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The Yard: Inherited Plants

14 November 2003 3 Comments

A sprig of lemongrass

As the yard was being cleared of brush, I came across a few plants of some value that I spared the parang for. The first is a very common seasoning in Malaysian cooking, Lemongrass or serai, Cymbopogon spp. Not surprisingly, it was planted just outside the kitchen door. From a distance it is hard to distinguish it from other grasses, though it tends to form a dense, rounded outline. Sometimes you can make out a reddish-brown tinge near the base. But just

A clump of lemongrass, serai.

touch it with the weed-whip and the smell is unmistakeable: a very pungent lemon scent. The base of the stalk is what is used in cooking. It is very woody, so it is often blended, or pulverized with a mortar and pestle before adding to the dish. If you’ve eaten at a Thai restaurant you’ve probably tasted some. It can be grown in Michigan, but only as an annual. And the spindly growth I got when I tried hardly made it seem worth it.

The next survivor is the Terung Asam, or sour eggplant. It is a vegetable commonly eaten here in Sarawak. I don’t remember ever having it in West Malaysia, but that doesn’t mean they don’t serve it there. This report on rare and wild fruits of West Malaysia lists Terung Asam as “Wild” in West Malaysia. From what I can decipher of the report, this would simply mean that it is primarily gathered rather than

The Asam Terung plant, in sorry shape.

cultivated. It is listed only as Solanum spp, which does put it in the same genus as Eggplant. Personally, it is not my favorite vegetable. It doesn’t have a very pronounced flavor except for a bitter aftertaste. The Terung Asam in my yard is a very sad specimen, by the way. The fruits are typically bright yellow-orange when sold in the market. I don’t know if mine is overripe or has some affliction.

The last plant was in the back on the edge of the jungle. It is Pandan, Pandanus spp, a common ingredient in kuih, snacks/desserts. It is called Screwpine in English. It is a subtle flavor, but a lot of sweets just don’t taste right without it. If you’re eating a dessert with any kind of green color, it is probably made with pandan. Its leaf is also fashioned into a wrapper for some sweets. It can also be bunched up and thrown in a pot of rice for flavoring.

Pandan, or Screwpine

The plant itself is very wild-looking. It grows on long rootstalks that sometimes trail, sometimes stick upright. It grows into a big tangled mass after a while. My wife reports that snakes are fond of lurking under pandan. My plant is quite overgrown, so I’m fixing to give it a regenerative ~~thrashing~~ pruning with the parang.

3 Comments »

NSDS3 said:

Warning: Cobras seems to like serai.

# 14 November 2003 at 5:29 pm

lin or 9thM or whatever i can come up with said:

Are you serious???? Is that a scientific proven ( by scientific here I mean whether or not it as been validated by our ancestors . they are way better at being scientist than what we have now)

Whenever I was asked to go cut some daun pandan,my wild imagination would come up with terrible things such as a big big snake biting my hands.

Do snakes like pandan?

# 19 November 2003 at 12:18 pm

Bin Gregory Productions » Mysteries of the Coconut: Ketupat said:

[...] Typically, they’ll be filled with standard white rice and boiled in water. Since the ketupat is stuffed full of rice, the grains press together as they expand, and in the end you have a solid mass of white stuff in the shape of your ketupat. This is removed and cut into cubes. Rice is always finger food in Malaysia, but these cubes are even more handy for dipping into rendang and popping into your mouth. In our case however, the ketupat was filled with glutinous rice and then boiled in santan. The green shown in the picture is a bit of Pandan leaf, which helps the flavor and aroma. Boiling glutinous rice in santan in a constricted vessel is another staple of Hari Raya, but is normally done inside sections of bamboo. The resulting cylinders of dense sticky rice stuff are known as lemang. In our case, what we would up with is ketupat lemang, I suppose. Ketupat comes in many shapes, with the most iconic being a flat square shape. The womenfolk in my house could only recall how to make the oddly shaped ones you see here. The excuse: weaving ketupat is the boys’ job. Of course, it takes a bit of time to weave, and tender young coconut leaves must be available. For that reason, city folk and busy people will buy ready-made plastic packets pre-filled with rice. Just steam, cut away the plastic, and serve. Like all fast food, you give up a lot: in this case, the color, the smell, the subtle flavor of the coconut leaf, and the spectacle at the dinner table. [...]

# 6 November 2006 at 12:53 pm

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