Sometime in June, I received an invitation to submit an essay to an anthology focused on mothering across cultures. The writing was filled with a lot of contemplations, reflections, and digging into our feelings about raising children in a foreign cultural environment. It took me two months to finish writing the essay, which I then happily submitted. In January, I was informed that the anthology was out.
And here it is; Call Me Okaasan: Adventures in Multicultural Mothering.
I have never seen as much mix up of homonymns in my life until these past few years. To be honest, it truly irks me when I see these mix ups in Islamic writings, flyers (especially), and advertisements. Isn’t it enough that Muslims are labeled terrorists? Do we want them to label us illiterates too?
Ok, that may be a little over the top, but seriously, I don’t think it hurts to do some extra editing before those flyers go out to the masses. Of course, this may be a pet peeve of some people, and not a big deal to others, and I can see where it’s not a big deal. As long as the message gets across, I guess that’s the most important thing. Maybe it’s just me who wants to kick it up a notch. Maybe it’s just me.
Regardless, I was doing some final editing on a booklet this morning, when I suddenly found myself lost in a world of commas and lists. So I googled ‘grammar rules list commas’. I right clicked. My one-sided clicks landed me on Copyblogger, on a particular post called, Five Grammatical Errors that Make You Look Dumb. Ditto.
When homeschooling my kids, I also came across this exercise; differentiating between their and there, it’s and its, your and you’re. Good inclusion of grammar lessons. I don’t remember doing that kind of exercises back when I was learning grammar. Then again, that was donkey years ago. I guess it’s one of those common mistakes people make. Where I, a non native speaker struggle with the verbal aspect of English, the native speakers seem to struggle with the grammatical aspect. Very interesting indeed.
As for my lists and commas, I learned something new, or maybe, I was just caught in one of those mesmerizing moments of commas, that I forgot all rules of lists and commas. But, I like this here google result:
I don’t claim to be a grammar specialist. I just know it sounds off, and reads off, but I don’t necessarily know why all the time. So their! Your welcome! Its a wonderful world!
Don’t your eyes just hurt?
Parts of the ilminar; Hikmah; Using Wisdom in Trying Times, can be found on HalalTube, alhamdulillah.
Waleed Basyouni (as the surprise guest speaker)
As the world watches the grave events unfolding in the Gaza Strip, history is awaiting to document the actions humanity is about to take:
Shameful Inaction or Heroic Justice?
It is human nature to feel all kinds of intense emotions towards the atrocities in Gaza: anger, sorrow, shame, fear, sadness….yet history is filled with stories of these very emotions resulting in dangerously wrong courses of action. It is evident, then, that these natural feelings act as fog: blurring our hindsight and preventing us from seeing the big picture.
The question then is: in these trying times, how do we use hikmah (wisdom) instead of emotion when taking the right course of action for our Ummah?
Join us for a special Ilminar as we answer this very question and in co-operation with Islamic Relief launch a unique ONLINE fundraising effort for our brothers and sisters in Gaza. Be among those whom history documents as partakers of heroic justice, and above all, those who embodied the true message of Islam.
With:
- Shaykh Yasir Qadhi(Dean of Academics, AlMaghrib Instiute)
- Dr.Hany El Banna(Founder, Islamic Relief)
- Shaykh Muhammad Alshareef(Founder, AlMaghrib Institute)
———————-
Convert to your timezone here:
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html
I love Mee. No, it’s not a typo, and no, I’m not being narcissistic.
Mee is what noodles are called in some parts of Asia. Mee Kari (Curry Mee), Mee Jawa, Mee Bandung, Mee Hailam, Mee Udang, Mee Goreng (Fried Noodles), Mee Rebus. I can spew out an exhaustive list of noodle dishes in Malaysia and Indonesia, but since that would only make me salivate pathetically, I’ll stop at Mee Rebus.
