful painted chalet. However, to access the place, we had to pay 20 Sudanese Guinea (USD10) as entrance fee. Rather exorbitant for a small hut and toilet services minus the water. But we all happily paid.

The Arous Resort. White sandy beaches

The sea
Once we reach the hut, while some were busy unpacking the food stuff, I already hit the water and went for snorkeling. I hated myself for not having an underwater camera with me as the corals and the “Toshiba” fishes that greeted me were simply beautiful.

After a short break and grabbing a bite, I joined some of my friend exploring the sea. We found a spot that had a wonderful coral at the edge of the reef that bordered into an abyss of dark blue water where fishes were big and colorful. The underwater scenery was so beautiful, words fail me.

God is great! From the sea he brought forth Luk-Luk wal Marjan. Which word can we deny? (Ar-Rahman)

Above, the rolling waves were quite strong trashing the unskilled swimmer me about causing panic that I had to abandon my adventure when I found myself left alone. Hehehe… penakut! Anyway, I think I saw almost all the fishes featured in Nemo including a few stingrays.

The oyster
Our fisherman club were already waist deep in the water trying their luck by the time I returned to the beach for some more munchies. Not satisfied snorkeling, myself and a the other few who didn’t bring their fishing rods along decided to look for oysters spotted on the coral reefs. The colors and sizes of the oysters caught our fancy that between us we harvested almost 30 of them big ones . That night after diner we had oyster and so was the next day maggi oyster and again more oysters for supper the following night. Too bad none of the Bapaks could put to any good use the extravagant treat of aphrodisiac! Hehehe..

The catchs Some more catchs Harvested from the sea. I felt bad for removing such colorful creature from their coral home, but still, Oysters are yummy!Aphrodisiac anyone?

All in all it was the most exciting day for me. The coral and sea off the beaches near the place I stayed could not rival Arous and nowhere even near it. Although for the next 40 days or so I had to settle for it but that’s just fine with me. InsyaAllah, maybe next time we would plan again for another trip there, but that time I hope I am prepared with snorkeling gears and most importantly a waterproof camera!