Saturday, January 29, 2011
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
“Ikan Bakar Colo-Colo” (Grilled Fish with Colo-colo dip)
For this simple dish, any fish will do. Originally from the Mollucas or Maluku islands in Eastern Indonesia, Colo-colo is a spicy and sour dip that goes with any grilled fish and rice. People in the Mollucas islands – with its capital Ambon, hence they are called Ambonese – live in harmony with the sea for centuries. Staple food there are sago and seafood.
This dish was very special for me as a child. Introduced by my father who was born in Saparua – a tiny little dot in the map about 74 km east of Ambon.
Ingredients
1. For the fish, any seawater fish will do. The amount is depending on how many people and how much each can eat (my father can finish one whole big tuna alone!)
2. For the Colo-colo dip:
4-5 small shallots (or 2 bigger banana shallots)
1 tomato
1-2 lime
Red chillies or bird eye chillies depending on how spicy you like your food
3. Any rice will do. I love Thai Jasmine rice, but I also like this dish with brown or red rice (yes, red!). You can also try organic wild rice. The amount? As much or as little as you like.
Preparing the fish
You can also have the fish fried. Shallow fry on both sides and check that all the flesh are cooked.
How to make the dip
Chop the shallots, tomato and chilli; put them together in a bowl. Squeeze the juice of one lime, add another one if it’s a small one. Add warm water (about 50 ml).
How to boil the rice
Quite straight forward. Most types of rice will cooked nicely with one part rice and two part water. Boil, but keep your eye on it as rice tends to stick on the pan. The Oriental way of boiling rice is to invest on a rice cooker (available in most Oriental or Asian supermarkets, price varies between £5 to £40).
How to enjoy Ikan bakar colo-colo
All together on a plate or bowl, dig in with your hand. Fish out the caveman/woman inside you and enjoy…!
Eating fish with your hand also helps in your fight against the bones. Knives and forks would not help you finding the tricky little bones, but your fingers will sense them.
Note:
* I found another version of colo-colo with additional basil (I prefer sweet basil) leaves. For this recipe, read Tony Wu's blog http://www.tonywublog.com/20101125/delicious-colo-colo-sauce-in-ambon.html
This dish was very special for me as a child. Introduced by my father who was born in Saparua – a tiny little dot in the map about 74 km east of Ambon.
 |
| Fresh catche from the sea, brought straight to the market (Saparua, Indonesia) |
1. For the fish, any seawater fish will do. The amount is depending on how many people and how much each can eat (my father can finish one whole big tuna alone!)
2. For the Colo-colo dip:
4-5 small shallots (or 2 bigger banana shallots)
1 tomato
1-2 lime
Red chillies or bird eye chillies depending on how spicy you like your food
3. Any rice will do. I love Thai Jasmine rice, but I also like this dish with brown or red rice (yes, red!). You can also try organic wild rice. The amount? As much or as little as you like.
Preparing the fish
The best (and healthiest) is grilled or barbequed. I think barbeque fish in summer would be a nice “exotic” alternative to burgers and hot dogs.
 |
| Any fresh fish will be delicious grilled with colo-colo |
Brush the fish with lime juice, then season with salt and pepper, grill or barbeque it until done (I don’t give the time or temperature as this will vary for different sizes of fish. Also, imagine living a natural live in the days before thermometer and electric oven….)
You can also have the fish fried. Shallow fry on both sides and check that all the flesh are cooked.
How to make the dip
Chop the shallots, tomato and chilli; put them together in a bowl. Squeeze the juice of one lime, add another one if it’s a small one. Add warm water (about 50 ml).
How to boil the rice
Quite straight forward. Most types of rice will cooked nicely with one part rice and two part water. Boil, but keep your eye on it as rice tends to stick on the pan. The Oriental way of boiling rice is to invest on a rice cooker (available in most Oriental or Asian supermarkets, price varies between £5 to £40).
How to enjoy Ikan bakar colo-colo
All together on a plate or bowl, dig in with your hand. Fish out the caveman/woman inside you and enjoy…!
Eating fish with your hand also helps in your fight against the bones. Knives and forks would not help you finding the tricky little bones, but your fingers will sense them.
Note:
* I found another version of colo-colo with additional basil (I prefer sweet basil) leaves. For this recipe, read Tony Wu's blog http://www.tonywublog.com/20101125/delicious-colo-colo-sauce-in-ambon.html
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
The Fish Fight, Sustainable Fishing and us
If you think that the media is just for entertainment, think again. Britain’s welll known TV chef Hugh Fernly-Whittingstall started a campaign against discarding fish on a Channel 4 programme “Fish Fight” on 11th-13th January. Since then, over 600,000 people signed up to support the campaign (http://www.fishfight.net/), sales on alternative fish has soared (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/17/sustainable-seafood-supermarkets-fish-fight?CMP=twt_fd), and in my household, we are all converted to mackerel for our Friday fish dinner.
