Eating Well – Page 7 – Suria Helang Lui

22 Jan 2014

0 Comments By admin Eating Well, Farm Recipes

Local Salad Mania

We are used to eating the normal “western” salad that comprises of lettuce, tomatoes, etc. However, locally, our ancestors have been consuming salads as part of their meal only we call them ulam. Their salad dressing was sambal belacan only theirs didn’t include pesticides or growth hormones. The argument would be whether minute amounts affects us and many would say, it is only a little bit. However, this little bit will accumulate. So, in my quest to have better quality meals without “having to pawn the house”, I began to look at what we have. Personally, I love salads and it is very suitable here, with our warm climate.
So, what to put in salads:

daun ulam raja – cosmos caudantus
pucuk tujuh bilah – pereskia sacarosa
kobis – cabbage
bayam – spinach
bunga kantan – ginger torch
kemangi – lemon basil
ruku – ocinum tenuiflorum

These are some ingredients for the salad which should be naturally grown without pesticides or growth hormones. Slice the cabbage and ginger torch and just tear the spinach. The combination of these based on traditional medicine is purported to provide therapeutic benefits for diabetes, high blood pressure, blood cleanser, cancer cells, stomach and colon, respiratory system – in short a whole bunch for the whole body.

Now, how about salad dressing. My version of the salad dressing with a twist it:

Blended mature daun durian belanda – soursop leaves.
Limau kasturi – calamansi juice
Natural honey (if you like a touch of sweetness)
Virgin olive oil
Salt to taste

What does the salad dressing bring to the table? Based on traditional or homeopathic remedies, it is packed with vitamins and minerals, anti-bacteria, heart benefits, cancer prevention – and so much more.

For this salad, all the ingredients are raw and with the exception of olive oil, are all local ingredients. To make it totally local, you can try virgin coconut oil instead of virgin olive oil. When you eat it, it is just another dish and much easier to consume than taking pills. Try making it as part of your regular meal dish and I hope you reap the benefits and have a healthier life. If you want to read more in detail about each of the salad ingredients, check out my plant specific blog. Happy 2014!

04 Dec 2013

0 Comments By admin Armchair journal, Eating Well, Vegetables

Growing vegetables: It’s all in the soil

I continually strive to improve the quality of the vegetables produced at the farm. The basic principle is “going organic”. What this means to me is that no chemical pesticides or fertilizers are used and the water source is free from “introduced chemicals”. From my experiments, it all starts with good quality seeds and importantly, good quality soil.

I experimented with different types of organic matter mixed with the soil. As long as it is organic, I am game to try with some exceptions. I have used goat manure, cow manure, decomposed vegetation as well as commercially produced organic soil mixture. To me, it is important what you add to the soil in order to have a good produce in the end.

The current round of vegetables that I am planting have at least 50% organic matter in the soil and I find that it works very well. It keeps the soil moist and not soggy and allows for good aeration as well as drainage. For leafy vegetables, I plant them in polybags and keep them in my greenhouse to help reduce attacks by pests. I will continue to add more organic matter and organic fertilizer as the plants grow with the frequency dependent on the type of vegetable. I also seed other types of vegetables like baby cucumber, French beans, long green beans, tomatoes and various others with this highly organic soil mixture. This helps produce healthy “baby plants” before they are transplanted outside with the exception of tomatoes which I keep in the greenhouse. The main reason why the tomatoes remain in the greenhouse is because the chickens love the ripe tomatoes and would fly up to the fruits and peck at them!

By electing to go organic, I spray my vegetables with serai wangi juice which serves as a deterrent but I do have to do some manual tasks like manually removing the slugs and caterpillars as well as spraying them with water to reduce the “white flies”.

I like to eat most of my vegetables raw so keeping it free from chemical pesticides removes the worry of ingesting harmful chemicals. To me, washing the vegetables may remove most of these chemicals but some will still remain within the vegetable itself as well as on the surface. The weirdest advise I have ever received was, in order to remove the chemical pesticides, to clean the vegetables with a mixture of water and Clorox!

After I harvest the vegetables, I will “process” the soil by mixing it with more organic matter before re-using it to plant more vegetables. I love it when I encounter earthworms as these are among soil’s natural best friends.

