Sabar Je Lah Kaduk......

Ever since I tasted this recipe of otak-otak from The Meor Factor, I was hooked. I had never tasted it in Malaysia.... yeah yeah ignorant of me I know, I know.... The only otak-otak I had eaten back home was the ones they put fish paste inside the daun kelapa, but this was different. The reason it caught my attention in the first place was the use of "daun kaduk". I could almost smell it and the thought of eating it certainly made me salivating hmmm... yummy. When finally I cooked it, I was not dissappointed, the Meor Otak2, which I now fondly call it, was sooooo delicioussss...

So a few weeks ago, thinking that we had not eaten it for quite sometime, I told my dear husband(DH) to buy me fresh mackerel and daun kaduk. Besides we had visitors coming, I looked forward to impressing them with my newfound recipe :)

Me : Dapat beli ikan mackerel bang ?

That was my first question when DH got back.

DH : Tak sempat pergi kedai tu... tapi ada ikan tenggiri ketul kat kedai Oriental, abang beli la.

Ikan tenggiri?? They had ikan tenggiri?? Hmmm....my mind started thinking that maybe I should try the other recipe I found on the internet, they use ikan tenggiri or was it ikan tongkol?

Me : Daun kaduk ada ??

DH : Ada, abang beli.

Me : Bukan daun sireh???

DH : (getting exasperated) Bukan.... daun kaduk....

Yippee...... I was worried that he would buy daun sireh by mistake, after all they look similar. I told him to check with the assistant if he wasn't sure. Frankly speaking, I myself wasn't sure what it was called in Thai/Dutch, so how to ask them???

I started taking things out from the bag. Among them were some frozen fish. Where's the tenggiri?? I looked carefully at the packet, no this was no tenggiri.

Me : Mana tenggirinya?

DH : Tu la... yang frozen tu...

Sabar je la.....the ikan tenggiri turned out to be rainbow fish. I didn't think I had eaten a rainbow fish before (trying to imagine ikan pelangi in my mind, ada ke?). The fish was quite thin, and appeared long (since it's been cut to pieces), no colourful stripe found on the pieces. Maybe it's ikan parang, I thought. Well, I just had to try then... see how it turned out to be....

I searched again to the bottom of the bag. I didn't see any signs of daun kaduk. Don't tell me he left it!!!, I thought to myself.

Me : Bang.... mana daun kaduknya, tak ada pun dalam beg?

DH : Tak ada???? Ohh.... dalam beg satu lagi. Ni dia....

I quickly took the bag from him and reached inside and took the plastic wrapped daun kaduk....

What the.......???? It's not daun kaduk..... nor was it daun sireh.......

Of all the things he would buy, it was this.....

Daun keladiiiiiiii...............

Had he bought daun sireh, I would have understood, but this is daun keladi!!! Don't tell me he didn't know daun keladi??? What would I do with it??? Stirfried?? (that's what he suggested when I told him) The stalk didn't look edible either, otherwise I could try to make sayur keladi.

Hmmmm sabar je lah hai kaduk....