In my limited knowledge of the EU common fishery law, I am sure that this law was (once) well-intended to preserve a few too popular species that were overfished. British people love Cod and Haddock, and the popularity of Tuna is worldwide. Still, the impact of this quota – that fishermen can only land a certain amount of certain species – is that many fish that were caught had to be thrown back. Once caught by the net and pulled up to the boat, they are already dead.
The discard, in my humble opinion, is disgustingly reflecting the greed of modern human civilisation – the greed that has been part of our everyday lives. The discarded dead fish reminds me of the amount of good food that we throw into our bins everyday. The “buy-one-get-one-free” loaf of breads that could not be eaten by the expiry date and ended up in the bin. The amount of cheap clothes that we bought – on expense of some cheap child labour in sweat shops somewhere thousands of miles away – wore once, then throw to the bin.
In the same week of Hugh’s Fish Fight programmes, BBC’s Human Planet showed some jaw-dropping images of how indigenous people hunt for shark and whales in the open sea. Then in the weekend, Bruce Parry’s Arctic adventure opened our eyes about whaling within the Inupiat community in Alaska. Whaling sounds evil. We all cringed just saying the word “whaling” – killing an endangered sea mammal. Our modern (western) world condemned this action.
But who are we to judge the indigenous people who hunt for not more than three whales a year in order to feed the whole village? The whaler of Lembata (Flores, Indonesia) and Inupiat (Alaska) do not waste anything from their catch. The Inupiat people even feed and conserve the polar bears by doing so. Can we say that they are wrong whaling while we discard tons of dead fish (and food and clothes and mobile phones and our modern electronic “toys” and so on)?
As part of this anti discard campaign, other TV chefs are presenting cookery programmes on alternative fish like Dab (no, I never heard that before), Coley, Sardines and Mackerel. There is also a map of chip shops across the UK who sell mackerel. We went to our local chippy but saw that mackerel is not on the menu. What a shame. So last Friday, we decided to make our own fish and chip. Of course, we use frozen oven baked chips and tinned mushy peas, but we fried fresh mackerel in a batter. The result? Wow…! My husband Andy, my son Jacques and I are now mackerel converts. I am not good at describing taste, but it was so delicious, scrumptious, lovely!
There is more to this: the price for one kilo of mackerel was about £2.50 while the price of one portion of cod/haddock is over £3. If we go to the chippy and bought three fish, we would have to pay about £10 – not included the chips and mushy peas.
We are very pleased for our mackerel converts. I don’t think we’ll ever buy cod from the chippy again.
For this Mackerel & Chips, we used Hugh’s beer batter recipe to dip the fish into: http://www.channel4.com/food/recipes/chefs/hugh-fearnley-whittingstall/beer_battered_fish_p_1.html
Other fish dish that we have done in the past is the classic Kedgeree (http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/feb/11/allegra-mcevedy-kipper-kedgeree). Instead of Kipper or Haddock, we used mackerel – either fresh or smoked. They are delicious!
Next entry, I will be sharing some spicy Indonesian-style fish dishes that can use any kind of fish. In Indonesia we are not too fussy about the type of fish and about bones. There is even a special “fish head curry” that people from Sumatra are crazy about. To cure everyone’s phobia of fish bones, here is a picture of my dad enjoying his fish until the last bit on the bones.
In the first episode, Hugh showed that, “Half of all fish caught in the North Sea are thrown back overboard DEAD.” The most significant footage that ended up played in the European Parliament, online and everywhere showed how tonnes of already dead fish are thrown back into the sea. This is because all fishermen in EU countries have to oblige by the quota system.
The discard, in my humble opinion, is disgustingly reflecting the greed of modern human civilisation – the greed that has been part of our everyday lives. The discarded dead fish reminds me of the amount of good food that we throw into our bins everyday. The “buy-one-get-one-free” loaf of breads that could not be eaten by the expiry date and ended up in the bin. The amount of cheap clothes that we bought – on expense of some cheap child labour in sweat shops somewhere thousands of miles away – wore once, then throw to the bin.
In the same week of Hugh’s Fish Fight programmes, BBC’s Human Planet showed some jaw-dropping images of how indigenous people hunt for shark and whales in the open sea. Then in the weekend, Bruce Parry’s Arctic adventure opened our eyes about whaling within the Inupiat community in Alaska. Whaling sounds evil. We all cringed just saying the word “whaling” – killing an endangered sea mammal. Our modern (western) world condemned this action.
But who are we to judge the indigenous people who hunt for not more than three whales a year in order to feed the whole village? The whaler of Lembata (Flores, Indonesia) and Inupiat (Alaska) do not waste anything from their catch. The Inupiat people even feed and conserve the polar bears by doing so. Can we say that they are wrong whaling while we discard tons of dead fish (and food and clothes and mobile phones and our modern electronic “toys” and so on)?
