Miri Memories, and Sarawak Laksa

Current Obsession: Eating Asia.

 

Reading Robin Eackhart's writing makes me nostalgic for Miri and its humble vibrancy. The daily tamu's (markets), where they sell everything from live fish, sago worms, mud crabs, crocodile-skin fruit, where I used to buy rambutans by the tonne (I exaggerate of course).

 

I have of course come to realize, cooped here in my big city, how much more I miss Miri than having to drive only 5 minutes to and from work every day.

 

I miss the tamu's, where were weather-beaten little old ladies sell handwoven baskets and traditionaly beaded Christmas ornaments.

 

Where the locals' favourite vegetables grow wild (midin or jungle fern) - stuff that grew in the drains and ditches.

 

I used to love the dependencies (and respect) the locals had on the wild, the rusticity of it all - we had neighbours who kept chickens and slaughtered them for food. We must have been the only family that didn't have a small vegetable patch in our garden. A monitor lizard and catfish lived in the neighbourhood drains (we occassionaly saw the big guy swim languidly by - but he never bothered us). It was an almost daily even to spot electric blue kingfishers sometimes. And - oh, Miri didn't have crows, it had storks! Pure white birds everywhere. Sometimes we even spotted a hornbill or two.

 

I wish I captured more of the local wildlife and lifestyles, in words and photos.

 

The fact that I would spot men with nets and rods harvesting krill and catching mudcrabs and catfish on my drive home, where the ground is so fertile it's easy to live off the land. Where they warn you about crocodiles in the local park lake.

 

I loved it all, I confess. I loved our kindly neighbours, the gentle Sarawakian spirit, the muhibbah-ness of the place - where, truly, people of all races and religions live in harmony.

 

I also loved Sarawak Laksa - white rice noodles in a sour, coconut-milk broth flavoured with the essence of prawns and jazzed up with chilli and lime. Garnishes are strips of egg omelette, strips of poached chicken breast, prawns, beansprouts and coriander. It is about the only Sarawakian food I really miss. I could do without kolok mee (kinda like wan tan mee without the wan tan, hence loses its point), red wine mee sua or wild boar (Sarawakians are obsessed with wild boar, I don't know why).

 

And since my pregnancy cravings are hitting me full on, I decided I had to make my own version. I needed a good supply!

 

I researched online and to my surprise, there isn't a real recipe for the Sarawak laksa spice paste. Apparently it's a closely guarded secret, and even the manufacturers are few and between. Oh when will they sell a Sarawak-laksa flavoured instant noodle??

 

So the paste had to be bought - good thing a friend was visiting Miri and so I got him to get me two packs. 1 pack feeds about 6. The rest of the recipe was gleaned from here and here. I decided that mine would be kinda a hybrid of both.

 

We invited AK's parents and my youngest brother over for dinner, and it went down pretty well, I have to say. My brother kept saying how much he loved it, and my in-laws told me to open a stall :P. The recipe below fed the five of us pretty generously, with enough leftover gravy for another 2 servings the day after - just nice for AK and I. I think a repeat is definitely in order!

 

 

Notes:

- I was pretty generous with the prawns - you can use smaller prawns and reduce the amount.

- You can also use thick coconut milk, or add more milk if you like a richer gravy. Reduce the gravy further if you plan to do so, so as not to dilute the taste too much).

 

Here's my version of the recipe:

 

Laksa gravy:

1 packet "Eagle Brand" Sarawak Laksa spice paste (300g)
700g large prawns. Remove the heads, peel and devein them. Reserve the heads and shells.
2 bonesless and skinless chicken breasts
2 litres chicken stock (I used water and a generous few dashes of concentrate)
300 ml coconut milk

 

Condiments:

4 eggs, beaten with a little soy sauce

4 cups beansprouts, tailed
Enough rice noodles (beehoon) for 6 persons
2-3 sprigs coriander, chopped

 

To serve with:

sambal belachan
lime halves

To make the gravy, bring the chicken stock to a boil. Add the chicken breasts, lower the heat to a gentle simmer and poach the breasts until cooked (about 15 minutes).

 

Remove the breasts. Once cooled, shred them using 2 forks (or your hands). Set aside - this is to be a condiment.

 

Bring the stock back to the boil. Meanwhile, heat a pan with a little oil. Fry the reserved prawn shells and heads until caramelized. Add this mixture (make sure you get all that orange prawn-infused oil into the pot) to the stock. Add the spice mix and lower the heat. Simmer for an hour.