I grew up eating a lot of Mee, mostly those sold at hawker stalls or in food courts. The Indian eatery next to my father’s clinic nurtured me with my repeated requests for Mee Rebus; bowls upon bowls of voluptious yellow noodles swimming in a sea of thick yet fluid soup emanating with a fusion of aromas I always attributed to coriander and cumin.
Not all noodle dishes have Mee in their names though. Some of my favorites bear the word Laksa (more information on Laksa can be found on Wikipedia) such as Laksa Penang, Curry Laksa, Assam Laksa. So much for stopping at Mee Rebus. These Laksa may use different kinds of noodles, ranging from flat thick rice noodle to the thin strands of vermicelli.
Before I start to drool, let me get to the point of this post; my own Mee-ly creation; Meatball Curry Mee. With help from two of my wonderful and helpful children (May Allah preserve their goodness. Ameen), I managed to make and hoard a large amount of meatballs. My intended plan was to have frozen meatballs, ready to be collectively dunked into a simmering pot of spaghetti sauce (from a jar) for times when I’m too lazy to cook from scratch. I know. I didn’t have to make meatballs from scratch to have a quick meal of spaghetti and ground beef, but give me a break here, okay? Unfortunately for me, I am a ‘from scratch’ person. Even when I’m lazy and grouchy, I have to have something that is made from scratch.
My mother will heartily agree with me when I say that deciding what to cook for lunch or dinner can be very mind boggling. I find that to be one of the difficult challenges in being a stay at home wife. It can ruin your sleep, rendering you an insomniac as you rack your brain trying to figure out what to cook for lunch the next day.
I used to make weekly menus, which I have to say, greatly solves the problem for me. However, my days of ‘prim and proper’ and ‘list and order’ are long gone. Today, I am a fairly reluctant cook who whips up unnamed dishes at the spur of the moment. I don’t have as much cooking-attributed insomnia, but some days, I still find myself brooding and mulling over the dreaded question,
“What shall I cook today?”
One such day, I found myself staring at a ziploc of frozen homemade meatballs plopped carelessly in the freezer. I took them out, planning to cook them, but I didn’t know what I was going to do with them exactly. I thought spaghetti and meatballs, but let’s face it, I am a Malaysian to the core. Well, when it comes to my taste buds anyway.
No Italian tomato-based spaghetti sauce, I thought.
I needed something pungent. Something that will make you shudder with ecstasy and lick your lips with satisfaction. That something had to come about from the bag of frozen meatballs in my hands. My eyes darted to the spice shelves. Before I knew it, my gaze had landed on a plastic jar of Madras Curry powder I had bought at an Asian grocery store, against hubby’s protests about it being too expensive. Personally, I think it’s worth the cost. It’s expensive for a reason. It makes great curries!
Though the United States, or at least where I live, has a dearth of Malaysian curry powder, namely the Adabi brand, I have made do with whatever curry powders are sold in the stores. My new favorite is the Madras Curry Powder.
I looked at the meatballs, and I looked at the curry powder. An idea began to form in my taste buds, I mean, my brain.
Why not make spaghetti and meatballs, but with a curried sauce?
If I had gotten into a hot air balloon, I doubt I would have gotten back down to earth. I felt like an undiscovered genius!
I have to admit that I had the desire to make Bakso with those meatballs. Bakso, is one of my favorite Indonesian noodle dish that is commonly sold by hawkers, stationary or mobile. I remember being ladled a bowl of steaming Bakso by a mobile hawker who ran his rounds throughout the residential area in Medan. (A Bakso recipe from Cooking with Heart & Soul.)
However, being bound by Baby’s allergies, I figured I would not be able to experience the complete coalescence of condiments required to eat Bakso, one of them being sweet soy sauce. I have to be grateful for this impediment though, for it greatly helped me to come up with what I deem my ingenious idea. Hot air, hot air. I was full of it that morning.
Driven by that gust of hot air, I proceeded to make the curry as I do any other curry.
1. Make a wet paste of minced onions, garlic, ginger, curry powder and chilli paste.
2. Heat oil, and saute the wet paste with a few whole cloves, star anise and cinnamon stick until the oil rises to the top.
