slow food foundation - ark of taste

From this site,
http://slowfoodfoundation.org/eng/arca/lista.lasso

The Ark of Taste aims to rediscover, catalog, describe and publicize forgotten flavors. It is a metaphorical recipient of excellent gastronomic products that are threatened by industrial standardization, hygiene laws, the regulations of large-scale distribution and environmental damage.

Ark products range from the Italian Valchiavenna goat to the American Navajo-Churro sheep, from the last indigenous Irish cattle breed, the Kerry, to a unique variety of Greek fava beans grown only on the island of Santorini. All are endangered products that have real economic viability and commercial potential.



and in this list, from malaysia, we have 2 entries. bario rice and rimbas black pepper.

i don't know anything about rimbas black pepper but i'm lucky to be able to find bario rice being sold in the oug wet market!

at rm13/kg, it isn't cheap but think for a moment, how could such rice be cheap? it's a highland rice cultivated manually, without aid of modern machineries, fertilizers nor pesticides. and the kelabit tribe has a current population of only 5000 of which you can bet your dollar the young is slowly shunning away from such laborious activity.

in other words, in a generation or two, we may lose this valuable tradition forever. so at rm13/kg, savour it while you can!

we have cooked this rice. it has soft sticky texture, very unlike other types of rice. we tried the white, red and black variety. the red and black doesn't require additional water to cook, very unlike the normal brown rice.

if you are a malaysian, you may want to try this rice first before we lose it forever.

anyone know anything about rimbas black pepper?

Another snack for tonto...

... pig ears!

Why not?

It's cheap, flavourful and all natural!

Easy to make as well. Slice it, cook in hot water, then dry it via the dehydrator aka biltong.

And tonto absolutely loves it!

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Make you own food dehydrator and biltong!

I was browsing ikeahacker (http://ikeahacker.blogspot.com) when I came across a post about making your own biltong.

wait. ikea hacker? yup, it's a site where folks submit their ikea hacks, basically hacking their ikea furniture to something else! the site is run by jules, a Malaysian who was once interviewed on bfm. way to go girl!

biltong? it's like beef jerky but thicker and supposedly tastes better. a favourite among South Africans and carnivores.

and biltong is made simply by drying marinated meat. well, wanted to make some treats for tonto and this is just the ticker! meat snack treats are very expensive, around rm20 for a 150g pack. so why not make your own?

first you need to make a biltong box. various schemes are available on the net and I hacked my own version using some thrown away planks I found in the neighbourhood during my daily walks with tonto.

built a very crude looking box, held together via furniture bracket and screws, the construction shouldn't take more than an hour, using only hand tools. chopsticks are placed at the top to hold good old paper clips (use the bigger sized ones) which hangs the meat strips.

near the base of the box, fit a light bulb socket (I use E27 type here) and the necessary wiring to light it up. I considered a dimmer as well as a timer but opted out for a "very quick" hack.

the biggest trouble I had was sourcing for a thermometer. dang! the easily available ones are all body thermometers, good to only 42c but we need good heat in the range of 60 to 70c. I finally found a few good ones at an instrument specialist store for rm75. I later found i could get the same thing from another store for half the price! @#%#!!

anyway using a 60w light bulb, I could only get around 50c so this isn't sufficient. a 100w bulb is perfect as I got 60 to 70c with it. now don't use energy saving bulbs here as we want the heat here. you can put on your green cap later.

last item to get is beef. bought half kg of Indian beef sliced thinly of course. you know our Hindu brothers don't consume beef hence cows live to an old age in India. the old cows are then slaughtered and the frozen meat imported here. these are about half the price of local beef. now you understand why your local nasi kandar stall sells beef curry cheaper than chicken curry?

as this experimental jerky is meant for tonto, we forego marinating the meat and only washed it with a little vinegar. the vinegar will darken the meat as well as soften the sinews inside. you need to soak in vinegar for a few hours as this is an old cow!

and about 8 hours later... we have jerky!

tonto absolutely loves it! the aroma got him running around in circles. he followed me wherever I went, well until I put the jerky away.

the pictures explain the rest.

Our impoverished taste buds...

Isn't it amazing that despite all the tastes our taste bud could experience, we limit ourselves to just a few?

Consider a trip to a fast food joint. You'll be assailed with just 3 types of taste : salty, sweet and fats. Lots of salt in your fries, burger patty; teaspoons of sugar in your soft drink; blobs of fat in your burger/salad dressing...

It's understandable. Inferior ingredients are usually masked with strong flavours and by making it savoury, you'll "think" it tastes "good".

Now in M'sia, the same observation applies to hawker food. Out of 10th stalls I sample, 9 would be guilty of too much salt in the servings. The tenth, unfortunately, suffers from poor business! It seems to me that this is what the public wants.

Many a times, we are recommended to check out some great restaurants. Again, we usually find their cooking to use too much salt. And these restaurants are highly recommended! Also, have seen those foodie shows on TV where the reviewer comments "the food is salty enough". Arghhhhhhh!

So what is this fascination with salty food? Seems like it is a requisite for "good taste".

I long for the fresh taste of a choy sum stalk, the inherent sweetness of a carrot, the subtle nuances of herbs. With quality ingredients, just a dash of seasoning is all you need. A dash of pepper, a sprinkling of sea salt, few leaves of rosemary, few drops of mustard..


Is this too much to ask for?

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easy chicken liver treat for tonto

we love to give treats to tonto but quality treats are so expensive! and many of those in the market are pure junk food. and the better ones also contain preservatives and flavouring, hardly suitable for dogs. so we are left to... make our own!

and making your own is soooo cheap. since people have developed an aversion to all things liver these days, you could buy 10 pieces of chicken liver (kampung chicken! - or free range chicken) for only rm1. sigh... you can't even get a can of poisonous coke for this amount!

so here is this recipe, adapted from this site.

• 10 pieces of raw chicken liver
• 2 cups of whole wheat flour (i just use our regular wholemeal bread flour)
• 2 cups of instant oat
• 2 eggs

just 4 ingredients! so easy! 

now comes the squeamish part. you need to "puree" the liver... it's like a gob of blood and oh... it smells awful!

then mix everything together, including the 2 raw eggs. believe me, it's all a gooey mess! the original recipe calls for half the flour and half the oats but i went double as that's even worse.

we shape them up in little strips and balls so that it's more interesting for tonto.

bake at 160c for 30-40 minutes. it smells quite good after baking. and tastes good too!