19 Sep 2013

0 Comments By admin Eating Well, SHL Products

Tasty dried, lightly salted lampan

I love experimenting with that I can do to the fish we produce at the farm. Since our water source is from the river upstream, all kinds of river fish enter the pond so when we “process” the pond, we always get surprises. Previously, I had place some “lampam jawa” which did very well in the pond. I think the flowing, fresh river water had a lot to do with it along with what we feed them – they love the green stuff. It appears that some river lampam had also entered into the pond and now I have cross-bred lampam.
Lampam is a fish with many bones – I think of it as the fresh water “terubok”. It has high fat content so from my experiments, I find it almost impossible to have a really bone-dry fish but what will result is the fish oil will come out and leave the fish moist-like.

This fish can grow to be big, sometime more than 1 kg in less than 1 year. This time around I opted to use the smaller sized ones (3-4 inches long) to create a “crispier” fish when fried. At the same time, since the population of the lampam had dramatically increased, this allowed me to reduce the population helping ensure the total fish population in the next round will flourish.
Each fish was cleaned, removing the scales and innards. and rinsed with water. Since I use clean, river water, no pollutants or chemicals were introduced to the fish. I added coarse salt to the rinse water for two reasons: to act as a natural cleanser and to have a natural “preservative”. The fish has a subtle salty taste which for some, would mean having to add more salt and for those who prefer to maintain a low-salt diet, they would not need to soak the fish to try and remove the salt.
For me, in ensuring that you produce good quality dried fish, it is important
to have the ability to dry the fish in an environment where it will not be exposed to flies which will lay eggs on the fish and the maggots will eat the fish flesh as it develops – all these in a couple of days. At the farm, we have constructed a dryer box which enables us to dry the fish and keeping all those pesky flies away.

Once dried, they can be kept for months, longer if kept in a cool and dry location. We pack them with a dessicant which helps to keep the moisture away.
There are many ways that you can prepare this dried fish. You can fry it until it is crispy and serve with some lime or calamansi juice squeezed over the too, cook it with a chilli paste and other condiments to create a sambal similar to sambal ikan bilis (anchovies), cooked in a curry, fried with onion rings, and many other ways. You are only limited by your imagination.

18 Jul 2013

11 Comments By admin Eating Well

Durian, oh delicious durian

It seems that the current trend is to go for durians with fancy names and

numbers like Musang King, D101, D24, etc. My preference is still for original varieties. Now that I have the farm, I can plant the types of durians that I like. So, my adventure with propagating durians begins. There is only 1 durian tree at the farm and it is the type that I like, creamy sweet with yellow flesh. This tree is obviously planted a long time ago and probably from a seed. Last year, I only got about 10 fruits from the tree and this year it looks like I may get a good harvest. Every year we have a Durian Fest and I hope in one of those years, the timing of the fruiting will coincide and we will be able to serve this great tasting durian.

A few months ago, I got my hands on some durian tembaga and I really loved it so I decided to try to plant it from
the seeds. From the whole fruit, I got 8 good seeds whicht I planted in a polybag. Out of the 8, 6 germinated. The soil mixture that I use is one with rather high organic matter. I have not fertilized it, letting it obtain its nutrients from the soil mixture. I water them when the soil has a low water content, never letting it dry out.
The durian baby trees are now transplanted into the ground and insyAllah, in 7-8 years, it will start fruiting. Until then, it is maintained every 3 months to help its growth.
There are several reasons why I prefer to plant them although it will take longer before fruiting:

I prefer plants and trees that have not been genetically modified.
Trees plant from seeds lasts longer so it will be my heritage for the next generation to enjoy and possibly earn some good seasonal income.
The taste, texture and color is great – nothing beats naturalness.
Preserving the heritage for future generations – nowadays, most people plant the new varieties so this variety may be lost if not replanted – one of the goals of SHL.