3. Pour in canned coconut milk. Add water to the desired consistency, and leave to simmer.
I always used to shortchange this step, cheating the onions and spices out of releasing their flavor and aroma completely, but a few sessions with my mother in the kitchen rectified this. She emphasized that the paste needs to be cooked slowly for quite some time to release the full flavor and aroma. Henceafter, I began to notice that my curries look much ‘prettier’. I fondly term them ‘Pretty Curries’.
With the will and help of Allah, I did end up with a very presentable and delectable, if I may say so, noodle dish. Instead of dropping a frozen school of meatballs into a simmering pot of tomato-based spaghetti sauce, I plopped a frozen school of meatballs into a pot of simmering pot of curry, generously speckled with deep shades of miniscule orange blotches where the oil had separated and risen to the top. My ‘Pretty Curry’ was born, yet again.
Of course, since this was whipped up on the spur of a great moment, I didn’t get to lavish it with a wealthy and generous garnish. The only garnish I had on hand were fried shallots and some parsley. It would have looked phenomenal with a few sliced fresh green and red chillies, a few wedges of hard boiled eggs, a few quartered key limes, fried and cut up tofu, and a decorative splotch of deep red chilli sauce.
Ahh…Mee, Mee, Mee. I am a genius, am I not? No, those are not typos. Narcisissm? Err…yes, maybe a tad. Ok, triple tad.
Since I didn’t note down the measurement of the ingredients, I wonder if I can recreate this gastronomical wonder a second time around, with equally delectable results. Hmm…I might need another burst of hot air.
Links to recipes of some Mee dishes mentioned above:
Assam Laksa from Beachlover’s Kitchen
Penang Laksa from Rasa Malaysia
Mee Hailam from MamaFami’s Spice and Splendour
Eeek! The Ten Mistakes on HOLT Uncensored made me wince and blush in silent embarassment. I found myself in there, not in all ten, thankfully, but in more than two. That was enough to make me squirm in my seat.
‘Crutch’ words. I recently noticed one in Monsoon Diary, such that it prompted me to look up the meaning. Ok, I admit, I didn’t know what it meant, but I could tell from the context when reading the book. Somnolence. I found it being used repeatedly. Hey, if a lay reader like me notices it, it must be a ‘crutch’ word, right? Now, I’ll be on the lookout for my ‘crutch’ words. I can think of a few I tend to love repeating. Erk!
Rotten apples. I guess there are a lot of them in our writing. Dig them out, scan for them with merciless eyes, and then scan again, and again. Who said writing is easy?
Being stuck in a rut is one of the goals. To begin with, I need a rut, big enough to cause agony. Then, I need a solution, a way to get out of that rut. However, in my case, that rut seems to be more than I can handle. I seem to be stuck in it for a frustratingly long time before I could see the light of day. When I was taking the Writing for Children’s Magazine course with the Institute of Children’s Literature, I remember being very wary and nervous about attempting to write fiction. The course lets you do both, but did ask which one you would rather ’specialize’ in.
I told my instructor I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to focus in, so she told me to try both and see which one I was more inclined to. So I did. I enjoyed non fiction a lot, probably because I love researching and reading up on new things. My dabbling in fiction however, was a different experience. It wasn’t as ‘easy’ as non fiction, because in non fiction, I simply do the research, come up with an interesting angle, have the information laid out, and I’m ready to write. In fact, it was enjoyable’ enough, that I managed to get in two pieces in Fandangle’s October 2007 issue.
With fiction however, I have to be the ‘creator’, come up with a problem or more, figure out how to resolve that conflict, and then write while trying to make it as interesting as possible. I don’t consider myself a natural storyteller, but when I did come up with a few fiction pieces, one of which did end up getting published in Fandangle’s June 2007 issue, I was ecstatic. The work wasn’t easy (finishing a fiction piece), but when I did complete it, it was thoroughly gratifying, to say the least. I also have another fiction piece from that course that is still sitting in my pendrive waiting to be fiddled with. I also wrote up a piece that I entered in the Islamic Foundation Annual Competition (which is now, I believe, discontinued), and it was shortlisted. I was elated beyond belief when I received an email and a letter inviting me to the event, which of course I couldn’t attend. I didn’t win, but being shortlisted was more than enough for me, considering my struggle with writing fiction.
