I love asam pedas. It's so appetizing. I have guests coming for dinner and it's perfect! Dishes like this is hard to cook with just 2 adults eating. Lots of work involved.

I went to chat with my colleague who married a Malaccan and cooks Malacaan food quite often. She told me, Asam Pedas Melaka is spiced, and if I were to cook Merlimau style, there has to be burnt coconut, as taught to her by her mother in law. As she is not staying with her in laws, she just played with the dish, adding anything she fancies. Yeah, that's what I will do too, if I'm not blogging about heritage dishes.

I got to know about this dish when I watched Masterchef US back in 2012. Christine Ha, a blind cook of Vietnamese descent served this homey dish to the judges and won their hearts. Sounded delicious!

And so, I tried to cook this myself. I found Christine's recipe here on Doctor's TV. The featured recipe wasn't the full version, and I changed it based on how she said she added coconut soda and some recipes call for birds eye chilli, but other than that, I just tried to follow her method and the recipe.

Tuna is a common fish in Malaysian cuisine. The local tuna is smaller in size than the ones we eat in Japanese restaurants or those found in colder waters. The local tuna is known as ikan tongkol and it's not an expensive fish to consume. There is another fish that looks almost the same, known as ikan kayu, and I wasn't able to distinguish between the two, until the fish monger placed them side by side. The local tuna, ikan tongkol's skin is actually bluish, looks pretty when the sun shines on it.

Ikan kayu has a much larger bloody area when cooked, tastes more fishy and has a drier texture.

I didn't hunt down any peacock for this dish. Nor peahen. Nor its chicks or egg.
It's just the method of arrangement that resembles a peacock. The auspicious Chinese name I gave this dish 绰绰有余, means, more than enough. And the 绰 (cheok), sounds like the Cantonese pronunciation for peacock.

Amok Trey is freshwater fish in a spiced egg mousse.
It is not too foreign to us, as it is similar to the local nyonya otak-otak, but quite different in many ways.

One of the important ingredients in amok trey is again, prahok. You can substitute it with other ingredients like fish sauce or shrimp paste, but I personally find the flavour profile to be quite different. The other special ingredients used is fingerroot (krachai, temu kunci).

A recipe that I got from a restaurant's cookbook of which I highly doubt the chefs tell you the real story.
The recipe just called for the fish to be simmered.. but the pictures tell another story.

A fried fish and boiled fish don't look the same.

Fish pie is a traditional British dish. Read more about it here. If I were to make this again with more seafood, I'll name it as Fisherman's pie.

During that time, my brother in law dines with us on week days.I thought this pie was huge and when my BIL said he won’t be coming for dinner, I was worried it won’t be finished, but I was wrong. My hubby and I ate it all with pleasure. LOL.

So good!

Creamy fried fish from Indonesia.
The creaminess came from the candlenut and the coconut milk. Very rich.

I saw that there are Betawi versions and Javanese versions. I don't know which version mine belong to. Kindly enlighten me.
I also saw some uses carp, Tilapia and some used Indian mackerel, so I made a guess that the type of fish is not critical for this dish.

When I saw this recipe.. the slices of chicken looked sooo enticing, and the pumpkin just sends my Ooo-Lala siren going off.

But I wanted to try something different, and changed the chicken to shark as I happened to have it. Red curry is very versatile and you can use any type of protein.

I love grilled saba and I do order this quite often whenever I eat at Japanese restaurants.

It's actually a lot cheaper if you grill this at home. When I dine at the restaurant, I get 1/4 of  the fish, but if I cook at home I get one whole fish for the same price. Wow, isn't that very "dai" (means worth it in Cantonese)

During Sarawak MFF, I got to know Julina, the lady behind Hunter's Food., a blog that focuses on Sarawak Ethnic Cuisine. Thanks to her, I learnt a lot regarding Sarawak Ethnic Food and from there tried cooking two ethnic dishes like Manuk Pansuh and Pig Stomach with Pineapples.

