Buah keluak satisfaction

For the past week, we've been soaking these Buah Keluak nuts (or seeds or fruits) in a bowl of water. It's supposed to be the way to dissolve away the poison (hydrogen cyanide) that comes with it.


So today is the day of reckoning. If you don't hear from me after this post, well, you know what happened with the hydrogen cyanide. Ha ha ha .....

Using a chopper, I open the shell at its thinnest part, scooped out the black kernel, mashed it together. mixed it up with a little salt and then stuffed the mess back into the shells. On hindsight, I shouldn't have bothered with the salt at all. Some recipes recommended mixing the kernel up with sugar as well, but it's all so unnecessary because once you start cooking the dish, the salt or sugar will dissolve into the soup.


When we were in Malacca, the Buah Keluak curry we took were cooked with chicken. Recipes are plenty in the Internet but they all recommended cooking the Buah Keluak with either chicken or pork. My family? We fell back on our old recipe of using fish. So there you have it: our main dish for today's lunch, "Buah Keluak" fish head "tumis" curry, looking exactly like what my mother used to cook more than 20 years ago. Don't you love the colour that the nut imparted on the curry? It's stained dark by the nut. And the thin layer of oil gives it that simply irresistible sheen. And mmm....the fragrance and the taste! Memorable! Excuse me, I'm going back for seconds ...