However, I have quite given up on writing fiction, since it does seem to drain me, and while other fiction writers seem to enjoy the process, I have to admit that I don’t have that kind of patience for it, though I really wish I do. Nevertheless, reading Jan Field’s article ‘Embrace the Conflict‘ perks me up. Throughout the course, I was imbued with the feeling, ‘I can do this!’. After reading Jan’s article, I suddenly find myself contemplating taking up fiction writing again. Do I dare get myself in a rut again?
It had been a long day, a truly long one, as I bustled about the kitchen, hopping from one task to another in the flurried attempt to make more than one dessert and main dish just so I could use up as much as I could of the contents in my pantry. I had wilted the banana leaves the day before, and that in itself was a tedious task I temporarily vow never to undertake in the near future, though my mother’s discovery of a more convenient and unback-breaking method of wilting the banana leaves is somewhat giving me second thoughts. But thoughts I will not entertain for now, for the sake of my well being and temporary sanity.
As you can see from my attempts at crimping the edges of Karipap, my fingers are not bestowed with the skills needed to produce refined fingerwork. I have tried to make this banana leaf wrapped dessert years ago, when my craving for it pushed me to purchase frozen banana leaves, a cylindrical block of palm sugar, a packet of glutinous rice flour (also known as sweet rice flour), unsweetened grated coconut, and coconut milk, all ingredients I was not familiar with, well except for the cans of coconut milk.
With the abundance of street hawker stalls lining the streets of Kuala Lumpur, selling all kinds of Malaysian delicacies, one is naturally not inclined to produce the very same delicacies at home. Well, at least not if one was as deftly challenged as I am. It was in that condition that I was flown to the United States. A poor condition indeed. No culinary skills whatsoever. Though I have to say, the fact that I possessed no culinary skills whatsoever, coupled with the fact that I was on foreign soil with patriotic taste buds, pushed me to seek those culinary skills. And seek them I did. Experience in the kitchen is key to attaining higher level culinary skills, as I was to find out years later.
May I state that most recipes for Malaysian food items are unreliable? At least that was what I concluded after ravenous searches both online and offline, followed by excitement and active salivary glands. Rolling up my sleeves in anticipation of devouring familiar desserts and savories, I would dutifully follow the instructions in the recipes. And may I also add that sometimes, the measurements are just plain dumb? 2 mugs of this. What capacity mug? Is there a standard mug with which to measure by, that every household should have? Though, in all fairness I have to also admit that there were just some lingo (in Malay) that was alien to me, much like dredge or julienne might be alien to native English speakers who are not culinary experts. Those alien terms were sometimes the cause of the demise of my homesick kitchen experiments.
My first try at making Kuih Koci resulted in misshapen blobs of steamed glutinous rice dough, encasing, or should I say, leaking, fillings of grated coconut sweetened in palm sugar wrapped in stiff banana leaves with exposed cracks along the leaf fibers. I don’t even remember the sheer joy of biting into an ugly Kuih Koci, for there were times when the saying ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’ holds true for ugly culinary concoctions. But this was no such ugly culinary concoction. So disappointing it was that I gave up ever trying to make this dessert for years.
In fact, I pretty much gave up trying to reproduce any other Malaysian culinary delights for years to come because the ugly and floppy results just increased my misery, homesickness, and abhorrence for Malaysian recipes. I plunged fully into trying my hands at western desserts.
Ahh…in these I found my calling. My fingers, which had failed me before, were not called upon for duty as much, but my wrist and brain power were. After years of attaining amateurish mastery of cake decorating, I felt compelled to give the Malaysian desserts and savories another try. Alas, my taste buds are purely and loyally Malaysian. No amount of distance from my home country would make me switch over to foreign food for long. I still need my Malaysian food.