She sent me some Sarawakian food stuff and one of them is this. Thank you Julina.
I have seen another participant to our virtual event cooking seafood with this eggplant and so, I tried cooking it her way, but with only fish.

Actually I cooked this dish last September, which is almost a year ago.

Fishball Noodles, Kampar style, has spread it wings out of town to Klang Valley  in recent years due to the 'migration' of Mdm Sau Ying. I've seen her in person at her stall at Ming Tien, Taman Megah. My family knew her  because our family business was very near to hers back in Kampar. She didn't recognise me, but only my brothers. Yikes, haha! Back when Mdm Sau Ying was still in Kampar, her noodle stall was infront of the Kampar town basketball court, one of the popular breakfast choices in town.

Those of you who ate it before will find the soup and the "liu" a bit different from others. Liu is the stuff that comes with the noodles. Kampar fishball noodles comes with delicious fishballs, Foo Pei (Stuffed beancurd skin with fish paste), Pork Balls (with some bits of cuttlefish) and the weird fried dough called "Jau Yun". But one is always free to dictate which one you want more or less or just that one thing.

Sekinchan is a small town on the northern coastal area in Selangor. It's major industry is fishing and rice planting.

This small town has a lot of seafood restaurants (compared to its size and population) and one of the popular treats in this town is shark porridge. Found cooked in two ways:- original and spicy. I chose to replicate the original version as I have kids at home.

When I saw this recipe... by the looks of it... rather dull, rather boring.
The picture in the book was all beige.... beige only. I can't even see the chilli
But after tasting it.. nooooooooo, it's not.

How often we are taken just with looks, right?

The name.... I curious, how does this fish relate to the Dutch? Belanda is Dutch in Malay. And Hu is fish in Hokkien. Fusioned name :)

I was supposed to cook salmon for dinner, but.... was out of ideas. I was on Facebook and asked my fellow  reader friends for ideas... lots came flowing in, but some can't be done due to absence of ingredient in my pantry.

I also searched the  web for pictures to inspire me and finally I saw one that looked interesting and that spurred me to try using sour plum sauce for the same visual effect. Actually I don't know what ingredients did that picture use, LOL. I was just taken by the physical appeal of it.

I'm happy with this glaze and I think it will work well with other  fishes too, or probably chicken or ribs. The ingredients are simple and it's easy to execute.

For those of you who have dinned in Petite Millie, One Utama, you would have heard of White Truffle Oil Fish Pie. It comes with a loose crust made of puff pastry. In the pie, are pieces of white fish swimming in a pool of creamy gravy together with shitake mushrooms and fennel.

After having this once, I then decided to have my own version of this, borrowing the concept from Petit Millie.

Sometimes I can be rather stingy to use the oven. Are you like me too?

I made this using a pan on the stove, giving the fish the “feeling” of being baked. I won’t call it frying, as I used low heat with the lid on, ‘sauna-ing’ the salmon until it is tender and flakes when tested with a fork. The heat is not enough to make it golden, maybe just slightly browned, just like being baked. It tasted juicy and tender, as if it’s baked not fried, and the butter in here is more for flavouring purpose rather for browning. The garlic is soft and fragrant, still with some pungency rather than golden and crispy. Just how I intended it to be.

Sinagol is a Bajau dish. It's shark and shark liver cooked with turmeric. It can also be can also be cooked with another pelagic fish, that is the sting ray (called Sagol Pari instead) or even puffer fish, surprisingly.

The Bajaus are traditionally from the Sulu Archipelago and they are currently the 2nd largest ethnic group in Sabah. The east coast bajaus are also known as the sea gypsies. They are also noted for their exceptional abilities in free-diving, with physical adaptations that enable them to see better and dive longer underwater. The west coast Bajaus are also known as good horsemen. I do remember learning about their horse riding while I was a kid in school, probably in primary school.