Eid Mubarak! 1429

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This year, I managed to darken my rendang, as per my mother’s Gold Standard. My rendang has always been golden in color, never this dark, but remembering what my mother wrote on her blog about letting the oil from the coconut milk darken the rendang, I waited and stirred it till the oil was really gone and voila! The next feat was capturing a nice shot of it, and the presence of the kaffir lime leaf peeking from between the beef chunks was just perfect! So far, I have made rendang every Eid, though I still reminisce my childhood days of inhaling the aromatic whiffs of rendang stewing and braising in a huge black wok balanced atop an arrangement of three vertical stacks of bricks enclosing a heap of dried coconut shells, firewood, newspaper and orange glowing coals all blown and stoked to produce a continuous fire. She would cook it right below my window, in the afternoon days before Eid, which meant, we were still fasting. And since I was usually home from boarding school by then, that meant that I was home to enjoy all the Eid preparation (note I wrote enjoy, not help with).

This year, I decided to make roti jala, and since it has been years since I made it, the first one turned out as a wet, yellow blob. The rest weren’t perfect, but at least they weren’t unpresentable blobs. The apparatus for the roti jala, I believe (if my memory is still functioning), I brought all the way from Malaysia. Such is my love for my Malaysian food, or rather, such is the affiliation of my taste buds. Living in the United States limits easy access to Malaysian delicacies that can easily be bought at street stalls in Malaysia. I miss that aspect of living in Malaysia. Nevertheless, it has also driven me to experiment and learn to make those coveted food items.

Due to Zoa’s allergies though, I’m not able to eat this roti jala, since it contains eggs and wheat.

I modified the recipe found here and added two eggs to it, making the new recipe as follows:

• 2-2 1/2 cups flour
• 3 cups water
• 1 cup coconut milk
• few dashes of ground turmeric
• 1 teaspoon oil
• dash of salt
• 2 whole eggs

and all of these are blended in a blender.

Rasa Malaysia has a beautiful entry on Roti Jala, though in the video, the movement of the mold was quite slow compared to ours. I think it’s because our batter is pretty runny. But I also found a video of a Roti Jala seller, who most probably is an expert at making it.

I made chicken curry to go with the Roti Jala. However, this time, we didn’t have that many Malaysians left in town to appreciate this, for our non Malaysian friends didn’t quite know how to eat it or appreciate it as we do.

Well, all this writing about Roti Jala is making me a tad more motivated to figure out an egg and wheat free recipe so I can also devour it, and more so, give it to Zoa as finger food. As to when I will get around to doing that, ahh…I have a feeling it might be a while.

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