So try again I did. By then, I had gained more culinary knowledge as well, and I was better able to pinpoint the cause of my failures (aside from blaming the recipes themselves). I realized that my failure lies in the banana leaves. I didn’t soften them enough. So when I tried to wrap those white balls of dough, they cracked and resisted my folding and tucking.
What actually stirred me to action were photos of this dessert on Facebook. A friend had made it at home (she’s on foreign soil too). I asked her how she managed to wrap the stubborn and stiff banana leaves around those balls of dough. She said she wilted them over a steady flame. I remember reading the instructions on wilting banana leaves before. I vaguely remember the mention of holding the leaves over a steady flame, and I remember dismissing it as being too tedious and illogical. I also remember reading somewhere that you could also blanch them in boiling water, which seemed more convenient to me. So that was what I did, which obviously resulted in banana leaves that were still stiff and ‘fresh’. Now, older and wiser, I decided to give the flaming a try, as tedious as it sounds, because, truth be told, I have been craving Kuih Koci for years ever since that first floppy disappointment.
I sat on my four legged kitchen stool at the table, on which there was a lighter, a candle, and a scattered pile of banana leaves cut to size, both circles and squares. I thought to myself,
If I fail this time, that’s it…Kuih Koci will just have to be a forever forgotten dessert.
And maybe, because of that line of thinking, I really made sure I did my best. There’s nothing like the threat of forgoing a loved food item forever to make you go all out to reproduce it. With determination, I remained seated on the stool that seemed to grow uncomfortably harder by the minute, and held the cut banana leaves one by one over the flame. Cautiously, I moved the leaves such that every inch of it was devoured by the heat of the flame. At times, the flame would leap, as if trying to lick the leaf, held at right angle to it. But for most of the process, I watched, with the fascination of an entranced child, the slight darkening and softening of the leaf fibers, beginning with a prominent spot that expanded outwards, much like the spreading of an inkblot. Unfortunately, even that fascination wasn’t able to quell my growing irritation and impatience at having to repeat the process assembly-line style until all the cut banana leaves were wilted. My thoughts at the time jogged along jagged line,
I’m never doing this again! I don’t want to see a banana leaf ever!
By the time I was done, I had had enough of banana leaves, candles, and crazy, tedious Malaysian desserts. I stacked the wilted leaves in a stainless steel bowl, covered it, and called it a day. I couldn’t bring myself to continue on to the next step.
The next day, I had more dishes to cook in that continued pursuit to empty my pantry, and by the time I was done, my energy level and enthusiasm in finishing what I started was dangerously low. But as I eyed the stack of banana leaves I had so painstakingly wilted, I knew I had to try it. Plus, there was my darned patriotic taste buds, telling my brain to convince my limbs to carry it all the way through.
With careless abandon, I dumped the glutinous rice flour in my 4 quart Kitchen Aid stainless steel bowl, thinking I would just pour enough coconut milk to make a workable dough. No measurements, though I did holler,
“Google Kuih Koci for me please!”
to whoever was propped up in front of the computer, which happened to be hubby. Google he did, and just as tediously, he read the ingredients and method one by one, at such an irritating pace that once I got what I wanted to know, I cut him off.
Thankfully, the dough was pretty easy to make, and I did come up with a workable one. I had already made the sweet filling earlier. It was easy enough. Melt some chunks of palm sugar in water, dump in the unsweetened grated coconut, and stir till the grated coconut has absorbed all the sweet brown liquid. Then came the step that intimidated me a little, for it required the use of my clumsy fingers, that have always failed me whenever there comes a need to completely enclose some kind of filling in some kind of dough. I always managed to put too much filling such that complete sealing becomes impossible, or, messy.
