Page 206 - The Guide To Sarawak

204 THE FLAVOURS OF SARAWAK
A selection of popular breakfast dishes, served in coffee shops throughout Sarawak. Clockwise from top left: popiah, Fujian-style fresh spring rolls; kolo mee with minced pork and char siew; and Sarawak laksa, the state’s most famous dish.
A Culinary Experience
By Edgar Ong
A wide and wild array of cuisines awaits the visitor to Sarawak. The different customs and lifestyles of
Sarawak’s many ethnic groups are reflected in their food and their eating habits, and the state has become a melting pot of local, regional and international cuisines.
Ethnic Foods - From the Jungle to the Table
are surely midin and paku
– two varieties of wild
ferns found abundantly throughout the state.
Both are crunchy and delicious served fried with minced garlic or belacan (spicy prawn paste). Other succulent foraged plant ingredients include young banana flowers, palm hearts, bamboo shoots, various beans, flowers, roots, shoots and vines of all colours, shapes and sizes.
Indigenous people also grow their own food - yams, tapioca and pumpkins
of all sizes; kangkung (water spinach), cangkok manis (a bush with sweet leaves), cabbages, carrots, potatoes and various Chinese vegetables fruits
of all kinds; fruits such
as bananas, pineapples, jackfruit, durian, rambutan,
Manok pansoh, a traditional Iban and Bidayuh dish of chicken steamed in bamboo tubes with wild herbs and rice wine.
People in the rural areas still survive
on the harvest of the jungles, fields and rivers. These include jungle ferns; all sorts of edible roots and foliage; wild game from the mouse-deer to wild boar and sambar deer; and fish, edible mussels, snails, prawns and more from the streams and rivers.
The most famous edible wild plants