Sibu Tales : Pulut Panggang

Our introduction to Pulut Panggang in Sibu was early in the 1950's when my father would bring back a few pulut panggang from Sibu to our home in Pulau Kerto. They were nice, chewy, oily and sweet and at the same time savoury pieces of glutinous rice wrapped in banana leaves.

My father would always toast the panggang on the charcoal fire before we ate them. He did not want any one of us to have stomach aches, eating cold rice.

My mother would comment, " This is the Malay style of plain Chang, cooked in a different way and wrapped in banana leaves."

We were only familiar with Zerngs wrapped in Chinese bamboo leaves.





When moved over from Pulau Kerto to Sibu, we lived in Kampong Nyabor and every day there were a few people selling home made pulut panggang along our road, Kung Ping Road. We could also find a few sellers carrying their baskets along Blacksmith Road.

Each pulut panggang was only 10 cents in those days.

If we had extra money we would buy one and the seller, would remove the white towel from their basket and reveal the lovely green banana leaf wrapped pulut for us to chose from.

Somehow the  memories of eating pulut panggan were awesome. We would run home with two pieces or three (if we had 30 cents between us) and we would share it with the whole family.