Shah & Shafinaz's Wedding

I don't get invited to Malay weddings often, and when I do, I never miss them. In this case, I looked forward to this wedding because it was the wedding of the son of my classmate G (she is Aminah now, but we her classmates have the privilege of calling her fondly by her childhood name, G). A few of our schoolmates have kids who have gotten married but in our class of 22 girls, G's 22-year-old son is the first.

The wedding started with the akad nikah, the taking of vows in front of an iman, in G's new house in The Residence, an upscale estate that sits next to a golf course with the city of KK behind it separated by a small strip of sea. Access into the estate was by golf buggies because there were so many cars. I must tell G that next time she invites me, I want to be sent in by one of her two boats anchored behind the house.

The akad nikah was a very solemn ceremony that lasted nearly 2 hours. Because it was so solemn, I didn't take many photos but here are some taken after the ceremony:





The Filipino florist/designer came up with interesting flower center pieces that included veg such as cabbage and chives.


These are suluk-bajau dancers doing their traditional dances.


The lovely bride in a beautiful hand-sequined baju kurung.


A row of interesting hantaran (dowry), beautifully wrapped and presented. There were many of sets of cosmetics, a couple of Louis Vuitton bags, jewellery, an iPhone, a pair of jeans and dodol (a chewy fudge-like confectionery made of coconut milk).


The beautiful young newly weds.

The next batch of photos were taken the next evening (9/6/09) at The Magellan Sutera Hotel where about 1000 guests attended the dinner. Again, I couldn't take the photos as freely as I wanted to because the occasion was very formal and grand. I wish I had the guts to walk up to the stage where the bride and groom were seated, dressed like prince and princess, as they were blessed by the VIPs and relatives. I was especially awed by the bride's breathtaking shimmering butter-colored baju kurung. A friend asked why I wasn't wearing a baju kurung and I realized I don't have one. Why I don't have one is because I think baju kurungs are hideous sacks used by some ladies to hide their rolls and lumps and bumps. I much prefer the sarung kebaya which seems to be worn proudly by the Indonesians but not anymore by Malaysians.

Everyday baju kurungs are like big cloth bags with holes to put your head through, and are usually made with cheap loud flowery fabrics. The baju kurung I dislike most are those that have reversed backgrounds, with, say red dots against a blue background for the top and blue dots with red background for the bottom. Oh. so. trite.

Well, my eyes were opened last night. Evening baju kurungs are totally different from ordinary day time sacks. Evening bajus are slightly more shaped at the waist, and are elegant, classy, exquisite dresses made from diaphanous, dreamy silk chiffon hand sewn with sequins and beads that shimmer and shine as the ladies glide elegantly across the room. I was particularly taken by this pink number with its scalloped multi-tiered layers edged in beads and sequins (if you could just have a closer look, you'd be awed too), especially when she was on the stage blessing the couple:




These two beauties obligingly posed for me in their beautiful bajus.

By the time I left the party, I knew I want a taupe beige-colored chiffony, flowy baju with delicate scalloped edges sewn with tons of sequins and beads.

Ok, on with the show:




G and her prince who whisked her off at 20. G was a beauty queen and carries herself elegantly. I've never seen her without a smile, and as I thought about it last night, in all these years, I've never seen her angry or loud. Class lady, this one, and she remains the same as she was in school -- sweet, gentle and gracious.

G's baju was contemporary, very elegant and tasteful.




The food was absolutely delicious, from the soup soto kambing (lamb soup) to the nasi briyani (which had curry leaves), to the udang masak merah to the kurmah chicken. I had no idea Magellan serves such excellent Malay food. It def beats the food they serve at Chinese wedding banquets.


Dessert was a durian cheesecake, good with black coffee.


The cake was in the shape of fondant pillows...I wonder if there's a reason for this. Symbol of fertility perhaps? Somehow it reminds me of Arabian Nights, especially that blue pillow.


