COUSCOUS

Since my wife, May, left to visit our daughters in Perth, I have been having meals bought from or eaten in food courts, food centres, coffee shops and the occasional restaurants. No home cooked food. Sigh.

So I decided to throw up something simple for dinner tonight, it being a Sunday. Simple in the sense everything on a dinner plate. And what can be more simple than fish with couscous. I am not sure what couscous is really. When I Googled I understand it to be a specially prepared combination of semolina and flour. It doesn't matter though, as you can buy a box of it from a supermarket. We usually use San Remo couscous because it was the first one we found in a Cold Storage supermarket and it was not expensive. Since it was good, we have suck with it.
Our first encounter with couscous was way back in the 1990s when we were invited by an Israeli friend to dinner in his apartment in Singapore. His wife served couscous. We actually forgot about it until our daughter Ann served it during one of our visits to her and Joan in Perth a couple of years back. It was yummy. Since then we have been having it occasionally.

After mass today in the Church of the holy Trinity, I went to the nearby Fair Price supermarket and bought a piece of white snapper (locally known as 'ang go li') and a small pack of frozen mixed vegetables (green peas carrot, corn, beans). There was no need to buy the couscous as there was still an almost full box of it at home. Rubbed some salt and pepper on the fish and left it in the fridge.

When dinner time came, I prepared the couscous by mixing a half cup of it with equal part of hot water and left it to expand. In the meantime I pan fired the 'ang go li'. When the couscous became soft but still grainy, I tossed it up in the frying pan (the fish removed) with browned chopped shallot, left-over diced salami and a handful of boiled mix vegetables. Usually we also add almond flakes but I forgot to buy some and there was none left at home. May also likes some mint and raisins. I like raisins in the couscous too and got them ready but left them out and only remembered about it after eating everything up. Ah yah.

Here's my concoction.

If I may say so myself, it was an enjoyable and satisfying meal. Yum.

LEMPER UDANG

Some while ago my brother-in-law said over Sunday lunch that lately he had yet to come across a good lemper udang - one full of the spicy fried minced dried prawn. It struck me that I had not eaten one for a long while. So I set out to look for the best one (at least to me). Surprise, surprise, I found one I really like in, of all places, the canteen in the Novena church at Thompson Road.

May, my wife, and I go to the Novena on Saturdays. On that particular Saturday I had to go to the loo and went through canteen to get to it. Lo and behold, there it was, a basket full of fat lempers - in the the canteen not the loo. Here's what this delicious treat looks like.



Not only is it choked full of the spicy dried prawn, it is also streaked with the blue from the bunga telang (blue pea flower), a traditional nonya food colouring. It is good because the spicy dried prawn has just the right hot chilly taste with a tinge of sugar sweetness. The glutinous rice is tender and lemak (rich with coconut milk) but not mushy.

If you want to get it, you have to go to the canteen before 10.30 am as they disappear soon after. Trust me, several times I went after the 10 am novena, and they were gone. Now, I buy them ($1.10 each) as soon as I arrive for the 10 am novena. Yum.