A eye-opening dish that Sarawakians are crazy for.
Sarawak is a wondrous place that is distinctly different from the other states in the Malaysian Federation. Their history is different (they gained independence from the British in July 1963 whereas Malaya or Peninsular Malaysia became independent in August 1957). Sarawakian culture is different (the ethnic mix is balanced between native Ibans, Malays, Bidayuh and other tribes plus Chinese while Malaya is majority Malay with Chinese and Indians making up the rest). And, Sarawakian food is different as well.
Making this favorite Nyonya dish is easier with the Royal Selangor jelly moulds.
Today is the most time-pressed post yet. We started prepping for this dish at 8pm so please forgive us for the brevity as I am writing this under immense pressure to meet the Jellyriffic challenge midnight posting timeline. I think we’re pretty crazy to try something this ambitious so late especially when it’s our very first time making this as well.
But guess what? It took all of 1 hour to prep. Despite the number of ingredients, this dish actually comes together quite quickly especially if you have a blender at home or food processor to do all the hard work!
Lately, I’ve been sticking to rice and dishes (veggie stir-fries, braised meats, soups, steamed fish, and the like) for dinner. I guess it’s been a while since I made a more Western-type meal (not counting pasta which I make often enough). Last night, however, I took a couple of pork tenderloin out of the freezer for tonight’s dinner.
I needed a recipe that I could whip up without any fuss.
I looked around for some recipes and saw one on Epicurious for this Ginger-Marinated Pork Tenderloin. The picture on the recipe showed it served with some mashed sweet potatoes. That got my attention as I had a couple of sweet potatoes lying around at home waiting to be used. And when I perused the recipe, I saw that I had all the ingredients available at home as well. Bingo! That was going to be dinner.
You’ll swoon over these lamb shanks in buttery braised garlic sauce.
For some reason, it’s really hard to find good beef here in Kuching. Last year when Nate was hankering for some steak for his birthday, I went to the store and got some ribeyes to grill up for him.
They were not good.
They were tough and did not have enough marbling. I had bought a big hunk of ribeye frozen and when we thawed them out, we had a feeling they weren’t going to be good. So, we’ve pretty much given up on getting good steaks here. The rest of that hunk ended up being sliced up and used for Niku-jaga which was a better application of that quality beef.
Anyway, why am I going on about beef when the title of this post says lamb shanks? Well, it’s because I want to let you know that even though we can’t get good beef here, we can certainly find good lamb!
The same place I got my beef, I also found some vacuum-packed lamb shanks that were super meaty. I got myself two shanks the first time; made this recipe and regretted not buying more. So the second time around, I made sure to get four shanks.