As part of this anti discard campaign, other TV chefs are presenting cookery programmes on alternative fish like Dab (no, I never heard that before), Coley, Sardines and Mackerel. There is also a map of chip shops across the UK who sell mackerel. We went to our local chippy but saw that mackerel is not on the menu. What a shame. So last Friday, we decided to make our own fish and chip. Of course, we use frozen oven baked chips and tinned mushy peas, but we fried fresh mackerel in a batter. The result? Wow…! My husband Andy, my son Jacques and I are now mackerel converts. I am not good at describing taste, but it was so delicious, scrumptious, lovely!
There is more to this: the price for one kilo of mackerel was about £2.50 while the price of one portion of cod/haddock is over £3. If we go to the chippy and bought three fish, we would have to pay about £10 – not included the chips and mushy peas.
We are very pleased for our mackerel converts. I don’t think we’ll ever buy cod from the chippy again.
For this Mackerel & Chips, we used Hugh’s beer batter recipe to dip the fish into: http://www.channel4.com/food/recipes/chefs/hugh-fearnley-whittingstall/beer_battered_fish_p_1.html
Other fish dish that we have done in the past is the classic Kedgeree (http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/feb/11/allegra-mcevedy-kipper-kedgeree). Instead of Kipper or Haddock, we used mackerel – either fresh or smoked. They are delicious!
Next entry, I will be sharing some spicy Indonesian-style fish dishes that can use any kind of fish. In Indonesia we are not too fussy about the type of fish and about bones. There is even a special “fish head curry” that people from Sumatra are crazy about. To cure everyone’s phobia of fish bones, here is a picture of my dad enjoying his fish until the last bit on the bones.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Thinking about the fish fight (against discard in EU fishery law)
Watching Hugh's Fish Fight and reading about EU fishery law makes me think about the sustainable way of life and food from poor traditional communities... Like in Saparua ( Maluku, Indonesia ) all kind of fish are cooked nicely in a simple way (grilled or fried, with colo-colo dip and rice or sago)... No over fishing, nothing wasted, all locally sourced... Happy and harmonious life!
We in modern urban society should learn from them by not being picky and only get/buy what we need... No cod, tuna and salmon in my household for a long time now!
I'll share the colo-colo recipe in my next post...
Adeline Tumenggung-Cooke
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http://adelinemt.wordpress.com/
http://adeline-andy.blogspot.com
http://flickr.com/photos/adelinecooke
Monday, January 3, 2011
(Not) Swimming in Singapore’s Rooftop Infinity Pool
I am crazy about swimming. Whether outdoor, indoor, sea, lake or a swimming pool, I just can not stay dry when I see water. So I was excited when I saw a picture of Singapore’s infinity pool in The Guardian’s Eyewitness (“Swimming in the sky”, 25 June 2010). What a lovely coincidence that my husband and I had already got tickets to Singapore this summer.
We stayed in a budget hotel in China Town, which was only two MRT (Mass Rapid Transport) stations away from Marina Bay, from where we walked to Marina Sands Bay hotel (http://www.marinabaysands.com/). Together with the observation deck, the infinity swimming pool is part of Sands SkyPark, a terrace on top of the three hotel towers. I took my bikini and small towel, ready to take the plunge.
The 1.2 hectare SkyPark is located on the 57th floor. We took the tour with audio guides about the building (it was designed by Israeli architect Moshe Safdie; the structure is longer than the Eiffel Tower is tall and large enough to park four-and-a-half A380s). From the observation deck, we saw part of the Formula One circuit, Sentosa Island and even Batam Island in Indonesia. It is impressive. Still, all I wanted was to swim.
We finally arrived at the swimming pool area, and my God, what a sight! Although it is actually impossible to swim the whole 150 metre length – it is divided into three parts to accommodate part submerged sun loungers and a shallower kiddie pool – I was still amazed. “This is every swimmer’s dream!” I told my husband who was snapping pictures, “Too bad I cannot swim.”
All access to the pool is guarded by security personnel with curly cabled earphones like those of the secret service’s. They all politely asked, “Are you a hotel guest?” No chance I could sneak in (we did talk about kidnapping a hotel guest, snatch the terrycloth bath rope, lock her in a cupboard somewhere then walk into the swimming pool. But we decided not to execute the plan.)
Then we saw two whirlpools that were not guarded. I took off my shoes and dipped my feet. Nice! But I wanted more. I wanted to get wet!
What I did next is not advisable, but it is not impossible and not against the regulations. I put on my bikini and confidently walked to the whirlpool. I plunged and got wet!
Back home, we cropped the picture of me in the whirlpool. There I was, swimming with Singapore City in the background. We did it! We visited world’s largest rooftop infinity pool, and I “swam”.
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