The stage where the couple sat to be blessed. You should've seen the bride's baju. It was stunning.





G and her family. I never understood pantuns/poems in school (although surprisingly now I do), couldn't speak Bahasa properly let alone write poems, but when G gave her speech at the end of the dinner, I teared as she told the newly weds to love each other forever unconditionally and recited a pantun that included these words, "kasih sayang bonda" --a mother's love. The tender feeling of gratefulness (that the kid has grown to what he is) and happiness (that he has found the person who loves him and will share his life) must've run through all the hearts of the mothers in the hall.

Pork Leg With Soy Beans

An absolutely delicious dish cooked by my MIL. I won't even bother to cook this myself because Hub has just joked that my Shanghainese dishes are 'slightly' second rate to his mom's. I tell him if that's so it's because the teacher didn't teach me all her tricks.

You must have heard about the pig trotter-eating trend that started from Japan last year and reached as far as New York, where the beauty conscious are dining on pig trotters in a bid to replenish their aging bodies with collagen. The idea is that instead of injecting collagen into their faces, which may result in uneven contours and strange expressions, not forgetting the pain of the needles, eating collagen will naturally put back the glow and plumpness that time and stress have robbed. The Chinese have long known this, and pig skin was something the previous generation left on their pork; it is never discarded and in fact is sought after for the taste and bite. Pig leg in sweet black vinegar (a serious YUM!) is a dish most Chinese moms, MILs and confinement nannies will cook for new mothers, and friends of the new mothers look forward to eating when visiting the new mom and baby, so I'm sure there's something to this tradition. I am in the in-between generation, eating trotters' skin once in a while when it's served but my kids don't touch any pig skin at all, although lately Wey realized that he liked pig trotters for their tendons. I do believe that when we get into middle age, we shouldn't be too skinny or we'll have that weathered taut look. Look at AJ. Okay, she is still hot, but like a hot, tired and aged 40 something and that thin body looks like it's having trouble holding up her head, which is too big, literal and otherwise. What she needs is a good meal of pig trotters.

There isn't any meat in trotters (just skin and tendons) and in KK, the section from the knee to the trotters is sold in one piece. I shall call that section the lower leg. The shank, upper part of the lower leg, has quite a bit of meat though. Have the butcher cut the lower leg into small pieces through the bone but not through the bottom piece of skin so that the skin still holds the whole lower leg together. When you get home, you can wash the leg, then cut into smaller pieces. Don't reduce the amount of soy beans because they soak up the sauce and become very tasty; in my family, we fight for the beans as much as we fight for that perfect piece of pork--the piece with some meat, lots of tendon and lean skin. Since this dish needs slow cooking for more than 3 hours, it's a good idea to cook more so you can freeze some of it.

Move over SK II, I've found a cheaper fountain of youth, and I can eat it too.

Stewed Pig Leg With Soy Beans

1 pig shank & trotters (the lower leg), cut into 6 cm X 6 cm pieces
2 cups dried soy beans
1 cup dried Chinese mushrooms, soaked until soft n sliced into half
1/2 cup Kikkoman soy sauce*
1/3 cup Lee Kum Kee selected dark soy sauce*
50 g fresh ginger, in thick slices
50 g rock sugar*
1/2 t salt
4-5 T shaoxin wine

*Adjust the amount to your liking because the lower leg can vary in size

1. Soak the soy beans overnight. Put the soaked beans into a medium-sized pot, add water until it is 5 cm above the beans. Simmer for 1- 1 1/2 hours. Drain.

2. Boil some water and blanch the pieces of leg. Drain, throw away the water.

3. Put about 2 T veg oil in a large pot, fry the ginger until fragrant, add the leg and fry until the skin curls and contracts.