InsyAllah, in about 7-8 years, I will be able to taste the fruits. Even if I don’t, I am happy to play my part in preserving our durian heritage, the king of fruits 🙂

18 Jun 2013

0 Comments By admin Eating Well, SHL Project, Vegetables

Project long green beans

I enjoy eating long green beans, whether raw or cooked. I prefer them when they are mature and green, still crispy. Previously, I had done smaller experiments in planting them, looking at soil content, support structure and water quantity as well as sunlight. This time around, we decided to plant a lot more than previously, about 100 plants.
I started with seeding them in small polybags and once they were about 10cm with several leaves, they were transplanted. The planting beds were also prepare carefully, removing the weeds and then mixing the soil with “seasoned” pure goat manure and then covered with black plastic. The beds was covered to serve two main purposes: to reduce the weed and grass growth as well as to help retain moisture in the soil.
Since we do not use any chemical herbicides, it was essential to remove the weeds and grass prior to planting and to control any new growth. It would be a waste for all the nutrients from the goat manure to be used by grass and weeds. Covering the beds also meant that we would reduce the time taken to maintain the beds – a big savings in time as we would have to manually remove the weeds and grass. I was hoping that it would also mean that we would not have to water them but rely on the rain to supply the necessary water to the plants and that has come to fruition.

Five weeks after transplanting, it began flowering and about at six weeks, the first beans began to appear. The intial harvest was around 6kg and now it is producing about 15 kg per week. I am happy with the results in terms of the yield but I learnt that we need to improve how we support the plants. On a weekly basis, I remove the mature leaves and try not to let any dry out on the plant. By removing the old leaves, it encourages the plant to produce new shoots and more flowers. Without old leaves drying out on the plant which turns mushy when it rains, it helps prevent mold from forming on the plant which can kill the plant. As the leaves are maintained, I also manually remove the black aphids which literally suck the life out of the plant. All the time and effort is worth it when I see the quality of green beans that we produce. SubhanAllah.

12 Mar 2013

1 Comments By admin Eating Well, Edible Landscape, Vegetables

Eggplants – So many varieties

Before I became a farmer, I was vaguely aware of the a couple varieties of the eggplant. Now, I find that there are so many varieties and called a few names – eggplant, brinjals, aubergine and guinea squash – and is from the plant family Solanaceae. As with the varied names, there are also many sizes, shapes and colors. This plant is a perennial but is often cultivated as an annual in locations which have a climate other than tropical.

This plant is propagated from seeds.The plant can grow quite tall but can be controlled by selective pruning to help shape it. It produces small purple or white flowers with a yellow stamen. A healthy plant can produce lots of flowers, beautiful to look at so you might want to consider this for your home garden, both as a landscape feature and food source. At the farm, it is watered regularly and fornightly organic fertilizing and this seems to result in good quality and quantity of flowers and fruit. I also water them at least once a week with water from the fish pond so that it can receive the various minerals and nutrients available from this water. Be careful with terung pipit though as it does have sharp thorns on its branches and stems.

It is difficult to spot the difference between the leaves so I wait until the plant produces the fruit although I can distinguish a couple of the varieties. The fruits produce can weigh the plant stems down so it is important to stake them to prevent the plant from toppling or the fruits from laying on the gound which can damage it. At the farm, I use a 1″ pvc pipe of at least 1m long and then I thread “rafia” string along the branches to provide support. I find that by threading the string, it prevents damage being done to the branches and provides balanced support.

Some varieties taste better than others eaten raw. Other ways for preparing it include using it in curries, baked either with olive oil or with a cheese topping, dipped in batter and fried, sauteed with a seasoning of your choice, stuffed with cheese, seafood, breadcrumb mixture or whatever you fancy – the options are limited to your culinary imagination. A special quality of terung pipit is it is often used locally is as a condiment to reduce the bitterness of papaya shoots.

There are probably more varieties so I look forward to more discoveries….

05 Mar 2013

1 Comments By admin Eating Well, Farm Recipes, Red Tilapia

SHL Red Tilapia Asam Pedas

My latest culinary adventure in the SHL Kitchen was to create my own version of the local dish Asam Pedas. The aim was to use as many ingredients as possible from the farm. The fish used is fresh red tilapia and with its firmly soft (is that an oxymoron? I guess most of you know what I mean) and ability to absorb flavors, I thought it would be a good fish to use for this dish. Next I had some bottle gourd which I felt would also be a great vegetable to add to this dish as it can absorb the flavors of the Asam Pedas. I also used vine-ripened tomatoes to have that slight sweet taste and a touch of sourness.The herbs used in this dish was also available at the farm so the journey began. The ingredients used were:

Cleaned red tilapia (300gm fish size to make serving much easier
Tamarind juice – add more if you like it really sour and less it you just want to have a subtle taste
Red chillies
Bottle gourd
Vine-ripened tomatoes
Shrimp paste (belacan)
Persicaria odorata or known in English as Vietnamese mint or in Malay as Daun Kesom
Lemon grass or serai
Red onion
Salt to taste

I do not like to use the blender and prefer to use a mortar and pestle (lesung batu) to create a paste of chillies, belacan and tomatoes. I also use it to pound the lemon grass to be added. I brown the sliced red onions in oil and add the chilli-tomato-belacan paste to it. After a few minutes, allowing the flavors to blend nicely, I added the tamarind juice, lemon grass, daun kesom and additional water to create a gravy. After it is brought to a boil, the pieces of bottle gourd is added. When this has become soft and the gravy brought to a boil, the fish is added. Once the fish is cooked, it is now ready to serve. It is an easy and quick dish to prepare, all in all taking less than 30 minutes to prepare from cleaning the fish to serving.

05 Mar 2013

0 Comments By admin Eating Well, Farm Recipes, Red Tilapia

SHL Smoked Red Tilapia

One of the things I enjoy is to experiment with ways if preparing whatever we produce. I began producing smoked red tilapia in November 2012 – in small quantities first to have people try it out. Based on the positive feedback, I began to make them quite regularly and sell it at the Sunday morning market in Sg. Penchala. It is a popular item and finishes fast. Many have asked how it is made so here’s how I process it so maybe whoever is interested can try to make it too.
Starting with fresh red tilapia, preferably those bred in running water ponds (as it tastes tons better), clean off the scales and cut it open from the “back” so that is splits open and remains joined by the “tummy” side. This will enable the fish to absorb more of the marinate and “dries” faster. Rinse it well and at the farm, since we have clean, river water, the fish doesn’t get touched by chemicals in our normal water although it may be present in small quantities. Be sure that the fish is really fresh or the meat of the fish will become “mush”.
Nest step is to prepare the marinate. The ingredients are:

Lemon grass (serai)
Calamansi (limau kasturi)
Coarse salt

Pound the lemon grass and squeeze in the juice of the calamansi and add salt, mixing these ingredients well. I also add the calamansi fruit that has been “juiced-out” in the marinate. Add the fish and mix it well with the marinate and let it marinate for at least 6 hours, keeping it in the fridge the whole time. I tend to marinate it for at least 24 hours.
The most time-consuming part is the smoking of these fishes. It is important to have damp firewood that will create the smoke as well as turn into embers to provide the necessary heat to slowly dry the fish. Be sure not to have flames as this will cook the fish too fast and not allow it to smoke nicely or you will end up with grilled fish and not smoked fish.
Now that you have the smoked fish, what do you do with eat. There are many ways to prepare them for your meal:

Fry them to create a crispy fish and you can munch on the whole fish.
Cook a sambal with chillies and a touch of shrimp paste (belacan) and tamarind juice (air asam jawa) to create a spicy smoked red tilapia dish.
Cook a coconut-based gravy either with or without chillies, with or without belimbing buloh and add the smoked fish to create a creamy dish or masak lemak as an accompaniment to your rice.
Chop it up and add to your rice porridge.

If any of you have any other ways of turning it into your meal, I would love to hear about it. Happy trying 🙂

13 Feb 2013

0 Comments By admin Eating Well, Farm Recipes, Healthy Options

Marinated Red Tilapia

Starting with a great, fresh fish, there are many ways to prepare red tilapia. Being very fortunate to have lots of ingredients that I can use as a marinate at the farm, I decided to experiment a bit to see how the flavors will blend. I enjoyed it so I am sharing it here. This marinate can be applied to 1-1.5kg of fish. Ensuring that the fish is fresh and farmed in “running water” makes a difference to the final taste of the dish.