 

Blend up the soup (I highly recommend using an immersion blender, this saves the trouble of emptying hot soup into a blender in batches - because I doubt any blender is large enough to accomodate a large pot of gravy). Strain the gravy into another pot and keep warm. Before serving, bring back to a boil and add the coconut milk.  Lower the heat and simmer for 10 minutes.

 

Make a thin omelette from the eggs (I had to do 2 omelettes as I wanted them thin and my pan wasn't that big).

 

Before serving, poach the peeled prawns in the laksa gravy (about 5 minutes) until cooked. Blanch the noodles (1-2 minutes) and the beansprouts (30 seconds) separately.

 

To serve, let people help themselves to noodles, beansprouts, omelette strips, chicken strips and prawns. Ladle the hot gravy over. Garnish with coriander. Add sambal and lime to increase spice and sourness levels accordingly.

 

 

Visiting the Niah Caves, and a Devil's Food Cake

Nothing like a good dose of blogging, scanning through captured photos, a slice of proud-product of the weekend just past in hand, crumbs on lips and keyboard all sticky, to beat away the troubles of a Dilbert-worthy Monday.


We rose bright and early on Saturday to make our way to the Niah National Park. It was a relatively painlessle ten-kilometer jungle walk, on a plank walkway so we didn't soil our shoes too much. Age-old trees provided shade that I was grateful for, given the awful spell of hot weather we have been having lately.






Caving was, well, not nearly as fun as the jungle walk. Credit to the park authorities, the raised walkways were well laid out and made it easy for us to navigate. Bats and swiftlets hung about above our heads as we tried to avoid as the guano , an impossible task. It was actually pitch-dark in some areas and we needed our torches to walk through.

 

Truth be told, what I felt really made our little trip extra special was our stop overs on the way to the park itself, the teeny town of Bekenu, where we had a freshwater prawn fried noodles breakfast.

 

And thanks to a minor vehicle malfunction, I got the chance to wander around the Niah Bazaar and the nearby river, on the banks of which stood this adorably garish hot pink Chinese temple.



And the Bekenu market. Clams the size of fists, with their white flesh peeking out only to slip back when we curiously touched them. Mussels by the bagful for 2 ringgit! And a rather sorry assortment of baby sharks, their skins leathery to the touch, their little fins, which could not have been more than 2 or 3 inches long, cut off. When will we learn to stop this unsustainable demand? :(



On the bright side, we were lucky that it's the season for fishing for freshwater prawns. Small-time fishermen brought in their prawn traps with their catches inside still writhing and leaping out of the river. A kilo cost us 28 ringgit! And as you can tell, these were healthy, good-sized specimens.

We also bought some garish pink dragonfruit (which turned out to be supersweet) and a giant soursop (we were advised that it’s a powerful antioxidant) that would have cost us a lot more in Miri. I wish I bought those mussels though - I could never find them in Miri and they were so darned cheap.


Sunday was an altogether different day. Aside from resting my aching bones (obviously the quest to get fitter has not been going as well as I'd hoped). We went over to a friend’s place for his housewarming. I’ll admit I’m pretty jealous of his super plush sofa and built in oven, and of course, of him having a place to REALLY call his own. I made Devil’s Food Cake, following a David Lebovitz recipe. I followed his recipe to the T, except for the frosting part where I made the mistake of using my 72% cocoa solids bar which turned out way too strong (never thought I’d say that), and had to whisk in almost a cup of butter and spoonful after spoonful of icing sugar to temper the bitterness.



So all in all, a weekend well spent. Next – on to a recipe that will hopefully do my prawns some justice!

The Swamps of Miri

Just a minute's drive from the office we work in, taken on a dreary, cloudy day that threatened to rain on us (and eventually did).

The road traverses a small patch wetlands. What you first see as you leave the office grounds is a squatter village - tin-roofed huts hovering precariously over the mud on uneven stilts. Children playing by the roadside, women walking down the road toward the bus stop nearer the office. A few minutes more and the ocean appears. A bit more - the expat village, old colonial-style single storey houses admist casuarina trees and winding cycling paths.

Locals fish and shrimp here in the swamps. And sell their catch too, along with watermelons, bananas and whatever else they grow on makeshift stalls lining the road.




A gnarly old tree that could be part of the set of Sleepy Hollow.

The stream empties into the rolling ocean beyond.

Borneo Rainforest Resort - A Farewell (late post)

We took this trip early last December, so this is a rather late post.