I suppose, experience and skills stayed close to me that day, not to mention Allah’s help, for I pretty much breezed through that stage, happily pinching off balls of white dough, rolling them into balls, flattening them into small disks, and filling them with just enough filling before pulling up the edges and ending up with filled balls that didn’t threaten to sputter their fillings out. And those wilted banana leaves. Ahh…it was worth it! They were a pleasure to work with, bending and folding subserviently to my every tuck, making me feel like the most dexterous person ever! Despite the arduous day of working non stop in the kitchen from morning, I found myself smiling and even humming while my hands churned out little tiny green pyramids that grew in numbers.
Next came the steaming, which was the last step, the step that stood between me and my fate with Kuih Koci. All that work, and if it still didn’t turn out okay, I would have bawled my eyes out, and leave my family in the wake of my journey to insanity. As it turned out, Allah had decreed that part of my provision for that day, was to eat Kuih Koci, for when I clicked open my rice cooker, which was steaming furiously, my sight was filled of little pyramids that seemed to have lost the dark fresh green shade and turned a wilted moss green. Gingerly, knowing full well that steam is hotter than fire, I took one of those pyramids out with a tong. Like a birthday child surrounded by multitudes of birthday presents, I clumsily unwrapped my pyramid to reveal a glistening white pyramid, which I immediately bit into.
Glutinously hot and chewy, with richness from the coconut milk, it filled my mouth with a desire to munch and chew like one does with an expanding bubble gum. And as my taste buds were teased with the chewy texture and richness of coconut milk from the steamed dough, the sweet and moist filling made its grand entrance, introducing a different kind of texture and taste. The finely grated coconut, having absorbed the melted palm sugar, still possessed a crunchiness, a moist one, if you will, that complements the chewiness and full blandness of the steamed encasing dough. After a delightful gulp, I was enamored by the whole experience of Kuih Koci and fished out another steamed green pyramid from my rice cooker.
Bliss. Pure bliss. It was late afternoon. The golden rays of the descending sun was streaming through my kitchen window, perfect for a food photo shoot. My work table was still littered with scattered banana leaves and unwashed kitchen utensils, yet there I was sitting on my stool, popping one Kuih Koci after another into my mouth, savoring every chew and gulp. The banana leaves, my nemesis. With the will of Allah, I have conquered thee.
Memoirs with Asian flavors seem to appeal to me the most, and understandably so, since I am a full bred Asian, and will be forever Asian at heart. I recently finished my reading of Monsoon Diary, by Shoba Narayan. Let me just say that I can see how she is a recipient of the M.F.K. Fisher Award for Distinguished Writing. I really dig her writing style.
Being Asian though, I felt myself yearning for her times in India as she transported me with her to the United States where she ran into a fellow South Indian who gave her a much missed South Indian meal. The difference in the two environments was starkly apparent. I was the one who missed the scent of freshly bloomed night jasmine in Narayan’s yard, the clinking of cow bells, belching buses, the rainbow of sari-donning Indian women, the “Kuppa!” calls of Natesan, the garbage man, the breathtaking performance of Chinnapan, the din and bustle at the train station, not to mention the happenings in the journey itself, the aromatic smells coming from tiffin carriers, and the sharp tongued Nalla-Ma.
There was one glaring mistake I came across in her book though; Allahu Akbar translated as God is Good. Allahu Akbar is usually translated as God is Great, and I have to say that this should have been double checked. I wonder how many Muslims have read this book.
Other than that, I really love her narrative. In my previous post, I mentioned Teh tarik, which is as much performance as it is a hot beverage, usually attributed to the Indians in Malaysia. In Narayan’s recounting of her childhood, she writes about her father’s morning indulgence in coffee, in which she describes her father’s skilled act of pouring the coffee from one cup to another by raising one cup high above his head and keeping the other by his hip, done several times to produce a frothy cup of ‘processed’ coffee. The metaphoric stretching and pulling of the coffee from cup to cup is very much like the performance of Teh Tarik sellers in Malaysia. In my recent googling on Youtube, I even came across Malay youths taking these performances a step further by adding music and dance steps to the pouring act, which I personally deem quite distasteful.
