Last Saturday, I joined my relatives to celebrate my Grandma's 80th Birthday in Malaysia. It was done in the Buddhist temple of Granny's village where we make some donations to cater vegetarian food for the villagers who turn up. Some volunteers helped to prepare the food in the morning for lunch and the nun gave a short talk on filial piety, killing and vegetarianism. Some people turned up for the talk, but most people turned up near the end - many more than I had expected. In a village that does not even have a decent dish of vegetarian food served at food stalls, I am glad they turned up and not create more killings in at least one meal of their lives.
On Sunday, we had to go back to Pudu Raya in KL for our bus trip back and heard news of the riots there. When we arrived all was over and the place looks as though nothing had happened. People were just going on with their daily lives and Times Square shopping centre seem bustling with people with a batik clothing stage show going on. I was surprised to find a vegetarian stall in the 10th-level food court at Times Square. You will find the usual mix-veg rice dishes as well as other soup based dishes. I ordered fish-ball noodles which was quite oily tasted so-so. The mix-veg rice dishes would probably be much better had I not have a craving for soup since Saturday. The good thing about ordering the mix-veg rice is you get to take the vegs yourself unlike in Singapore - good news for people who like to eat a large portion of food.
On the way back.... I experienced an unfortunate encounter. The munchie goodies I bought from Malaysia were gone! I realized this only when I got back home. We bought a few pack of dodols (more on this below) for my friends and one of the pack was gone... so were some tau sa pias from Malaysia Chinatown. We couldn't possibly have dropped or misplaced it, so I believed it was stolen :o
Dodol is a kind of coconut candy made with coconut milk, gula melaka, and glutinuous rice. It's rather sticky and has a very strong coconut flavour. Here's a recipe from Indianservice.com if you want to make it yourself:
3 Coconuts (large)
1/4 kg Rice flour
1/4 kg Palm jaggery
1/4 kg Cane jaggery
Few Cashew nuts (optional)
Salt To taste
1. Extract thick and thin juice from coconuts.
2. Mix flour and thin juice and continue stirring all the time.
3. Add some jaggery and continue stirring.
4. As mixture thickens, add remaining jaggery and keep stirring.
5. Then add thick coconut juice and stir, adding nuts.
6. When mixture begins to leave the sides of the vessel and oil begins to ooze the Dodol is done.
7. Pour into a flat plate.
Tian Yuan Vegetarian
3 years ago
4 comments:
What a nice way to celebrate grandma's birthday. Is your grandma vegetarian too?
Happy birthday to your grandmum! That's cool there was a veg meal. As for the stolen foods, you can just think of it as charity, someone must have been really hungry, and it's good they got veg food then, no? :-)
That dodol sounds pretty good.
Hi VB, Nope my grandma is not vegetarian except on 1st and 15th of lunar month.
Hmm yes, thats a very positive way of looking at it Jari :) Dodol is very rich and very sweet, some people dislike it's richness though but I like it.
Oh i love dodol..sticky and gluey... edible chewing gum.. haha...
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