4. Add the soy sauces, sugar, salt and wine and enough water to just cover the trotters. When the dish comes to a boil, lower the heat until just simmering and cook until skin n meat are tender and very soft, but not falling off the bone and the beans are soft and filled with the flavor of the sauce. This can take 2 hours or more. Stir once in a while. There shouldn't be too much liquid or too little when the dish is done. Too much and the flavor is diluted and the sauce will be too runny; the sauce should be slightly thick. If this is the case, turn the heat up, take off the lid and let the sauce reduce but make sure you stir once in a while. Don't reduce the sauce too much or it will be too salty and there won't be enough sauce to go around. This is a good dish to eat hot with plain boiled rice.

Kedai Kopi Ming Fong

A quick post. My internet connection is very slow again. I went to my hub's office last night to make some online payments and was taken aback by how fast the internet connection was; the page appeared right after clicking which seems like magic to me. I'm used to watching the what-do-u-call-it go round and round as the page tries to load and reload, stops, stalls and I have to start all over again.

We don't normally have late night meals now that we are our age and our size. But since school's out for Wey, we take him out once in a while because he needs 5 meals a day, especially just before he sleeps.

My sis told me about Kedai Kopi Ming Fong behind the burnt-down Servay Supermarket in Penampang whose young cook used to work at 'Bamboo Inn' (my translation) up on the hill slope near Taman Century in Shantung Au. I'm sure you know the Bamboo Inn. It was a very popular place to bring tourists for a very local meal because they served game such as wild boar, 'flying foxes', snakes, whatever else that I'm not aware of, in a wooden shaky open hut perched precariously on a hill side. I used to dread eating there because the hill was kind of spooky at night, although the air was very fresh and it freaked me out that my food may be contaminated with the blood of those exotic animals. It is also because of this reason that I don't go to Hong Kong or southern China in winter, because that's snake-eating season. Anyway, despite the large crowd, the place was closed down a couple of years ago after the landowner sold the property. Once in a while, I wondered where the restaurant relocated to. According to the young cook, all of them have gone on to work for other restaurants but he stressed that he'd work long enough at Bamboo Inn to come up with the same dishes, and the dish I wanted to eat was what I called 'Sabah mi fen' and what he called 'Fish sauce mi fen'. Btw, if you liked the guotie they used to serve at Bamboo Inn, the couple and son also relocated to Ming Feng. Gone are the days when people couldn't find a table. The concrete structure of the coffeeshop does not have that quaint wooden ramshackle-hut-in-the-jungle atmosphere so people don't bring their cousins visiting from Germany or Ireland here anymore. I suppose ambience was the real puller for Bamboo Inn. But I'd suggest you give the young cook a chance because he cooks pretty well and fast (okay, including us there was just another family in the whole restaurant).


Sabah style mi fen RM5/US$1.40, also known as fish sauce mi fen, is thin rice noodles fried with fish sauce, dried shrimps, sometimes salted fish, Sabah veg (vital) and a sprinkling of bird's eyes chilies, the hottest chilies in this country. 'White mi fen' is not easy to fry, since there's no soy sauce to lend any flavor, so there must be enough wok hei (heat of the wok that gives a smoky char flavor). The fish sauce, salted fish or dried shrimps and Sabah veg contribute to the subtle but yummy taste of this dish, best eaten with a belacan sauce or a lime-chili sauce.


Watan ho RM5/US$1.40, flat rice noodles with an egg gravy. It was okay, lots of wok hei but not exceptional in taste.


Guotie, pan-fried wheat flour snacks, was RM0.60 each and tasted like regular Malaysian-style guotie with a meat and onion filling.


Deep-fried quails, RM4.50 each, were lean and tender but a little too much for hub and I because Wey wouldn't touch it. "It's a little bird!" Yes, but so is chicken. "I don't like chicken anyway."

Bill was about RM26/US$7, cheaper than eating a pizza.

Ming Fong is in the middle of the last row of shop lots on the left side (if you are facing what used to be the entrance) of the Servay plot, on the road linking to Wong Kok Restaurant.

