Greetings from Borneo - neither a country or an island, but an Experience!! I arranged a cooking course and tour of the large weekend market months ago, and today was finally the day to meet Joseph. Joseph is the owner of Bumbu Cooking School, and we quickly got a sense that he would be a great cultural link for us to the people and customs of Sarawak.
Joseph is from the Bidaiu tribe (they comprise roughly 8% of the population of Sarawak, while the Iban are the largest tribe at 29%) - he was born and grew up in a long house - a real boy/man of the jungle. He is one of 10 kids (lucky #7), though he has only two kids of his own - a real city convert. We actually met his daughter at the office - she is very tiny and full of personality. She's helping out at the office while on leave from studying linguistics at university in Kuala Lumpur (which makes Joseph's life a little more interesting, getting corrected on his English very often by his 4'8, maybe 40kg daughter!).
The five of us drove to the weekend market - a well developed market compared to the ones we'd seen in Indochina. It's so organized that the produce is price controlled and laid out evenly by portion sizes that are appropriate for buying. The market has been moved twice, both times further from the town center, as it has grown in size of late. It's now in a set of big, modern buildings and it seemed not as busy as perhaps it usually is, due to the holidays going on here.
We walked around for an hour or so, shopping for ingredients we would use that day, and gaining insight into the things for sale, but more interesting to me, how "things worked".
We got back to the school and were told that the 6 that would be joining us were running 15 minutes late. Not a big deal, but the people that eventually came were not the kind of people that we'd usually run into at "sessions" like this before. We were used to people like us - interested participants that were there for the experience. The six with us were all expat (Brit and American) lawyers from Signapore here for a long weekend getaway. They were mostly hungover, and seemed pretty disinterested (Beth thought they were also a bit "cocky"), so they certainly didn't add to our experience, but oh well.
Joseph's manner of teaching was pretty cool. He definitely went over things as if he was speaking to two groups, one of which was inattentive and possibly very hung, as he went over things in great detail when our four got it pretty quickly and were raring to go. But we all liked the way he told us how he learned the lessons from his parents on how to work cleanly and safely in the longhouse kitchen, and he was teaching us like we were in the longhouse. Here was Beth squeezing some coconut milk out of raw shredded coconut.
Another thing I liked about Joseph was his knowledge and dedication to doing things in a sustainable way. Borneo relies on its natural resources - from a tourism and production standpoint, so there are many push-pull forces that sometimes put the environment in jeopardy. We are hoping to get Joseph for a short jungle/river trek with the Versly (remember, that's plural for the Versluis family!) where I'm sure he will get peppered with lots of questions!
The first course we made was the last course (of course! As Joseph said, this is the way it is done!) - dessert. We wove little green baskets, put sweet corn (ew) in the bottom to block the holes, and poured in a sugary coconut mixture in to top it up.
We were getting pretty hungry, the four of us. I sometimes think the locals must think, we are crazy - three big meals a day with snacks in between. You'd think we were malnourished or something - I think our bodies are not used to the generally measly breakfasts (or low in protein breakfasts) here, and we find by 10:30, the Quickersons (that's two sets of Bickersons) appear if there's nothing to eat! Robin managed to sneak some spoonfuls of the coconut mixture.... Little bugger!
Next up was the main dish - an awesome Sambal curry dish with bone in chicken and potatoes. We were all star..... No, we've banned that word - very hungry! And the smell of the curry was absolutely killing us. This smile was so forced :-)
While we waited for the curry to simmer, we learned how to properly cut pineapple, which was useful. It was funny watching the cocky young lawyer next to me out of the corner of my eye doing everything wrong right before Joseph went over the next step... She couldn't help herself by racing ahead. We managed to sneak a bunch of pineapple, so the Quickersons left and we happily looked forward to lunch!
And here it is! The curry was FAN-TAS-TIC, and accompanied by the fried fiddleheads we made, some steamed rice, pineapple and our little desserts (we all ate around the corn!), we were all stuffed by the end of it. I liked Joseph's style and demeanour - it was a fun morning.
Beth's cold was bugging her, so she was ordered to nap while the girls and I went up the 16th floor pool-with-a-view.
We went out for Tandoori Indian, which was good, through the butter chicken (which we shouldn't have ordered.... We're fogetting our diversification lessons from our Indian-Canadian friend from Hanoi) was closer to BBQ sauce than curry. We walked around the waterfront and found a mall that had some essentials we'd been looking for that, by complete dumb luck coincidence, had a movie theater. We took the opportunity to get 3 Antman tickets and packaged Beth back to the hotel for an early night. When she got a couple of hundred meters down the road, we put our hands in and gave a loud, intentionally awkward cheer of "1, 2, 3, Let's movie!". That got a half turn and smile from Beth down the street so we knew we were not in the doghouse!
The movie was fun as was the walk home. It reminded me of when we would ride home from the Queensway theater late at night, the kids full of late night, post movie energy and chatting their heads off. Fun. I managed to get the kids to bed before midnight so we wouldn't have to have an early birthday celebration for Abby. I hope she enjoys her day tomorrow - she'll only be 13 for one day after all....
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