Elizabeth and I have been friends since high school. Our friendship was not the most immediate—she is naturally more suspicious and takes a long time to warm up to people. I, on the other hand, will talk to just about anyone who is near me. So the first time we met, I had come up to her to say hello and ask her name only to be met with a suspicious, “why do you want to know?” At least, this is what Elizabeth tells me. I don’t remember that at all. I only know that we’ve been good friends for a long time. We’ve been through years of sitting next to each other through high school, work (graduate school for me), and of course, FOOD.
It smells like a burning tire but tastes like the sweetest custard apple.
We are really happy to be living here in Sarawak. Time and again, the kindness and the generosity of the people here simply blow us away. Last month, when we invited our friend Paul and his family over for a big, home-cooked Japanese meal of miso soup, niku-jaga, kabocha no nimono, and sesame salad with chicken, they brought over a couple of these unique fruits called “buah tarap” to eat for dessert.
Well, kinda. Rambutans are tree fruits which are close cousins to the lychee and the longan. Like a lychee, they are ovoid (egg) shaped, about 2 inches long, and have a hard, inedible seed at the center. But instead of the smooth skins of those two other fruits, rambutans have thin, fleshy spines growing out of them. These spines not sharp like a durian, but pliable like a dragonfruit. The spines are more like thick hairs. In fact, the name “rambutan” comes from the Malay word for hair, rambut.
It may not be pretty, but the taste is simply amazing.
Stir-Fried Tomatoes with Oyster Sauce
By now, you know that I have a love affair with tomatoes. I love growing all kinds of tomato varieties and using the fruit in manydifferentapplications. Strangely, I’ve never thought to use them exclusively in a stir-fry. I have recently used them with other vegetables but even then, when I think of Chinese stir fries, I hardly think to use tomatoes.
But recently, I was at a friend’s house and her daughter Phoebe made this stir-fry using only tomatoes. We all loved it, especially my picky eater daughter, Esther. Phoebe told me that she used to make this dish during her college days away from home, so it had to be easy. When she told me what went in it, I was amazed!