Chili Hot Ddeok

It was a long weekend so we took a drive down the coast where there are acres of green fields that used to be (and some still are) padi or rice fields. The west coast of Sabah is truly pretty, with blue hills on one side and the calm blue sea on the other side:



We went to the Bongawan Golf Resort that has been bought and recently renovated by some Koreans and we were hoping to have their daily Korean buffet. The restaurant was nice with a view of the golf course, which seemed rather devoid of shade trees except for coconut trees which don't give shade but then I'm not a golfer:



But the Korean buffet spread was pathetic, mostly veg and pickles, tough looking pa jon pancakes, and flies galore so we left and went to the Golf Club where we had their chicken chop rice which was, how shall I put it, strange-looking and tasting. Lucky for us we bumped into a friend who was there to golf and when we finished, the waiter told us that our meal was already paid by this friend. This is a common practice here. I like that, I should eat out more often at places where my friends frequent.



We passed by a stall where some fishermen displayed their catch of mackerel and another kind of fish which I can't recognize. I bought the whole fish because it was so fresh:



Since I was craving for Korean food, I got home and cooked the packet of ddeok that had been sitting in my fridge. Ddeok are short solid cylinders of rice dough that are very chewy. The Chinese (see my post on Shanghainese rice sticks), Japanese and Korean all have various shapes of chewy rice dough, and one common way of eating it is grilling and dunking it in soya sauce. My kids love to eat glutinous rice dough this way, as a snack.

The following way of cooking ddeok is very easy because everything is thrown into a pot and boiled until the water is reduced to a thick sauce and the rice dough is soft (but still chewy). You can take the long way and fry the ingredients before adding the water but why take the long (and oily) way when you can avoid it with similar results.

Personally, I'm not so hot about eating ddeok this way. I think Japanese curry sauce would go better with it but who knows, maybe that's how they eat ddeok in Japan.


Ddeokbokki, a popular Korean snack.

Chili Hot Ddeok (serves 4 or more)
600g fresh ddeok, soaked for 1 hour in room temp water & drained
1 brown onion, sliced thinly
200-250g fried fish cake, sliced thinly
1 T garlic, chopped
4 -5 T gochujang (Korean hot bean paste)
1 to 1 1/2 T gochugaru (Korean chili powder--can use local chili powder)
1-2 T light soy sauce
1 t fine sugar (Koreans like it 2 T sweeter but I don't)
2 cups dried anchovy or chicken stock
chopped spring onions and toasted sesame seeds for garnish, sesame oil to drizzle

1. Put the stock, gochujang, gochugaru, garlic, light soy sauce and sugar into a pot. When it boils, add the ddeok and brown onion and let it simmer, covered, stirring now and then.

2. After 15 minutes, add the fish cake slices and extra water if there isn't enough liquid. Let the ddeok simmer (stir!) for another 10 minutes, check if the texture is right for you (soft but still chewy), adjust seasoning if necessary and dish out. If there's a lot of liquid, remover the lid and increase the heat so that the liquid reduces and becomes thick.

3. Garnish with the sesame seeds, spring onions and drizzle some sesame oil over.

SIA, Strong $ & Now Their Police

I've been following news about Manohara ever since one of our local dailies reported it in April. Since then there has been a media black out on Manohara. Then today I read about her amazing escape (kudos to the Singaporean police, who acted without fear or favor) and I felt joy, just like how I felt three years ago when the Australian woman (I only remember her last name was Gillespie, because it reminded me of Pinocchio's maker, Guiseppe) finally was reunited with her now-grown kids after her Malaysian prince ex-hub abducted them in the 80s.

I am especially happy because the truth is out. I do not trust our mainstream papers, not even their reports on the economy. Wait, make that most of all their reports on the economy. They are too oppressed to report the truth.

I am especially happy for Manohara 's family, because Manohara escaped alive. Her story reminds us that the truth will prevail, eventually.

Anybody for Mongolian Hot Pot tonight?