In the course of reading the book, my mind kept wandering away to dwell on issues such as religion and culture. I have always been aware that we, the Malays have inherited a lot of the Hindu culture, one of which is the act of feeding one’s new spouse during the wedding. Before Islam arrived in the Malay Peninsula, Hindu was the reigning empire, and thus it’s really not surprising that some remnants of the culture is still present in the Malay culture. In her book, Narayan tells of the pressing dilemma she faced at her wedding reception when she was expected to feed her new husband. Not wanting to have rasam rice dripping all over his face, she ingeniously tipped a tumbler containing panagam to his lips instead. In the Malay culture, both the husband and wife would feed each other a fingerful of rice. No dripping rasam, but the same act nonetheless.
Tiffin carriers. Ahh…now I know what my mother was talking about. I’ve had my fair share of tiffin carriers. When I was in boarding school, my father and stepmother would pay me a visit on some weekends. On most visits, they would bring with them home-cooked food for lunch, that we usually ate in the school canteen, where other parents were seated with their sons or daughters, also enjoying their food. My stepmother’s cooking were deliciously packed in stainless steel tiffins. And together, we would have our lunch, freshly made at home, served in the tiffin carriers. How can I not remember those stainless containers stacked atop each other, clicked and held shut by the the U-shaped handle, when it was my source of weekend good eats throughout my five years in boarding school? I now know what a tiffin carrier is. I have known it all along. I just didn’t know what it was called. I just knew it provided me with good home-cooked food. And that was more than enough information for me back then.
My parallel reading of Curry, shed some light on the Hindu concept of purity. Narayan writes about how her mother designated special cups or plates from which their many ‘visitors’ such as the flower woman and Ayah would eat from. I now recall a custom some Malays still practice, or used to practice, of not allowing a woman in her menses to eat together with the rest of the family. This is, for the record, an unIslamic practice, lest people think it’s Islamic, but it may very well be again, the remnants of the Hindu culture that we have adopted into our culture.
Indian women and gold. Narayan mentions the love and weakness for gold in Indian women. I can say the same for Malay women. Especially the more traditional ones. Malays are quite fond of gold. Even infant girls are adorned with light gold bangles, and sometimes tinkling anklets. In fact, I have in my room, my daughter’s gold bangles, and I believe, mine too. I remember being summoned to my father’s room just a few nights before Eid every year. In boarding school, we were not allowed to sport jewelry, and I doubt very much that my parents would have allowed me to sport jewelry on a daily basis anyway. But on special occasions such as Eid, even at the age of seventeen, my father made the tradition of adorning me with gold jewelry each time. Out came the gold bracelets, necklaces with fat heart-shaped pendant, rings, and earrings. I would dutifully put them on, or rather, stand still as my stepmother clasped them on my person. And a tinkling I would go back to my room, bejeweled from head to toe, ready for Eid.
Nevertheless, despite the annual tradition of being ‘gilded’ for Eid, I fail to have a love or weakness for jewelry, with the exception of earrings, which I still don’t sport to this day because of logistics. For some reason, I think of jewelry as gaudy and glaring, though I remember loving how the anklets would tinkle merrily everytime I took a step. However such is my indifference to jewelry that I inadvertently lost my grandmother’s ring that she had passed down to me. That, and a necklace and bracelets, which I had left in my room, unlocked when we went away for vacation. The naive me didn’t think or expect our live-in maid to scoop those valuables and run away, never to return. Ahh…the drama of maids in Malaysia. We’ve had a lot of those too.
One thing I realized from all this reading of Indian cuisine and history, is that, Indian cuisine seems to have gone through a lot of evolution in and outside of India. We were recently invited to an Indian home-cooked dinner, consisting of raita, white rice, keema, and puri, which I was completely in awe of as I watched them puff up in the hot oil. Like I said, I was completely overtaken by the ‘magic’ of puri making, and I found myself looking on with the fascination of a child. Over a recent conversation with a fellow Malaysian, I found out that I have not been privy to the presence of Puri in Malaysia in all my years of growing up there. I have never heard of Puri before in my life, but apparently, some Malaysians even make Puri in their homes!