The F23 crew organized a stay at the Borneo Rainforest Resort in December, and we spent one night at the place. We (AK & me, the guys and their families, plus our 2 lady trainees) went on a tractor ride which took us on a tour of the place, past vast oil palm plantations stretching into the horizon, farms of chickens and goats, fruit trees (jackfruit, durians, breadfruit - no fruits yet though). We also hiked through some of the (remaining) virgin jungle. Nothing really spectacular I would say but still very nice - waterfalls, lakes for fishing, a slow boat ride.

We (well, not me) also had some fun at the huge activity centre. The kids had colouring books and model building, while the guys played volleyball, and AK rather shamelessly outshone them all. I really wanted to play, but my stupid frozen shoulder-or-extra-rib/spur was hurting too much to play any sport requiring shoulder muscle movement. Boo-hoo :(

We stayed in little timber houses on stilts that stood over some stagnant water holes. No smell, luckily. The rooms are all varnished wood, something I liked a lot. And, the nicest surprise, the amenities were hotel-like - air conditioning, bedroom slippers, hot showers replete with miniature toiletries. No worries about having to set up camp or waging mosquitoe wars. Luxury in the middle of it all!

Fishing hole.

We were guided to this cool waterfall after 20 minutes of trekking through the jungle (nothing heart-stopping, physically - most of the kids and older folks managed the hike, but then again these are Sarawakians we are talking about. Way fitter than us lousy Westerners, generally). In the stifling heat everyone was so tempted to just dive into the pool, jeans and all. But being the civilized offshore folk that we are, of course we didn't.

What a wonderful farewell. We always have so much fun, no matter what we do.

I miss everyone.

Walk on the Beach, 30th Of September

The weekend before I was due to come offshore, AK asked me if I wanted to go to the beach. Lethargic at first and enjoying the comforts of my bed and air conditioning, I was a little reluctant.

So understandably, after I managed to drag myself out of bed, it was a little late in the evening when we got there - the Miri beach named, if memory serves, Hawaii Beach (why, I have absolutely no clue).

And I totally regret that we did not leave the house earlier.

Now, Miri's Hawaii Beach is nothing to shout about, no Phuket or Perhentian. It's no Sabah either. The water quality is dubious, and swimming is usually not recommended, thanks to the nearby offshore platforms and worse, the timber factories upriver.

But it is not all that bad.

When we got there, the waves were rocking and rolling, the wind was blowing salty mist into our faces (made me wonder how my folks offshore were doing - it would be twice as bad offshore).

The beach was surprisingly clean. We saw families clearing the last of their picnics, and met with children putting finishing touches to their sandcastles.

We played with the tiniest little hermit crabs and tried to coax some photos out of them, but found them to be shy little fellas :)

Think this one here is the best we got.


Tiny little things they are.


We did not realise that the sunset was almost upon us, but managed, just in time, to capture it before the sun exited and we were, literally, left in the dark.


Portrait of me in the sand, by AK.

When it got too dark to see clearly (and it did get that dark pretty fast), we had a simple little dinner in town, at a place we had never been to, just to be (a little) adventurous. The food was nothing to shout about, but we did have the best time, just the two of us.

It was one of those times where we were just immersed in the moment, not talking about tomorrow or yesterday. The sun is setting. The children are playing. The wind is blowing. Notice the present tenses? Notice how wonderful it sounds? (to me anyway)

Even now, writing from offshore, I remember almost every detail of that evening because we were in the moment. I'll be the first to admit, we had been living life a bit too hecticly, both of us totally caught up with our work. We still are, but it's nice to take a few pauses now and then.

It may be a sign of getting older, or maybe my Carpe Diem tendencies are not of a high enough standard, but the below realisation has just come to me.

I don't need no exotic vacation or rockin' nightclub to make my weekend worthwhile. (Come to think of it, a vacation to Bangkok or even Sabah sounds good..hmmm...) The walk on the beach (ahem, Hawaii Beach, Miri) made me pretty darn happy.

Cats in Our Lives - Queen's Kittens in Miri

We used to have kittens around our house in Miri - they belonged to a snobbish old queen cat who adopted our next door neighbour. She looks pretty shabby now, but if you take a closer look at her long grey fur and haughty demeanor, you would know that she used to be a regal one.

Queen of the Garden - a bit past her prime

Trailing after mama

It is my belief that her many descendants are living all around us now. Anyhow, she had kittens some time in April and we used to play with them - to me they embody all the innocence and carefree-ness of childhoods long ago. When was the last time when you didn't have to worry about the bills, the boss, family, etc. and the MOST IMPORTANT things are What shall we do today? Where shall we play?

Sadly they are all gone now - one got knocked by a car in the road outside the house...and the big one with the Batman costume - just disappeared. It's been a couple of months now but I feel sad all over again posting this.