Ingredients for marinate:

2 stalks of lemon grass (serai)
1 yellow onion
Fresh tumeric (kunyit)
3 calamansi (limau kasturi)
Salt to taste

I prefer using a mortar pestle (lesung batu) as opposed to a blender so I placed all the ingredients for the marinate together and pounded them until they became a paste. I then added some salt and the juice from the calamansi – I added this after the other ingredients were pounded to prevent it from “jumping out” of the pestle. To speed up this process, I had sliced the lemon grass, onion and tumeric. Try to use fresh tumeric as it does make a difference to the taste as opposed to using tumeric powder – this will also add better nutrients to the dish. There are numerous health benefits from the lemon grass, tumeric and calamansi so this is a healthy way to prepare the fish at no expense to the taste.

The marinate was then applied to the fish and left to marinate for 1 hour. You can marinate it longer if you wish – I was just hungry hence the 1-hour marinate.
This fish can then be grilled, cooked over charcoal or fried. For a low-calorie option, you might want to avoid deep-frying the fish. as a note, there is no need to add any flavor enhancers as by using fresh ingredients that bursts with flavor, your palate will enjoy the experience. In my hurry to eat the fish, I forgot to take pictures of it done 🙂

05 Feb 2013

0 Comments By admin Eating Well, Edible Landscape, SHL Journal

SHL Trellis Plants Adventure – Part 1

I have always had a fascination of plants growing on a trellis or arbor ever since I saw in real-life grapes growing on an arbor in California. Somehow, I do not think that grapes will grow well at the farm so I began to experiment with different plants. There is a multitude of choices so I selected based on what I enjoy eating.

To start with, I selected long green beans and french beans – both versatile vegetables. Both these plants produce lilac flowers so I wonder if these types of beans produce lilac or purple flowers. I also noticed that the angle bean (kacang kelisa ) also produces purple flowers. Both the long beans and green beans does well planted in polybag, just watch the soil level against the root growth. Should the roots become visible, it is essential to top-up with additional soil to ensure the plant continues to produce good quality and lots of beans. Periodic removal of mature leaves will encourage production of flowers and new growth. These two plants share a trellis well as the trailing vines have similar light texture.

Baby cucumbers are also a favorite, with its crisp, sweet, fresh taste. They also produce nice, small yellow flowers. These plant are really sensitive to the water availability as well as vulnerable to insects which tend to eat the leaves as opposed to my other trellis plants. The leave have a coarse surface texture and can stick to your clothes easily. I spray them at least once a week with my serai wangi mix.

The bottle gourd or labu air produces medium-sized white flowers with a yellow center, which unlike most of the other flowers, have petals that open at dusk and through the evening and closes when the sun rises.

The leaves are similar to the loofah/luffa or petola plant. The difference between the two, the loofah plant produces yellow flowers and similar to the bottle gourd, it opens at dusk and closes at sunrise. The bottle gourd, loofah and baby cucumber can share the same trellis as they have heavier trellis so they can support each other. It is best not to plant these plants on the same trellis as the long bean or green beans as they can weigh down the vines of the beans,

There are several varieties of bitter gourd and they produce white flowers. The leaves of the bitter gourd appear to be delicate and has a distinctive shape, with lots of details – rather beautiful. It is also soft to the touch. It’s tendrils are also delicate and break easily. The bitter gourd can share the same trellis as the green beans due to their similar lighter vines.

Most times you will find pumpkin grown on the ground, often referred to as a pumpkin patch. However, these plants can be grown on a trellis, albeit with a little help from “strings” to help support the plant. Personnally, I prefer the green/yellow speckled pumpkin which you find at supermarkets often labelled as Japanese pumpkins. It is best to plant the pumpkins on their own trellist as they have heavy vines and much larger leaves.

All these plants are planted in large polybags to ease maintenance as well as ensure maximum fertilization as the fertilizer is placed within the polybag and no wastage. I can just focus on the weeds that grown in the polybags and use a weed-cutter in the areas surrounding the polybags. When the plants die off, I just remove the polybag from the trellis and replace with another.

Being in polybags also mean that I have to monitor the moisture level of the soil more than if it was planted in the ground but the trade-off is worthwhile since it makes preventing it from being overcrowded by weeds much easier. With all the various colors of flowers and its fancy-shaped leaves, it presents a beautiful trellis to the eyes. My next addition to the trellises will be honey dew and cantaloupes. And so the adventure continues……

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Category: Eating Well