The cuisine of India has undergone worldwide evolution and adaptations along with Indian migrations. Roti canai, I now believe, is a Malaysian creation, for I can’t find it in any of Indian bread recipes. My mother, in a comment in a previous post, said that Nasi Kandar, is also a Malaysian creation, usually sold by Muslim Indians in the northern state, particularly Penang. I feel like I have come full circle in understanding Indian food. When I first encountered Indian food in the United States, I felt compelled to tell the Indians of the Indian food we have back home, but even in my ignorance, I had a feeling that some food such as roti canai sounded unfamiliar to them. The most similar food item we could find to roti canai here is Paratha, but the method of making roti canai is still uniquely Malaysian. In Lizzie Collingham’s book, Curry, she also writes of how the Indian cuisine have been undergoing globalization, such that what people claim to be Indian food in other parts of the world, is completely unrecognizable as Indian food to Indians in the subcontinent. I remember now the curry made by a sister from Jamaica. It is nothing like the curry we make back home in Malaysia, but then again, the curry we make in Malaysia is probably also quite different from the authentic Indian curries made in India. As Indians migrate away from India yet continue to cook their food in different countries and environments, the limiting factors such as availability of ingredients and pleasing foreign palates, have forced them to make some improvisations to the original recipes, thus producing ‘outside India’ versions of Indian food.
My pathetic attempt at making Karipap in 2004. Note the poor crimping.
When I was flipping through pages of various cookbooks in my hey days of recipe hunting, I came across a dish called Pasty; a snack item of Cornwall, United Kingdom, which has a rich history of its own, related to fishermen and miners. Upon first reading of the ingredients and method, I remember thinking,
This sounds a lot like Karipap.
The dough, made of flour and water, with a little fat, encloses a hearty filling of potatoes and meat, and forms a half circle with a crimped curvy edge. It is said that the pasties were created for miners because they were able to eat it with dirty hands by chomping on the meaty filling and chucking away the part of the dough that was marred by the dirt.
I had often wondered about the origins of Karipap, a Malaysian version of pasty, if you will. Also called curry puff in English, it is like a mini savory calzone filled with a variety of fillings ranging from the typical potatoes and carrots to shredded meat and chicken, usually cooked with curry spice. Of course now, the karipap has gone through its own evolution and today we even have Karipap Pusing (Swirled Curry Puff), where the creation of dough creates a finished product that boasts swirled patterns on the doughy crusts, of different golden shades. A bite of Karipap gives you a mouthful of crispy deep fried crust, dry and flaky on the outside, and as the outer enclosure crumbles away in your mouth, the filling reveals itself. Via the slightly chewy and moist part of the crust that touches the filling, your tastes buds are now exposed to a spicy medley cubed potatoes and carrots that are cooked in curry spice. Best eaten warm, Karipap can serve as a filling snack, or even a light lunch.
Despite indulging in a hobby of cake decorating for a number of years now, I’m a pathetic failure when it comes to crimping the edges of Karipap by hand. I have never seen it done manually, but I have seen perfect crimping, manual crimping that is, not the automatic ones that are created by the Karipap mold. In my attempts of making homemade Karipap, I have butchered the crimping stage such that the filling broke loose in the sea of hot oil as the edges split open due to my poor crimping. So I turned to the plastic Karipap mold. Nonetheless, I haven’t made as many Karipaps as I want to, because of my poor crimping skills.
And here, I am awed to see how the crimping is actually done, with a lot of sound effects to match:
Maybe I should give this crimping business another try, eh?
 | Juli on Hard Hitting Mercy |
| Juli on A Hiatus Or No Hiatus? |
 | Alisha on Hard Hitting Mercy |
 | Umm Zakariyya on A Hiatus Or No Hiatus? |
| Juli on About Juli Herman |
