Badak Berendam

Glutinous rice balls in coconut milk
The green hipopotamus or 'badak'

Badak (hippopotamus) berendam (sitting in the water) is one of those particular Malay kuih with the puzzling names. Then when you eat it, you realise that the kuih itself may not taste as exotic as the name. Grandma likes this as it is soft and chewy. There is a little salt in the coconut milk it prevent it from being too cloying to the taste. It is rich nonetheless.

It bears no resemblence to the fearsome Hippopotamus from the Discovery Channel though

Talak Pecah recipe

Talak Pecah- bananas in syrup

Ondeh-ondeh

Cousin R cooked these delicious kuih herself. The first one is Talak Pecah. It is just caramelized bananas . When the bananas are brown, she puts some honey in the pan. Once the bananas are coated by the honey, then she removed them from the heat. Of course grandma said she should have retained the original recipe of putting sugar instead of honey and she should have sliced the bananas in half lengthwise :) Grandma is a stickler when it comes to old recipes.

She also made very soft ondeh-ondeh. They were round and plump and when you bite into them, you get a nice taste of melted palm sugar. Very sedap.

Cousin R was very kind and made the Talak Pecah just for me as I have never eaten it before and of course I found the name rather intriguing.

Express meal

My express break fast - full of fried food and fattening kuih...

The pink one is called kuih lapis. Nowadays it comes in multi-colours and some even in fluorescent ones. I like these muted pink and white the best. It reminds me of my '"kampong days' where we used to buy these kuih straight from someone's house. I like to peel off the layers one by one and eat them warm :)

Pre-dawn and break fast

My pre-dawn meal of corn flakes with fresh strawberries, black berries, dried mango and dried peaches...

My meal at break-fast time at 7.14 pm
curried crab, salad with tomatoes and raisins and white rice.

Cousin R very kindly came by and brought us curried crab and pulut (glutinous rice) with sweet coconut topping. The curied crab was delicious - fragrant and spicy and hot, but not too hot as that would have spoiled the taste. My auntie had cooked the white glutinous rice and we ate it with the sweet coconut topping. Grandma liked the pulut best.

1st thoughts

Ku Dah Makan? or Have you Eaten, is a the usual family greeting in our house. It is said to almost everyone and followed by the usual reply, "dah Makan tadi" or "I have just eaten just now". Only then would the host be satisfied and all conversations would be as always.

I thought I would just have a blog that is not about cats but about food. I like food - to eat..not to cook. Then Cousin R and grandma and I got to taking about food and kuih-kuih (malay snacks) for Ramadhan and I thought it would be good for me to have a blog where we can put up all the Ramadhan kuih-kuih that we would not be able to get, or rather that we do not eat, every day.


It is always the case that we could get many of these kuih-kuih in Geylang. I may even make a trip there as Geylang is now spick and span after the horrible case of food poisoning and pictures of rats as big as my cats! So maybe I will put up pictures of that and some of my favourite food that they family cooks very well (not me of cos). Maybe there would be a recipe or two..who knows...