a beautiful festive marriage

Foodie Friday 015

Ketupat with Ayam Masak Kicap

[ Malaysian ]

Availability: nationwide & beyond ...

I want to keep doing this but just have the world keep going around me, preoccupying me time and time again. With that in mind, it's been awhile that the Raya fever have died down a tad but I want to do a timely festive entry when I still have the time! Oh, I think I will use pictures readily available on the internet instead of my own inferior pictures that I take with my sub-par smartphone camera. I'll come back to that when I absolutely need to use it or to just add that personal touch. If you do celebrate the occasion as I did every year, what comes to mind food-wise when I mentioned Hari Raya Aidil Fitri?

For me, the first and foremost item is of course ketupat and its accompanying dish of ayam masak kicap or soybean-cooked chicken (I know it doesn't translate well, it's not called ketchup in the States, that's tomato sauce here). My second or rather third Raya food of choice is lemang but I want to focus on the former two since it's our family's must-have every Syawal. Truth be told, I never took into account why we had them before and just happily ate them before but over the years I have begin to notice how lucky I am to have it again and again since I know that the ketupat itself (sans the rice inside) is really hard to make by hand and require a learned skill to stitch the leaves together, which is why it fetches a ludicrously high price for those who wanted to buy them when on the way back home or balik kampung. Just like lemang, it would cost you extra to buy them at the ready and  fully cooked through, the unneeded cost that my mother is happy to save up on by anyam-ing the leaves herself (and since I've never learn to it myself) on her own. For me, the final product justify the whole tedious process. Regarding the ayam kicap, I never thought that every household would have different dish catering to each family's taste and tradition and this dawned on me when I couldn't found it when I visited another house and was offered to eat a full meal. It appeared to be the specialty of my mother's side, and it's great since it is one of my favourite delicacies ever. I always applaud my mother's cooking and would express my gratitude to her every time I could!

Regarding the food themselves, let me focus on the ketupat first since I want to state it is definitely superior to the quick and easy alternative of nasi impit or rice in plastic wrappings, as the coconut leafs add a natural layer of flavour on top of the admittedly bland staple food instead of the chemical plastic aftertaste of the latter. Even more, the visual or the optic is certainly better comparatively and in my own personal experience, it works wonderfully well with the ayam masak kicap, with the contrast of black and white is a visual eyecandy. The second dish in question is cooked with the combination of chickens with various parts and santan kelapa or coconut milk and of course the aforementioned sweetened soy sauce and assortments of spices in cumin and bunga cengkih and others. You can see the recipe here but I can assure the combination of it all births out one heck of a delicious and filling dish, pairing perfectly with the ketupat for me in the Raya morning as a reward for my my month of fasting that's worth the year wait for.

I might not be able to describe them as fluently as other food critics but I just want to showcase local food that I have personal attachment to. I hope you know that already before coming across this segment and if you don't, well now you know!

I wonder what kind of food do you guys eat at your own religious annual festivity. Would you mind sharing it with me?

-

a case for the wonderful family tradition:

+ Positives +

filling delicacy in more ways than one.

? Main contention ?

well, not all food suit all tastebuds so tread carefully.

- Negatives -

since the ketupat would turn bad just around a couple of days after it is cooked, I have to keep eating them as to not waste what my mother had worked so hard on.

! Warning !

watch out for spoiled ketupat ...

j preferred way of eating f

eating them slowly to savour the taste ...

* sense of touch & taste *

chewiness of the soft ketupat and the cooked chicken of course, as the rich coconut milk complement with the added spices that add to the familiar tastes of rice and chicken.

 <+> 

as usual, eat in moderation ...

RM

...

? Value ?

+ rich taste + tradition of family and race - short shelf life + filling + personal favourite = 90% 

--

- x -