Some Iban Food Preserves

We love the preserved food brought by our paternal grandfather whenever he came visiting. Kasam ensabit, kasam babi,kasam ikan, salai rusa,and tempuyak just to mention a few.

As we grew older, our kitchen became our chemistry laboratory and we experimented with the food we bought, or with the vegetables we had brought down from the ulu. In this way we learned some skills in food preservation. This experimentation also helped us to realise how important it is to pass on skills to others. "Just in case. It might be useful one day," our mother used to say.

Today, in Miri, chillies can be RM 15 a kilo. So some preservation of chillies when the price is low can help us ride the waves of high chilli prices!!

Ensabi or the small mustard green is not available throughout the year. So preserved ensabi is lovingly preserved and we have our occasional celebration of a good indigenous meal!! How convenient it is, if we have our bottled preserved vegetables on our shelves. We have to tie our tongues when we savour the food on the table. (Tie our tongues is a Foochow saying which means, control our eating or craving.)

Salting of meat (wild boar, pork,deer, fish)

Salt the meat pieces (which have been cut into 2 finger thickness and about 3 fingers long. when some liquid comes out after two hours, squeeze more of the fluid from the pieces. Drain for another two hours, making sure that the meat is free from flies, or dirt.

Put the meat pieces into a small clean and dry jar, and then dust with crushed salt.
Add a cup of dry roasted rice grains and mix well. Cover the jar for three days and then stir the meat. After a week, the preserved salted meat is ready for cooking.

Sour and salty method of preserving of ensabi

During the planting season (of rice), plenty of ensabi is grown. The ensabi is plucked from the field, washed very well and then dried in the sun for a few hours, just until the leaves are wilted, and much of the moisture is gone.

Rub the leaves with coarse salt until a ball can be formed. Place the ensabi in a nice jar with a good cover.

When cooking rice, add extra water. Take an adequate amount of the boiling water from the rice pot and cool it. After it is really cool, add the rice water to the ensabi in the jar. The water should just cover the ensabi. Leave the jar of ensabi closed for about 3 days. By then the stalks of the ensabi should be yellowish and the water murky.

The resultant preserved ensabi is sourish salty.

This is similar to the Chinese kiam chai.

Sun dried meat

One day,when we were quite young, we saw our grandfather pulling some zinc sheets to make a shed. We thought that it was too small a shed for bicycle or motor bike. On another afternoon, we saw him squatting on top of the roof and we were really amazed. Could he be performing some rituals?

He was on the "roof" for some time. But we lost interest. In the evening when we came back from our school, we found many slices of dried meat on our table.

He had been making "salai" deer or rusa for us. Unknown to us, he did not appreciate all the fresh deer meat getting frozen in the freezer. so he decided to sun dry a bit of the meat.

The next day, he cooked some of the dried meat for us, in his own way. We found the meat really apetitizing.

From then on, we often asked him to sun dry deer meat for us. But for many years because deer meat is not readily available, we have not had "salai-ed" meat for our meals.