The Lore of Food

Mother cooked the simplest of Trengganu fare, ikang singgang in the belanga, and ikang kembong in the panggang, and sometimes meat on a skewer that hissed over the fire and dripped fat that rose in a pall to our atap roof.

As coastal people our bellies were lined with ikang:mashed and rolled in salt and sago flour, then boiled in the cauldron as kerepok lèkor or göndè; or kembong boiled in the claypot belanga with the addition of asam and the root turmeric, and lengkuas and whole chilli and salt, or tenggiri held in the cleft bamboo panggang stick and then cooked over a spit. Sometimes we had treats like ikang mèröh — the red sea perch — or pparang — a variety of herring — that had layers of fat in its thin belly, and cat’s whisker bones that we spat to the side. The tenggiri head cooked well in coconut milk and fish-friendly spices that were ground to bits on a large stone slab, but the large tuna — ikang aya to us, but tongkol in standardspeak — its head or flesh, was much prized as the fish of choice to accompany the nasi dagang that tasted better off a coconut leaf than from a plate. But never mention nasi dagang to an Orang Barat lest you’re spoiling for a fight, for one sees the other’s product as what came in with the cat through the flap, while the other sees no merit at all in our hard day’s work. And ‘Barat’ is Kelantan as you know from our Trengganu world map.

On special days we had ikang cooked on the spit that became the gölek after Mother had sauce poured over it — of shallots and trumeric and garlic and ginger, dancing to the heat of the chilli in coconut milk — and then it is returned to the heat for a while and then taken back to the pot to be basted in the sauce, and then back again to the heat. Sometimes we had chicken on the skewer instead of the fish, but as chicken was then a luxury meat, it was more likely that we had gulai meat from the water buffalo that had been laid off work.

We had akök if there was call for a dessert, like on the night when we concluded our reading of the Book, or on festive days when one or more desserts preceded the main dish, and then we had some for encores afterwards. During the durian season we had lempok (durian cake) in a huge enamelled pot that hung from a stiff wire that reached down from our roof. We had hard-boiled eggs sometimes, rolled up in beef, cooked, and then sliced like your Swiss Roll with the yellow eye looking at us from a circle of white that was insulated by a skin of cooked meat. I was never sure if this was a dish in itself, or a starter or something to take off our Trengganu taste just before we left the table afterwards. It was something Mother learnt from the lady who married our cousin Chén, and our cousin Chén brought her to us from the land where Cleopatra in her barge went down the river: asp, baklava and grapes.

Food was to be approached with caution as a surfeit could give you an attack of the sè’èh, and to feel sè’èh was to be round and bloated. Or worse, you could be gripped by the sekök, and that’s when you’ve filled yourself right up to your neck. Large fish heads were to be eaten with relish, but small ones were especially avoided by the child as they could make you benök, i.e. impermeable to knowledge. Mother also avoided certain types of fish: we never saw a keli (catfish) in our childhood life, nor the kkacang which was a no-no and which still is, to me, a mysterious fish; though I have it on the authority of Winstedt that it is a barracuda, of the Sphyraena species.

And then we had leaves put into the pot with sweet potato (ubi setèla), and coconut milk, with turmeric perhaps, and sea salt that came weeping in woven bags on our big boats. The slight bitterness of the leaves and the strange mushiness of the ubi turned it into an adult food, much like the jering beans that were never brought into our house, or the yu (shark) that I sometimes saw men carry into the market.

And when you have eaten one side of the fish — be it panggang or gölèk — you do not turn it over once you’ve seen its bony ribs, for the turning action that you will carry with you will cause a calamity in a boat.