A Good Long House Style Meal - A Cyber Birthday Card

Today is my eldest daughter's birthday. It has been too many years she has not celebrated a birthday in Sarawak.

This is a birthday card which includes photos and text on a possible feast for her - organic food from the longhouse.

This is her favourite dish - ubi leaves cooked in the same as Mrs. Kuntai our relative would cook. Young tapioca leaves (the top leaves - yes as in tea leaves) are plucked and then pounded using pestle and mortar)and then squeezed with salt. This is then fried with ginger and some pork or ikan bilis. The texture is lovely and the taste heavenly.



This is Winter Melon - a soup simply cooked by throwing in cubed winter melon and ikan bilis into a large pot of boiling water. Add salt towards the end.
 For better taste use a chicken stock.

Kampong chicken or free range chicken cooked in oyster sauce slowly over a wood fire until the flesh leaves the bones at the touch of a fork.


Bell chillies cooked with ikan bilis and belacan. You can eat double portion of rice with this alone.


Long house rice - black organic rice from the hills. Very fragrant and very sweet.

Iban terong - cooked slowly over a wood fire - until the sugar present in the golden brinjal caramelises. It is all at once sweet and tangy at the same time. It can be eaten cooked like this or it can be used as part of tom yam prawns or fish or masak asam.


Our all time favourite - home grown and organic cangkok manis fried with free range eggs.


Freshly plucked jungle fern (paku) stir fried with some belacan and home grown ginger.

Happy Birthday to you across the Pacific.