Saturday, October 13, 2007

Selamat Hari Raya Puasa

Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri to my Malay neighbours!

The preparations by my Malay neighbours for Hari Raya Puasa seems endless. One day they are throwing the old furnitures and wall clocks away, another day the family is busy cleaning the house and yesterday evening, I saw a big pot brewing atop some charcoal in the corridor. Yeah...this is the stuff that has me poking my head to sneak a peek or even a whiff of what's cooking inside. :)

Geylang Serai which is well known to be the Malay Village for the Malay Communities in Singapore is also soaked with the festive mood. Just a few days ago, I took bus number 13 to East Coast and along the way, it passes by a long stretch of Pasar Malam with hundreds of stores selling all sorts of delicious snacks, clothes, curtains, bedsheets, pillow cases...the list goes on and on. And I found myself intrigued by the numbers of stores selling the famous Ramly Burger. It must have such a large customer fan base that I observed one Ramly store being separated by the next by only two or three stores in between. And so it goes like this: Ramly store A...store x..store x...Ramly store B...store x...store x...Ramly store C...store x...store x...store x...Ramly store D...store x......

Anyway, what has all this got to do with me? So the story goes that I was awoken by a knock on the door at 9.30am this morning and I was pleasantly surprised to find my neighbour standing outside with a BIG tray of food. Heh..heh...

This definitely woke me up! So now you know why i'm extremely concerned with Hari Raya. :)


Cookies & Cakes
Clockwise: pineapple tarts, almond cookies (my favourite), kueh lapis, butter cake, peanut sugar cookies


Lontong


Ketupak
These are steamed rice wrapped in banana leaves. There are three version here. Going clockwise starting with the usual squarish Ketupak (my favourite) wrapped in weaved banana leaves in the foreground, long Ketupak with beans mixed into the rice and triangular Ketupak (it tasted the same as the first one). So normally, I would cut some of these Ketupaks into smaller cubes and mixed it into the Longtong for a fuller meal.


Sweet Coconut Flakes
This is to be sprinkled onto the Longtong and the combined taste is heavenly!


Chilli Chicken


Chilli Prawns


Isn't it lovely to live in a multi-racial country?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

The sweet coconut flakes are called 'seroendeng' and the peanut cookies are called "kuih makmor' just in case you were interested