Food Glorious Food

Tuhau flower

Mixed vegetables with tuhau 

I've just realised that time is running out on my blog and I still haven't written anything about the food like normal travel blogs do. The food in Malaysia is a fusion (cookery word! ) of flavours with all the influences of Indian, Chinese, Malay cuisine not to mention Western and local produce. In Sabah the cuisine is relatively bland and not very spicy although the little white and red chillis can be very hot. The Dusun cooking is different than the Bajau and that is different from the Rungus and so on. So I will talk a little about the Dusun cooking as I don't know that much except that I have grown to love it. The kampong rice is the most commonly used,  which is pink and is often cooked in leaves mixed with another vegetable such as pumpkin. They also cook the rice inside bamboo but nowadays nearly everyone seems to have rice cookers. They grow and use tapioca as another form of carbohydrates but if they don't eat rice at least once a day they will have withdrawal symptoms! They eat lots of vegetables and also collect many different green leaves from the jungle and use leaves in the cooking process such as wrapping fish in banana leaves to cook slowly. The ginger flower of tuhau is the most distinctive taste in dusun cooking. They use the petals to flavour many things as well as chopping the stem and eating it. Tuhau can be fried, steamed, boiled and added to anything and it changes the taste completely. I really love it and will miss it.

augergine, sambal and ikan bilis

Chicken curry

Spicy fish and vegetables

 The main source of protein are eggs and ikan bilis - small dried fish - which you find in many different piles in the market. These are sprinkled and added to dishes as they are easily kept and are cheap. Chicken, beef, goat and pork (for Christians) are of course eaten but not on a daily basis for most people. Soups with noodles and vegetables, nasi lemak, nasi goring and mee goring (fried rice and noodles) are eaten daily and the seafood near the coast is amazing but in the mountain areas it is not eaten as often.

Ikan bilis

Nasi lemak

  I treated the whole of my base school to a meal last week and Irene kindly cooked all of my favourite things which are - mixed jungle vegetables with tuhau, chicken curry, fish in spicy tomato sauce and aubergine and ikan bilis in a sambal sauce. Sambal is a sauce made with tomato, chillies and onions. Last but not least I am addicted to roti canai which is a flat bread served with a curry sauce and is very indian but is a very Malaysian start to the day.

Roti canai

Seafood laksa