Acha – Timun (Cucumber)

This is a recipe for cucumber (timun in Malay) acha.
Some interesting pickling techniques to note here – salting overnight and weighting, for example. I don’t know much about pickling but learnt quite a few things when reading about Korean kimchee recently, and also the instructions in some macrobiotic cookbooks (pickles are an important part of [...]

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Acha – vegetables used

There are no vegetables specified in the acha/achar recipes I have posted earlier, however this entry provides some guidance in this area, or simply follow the instruction to use ‘any kind of vegetable available’ :)!

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Acha (basic)

‘Achar’ is actually a Hindi/Urdu (Hindi: अचार, Urdu: اچار,) word for pickles; see here. It’s also spelt as acha, achaar, or acar in modern Malay spelling. The origins of the word also tell us about the diffusion of foods from South to Southeast Asia.
Here’s the basic barebones acha/achar recipe.

And several pages further on in the [...]

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Acha – Malacca

Malacca acha (achar) here, as compared to yesterday’s recipe for Penang acha.
The use of the word ‘kunit’ here for tumeric, makes me wonder if the ’saffron water’ in the Penang acha recipe actually refers to turmeric, as saffron and turmeric are often confused with each other. Despite being both being yellow spices, they are in [...]

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Acha – Penang

A whole series of acha (achar) recipes starting from today. We can think of acha as the local version of the pickled onions/cauliflower recipes I posted earlier.
Acha recipes labelled ‘Penang’ and ‘Malacca’, illustrate the regional differences and the very Straits Settlements-based nature of these Straits Chinese acha recipes.
The vegetables are not specified, but cucumber, carrots, [...]

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Roast Pork Ribs

This recipe was on a slip of paper inserted inside the notebook. I would date it to the early 1980s because of (1) the ball point pen used and (2) the paper is the yellowish, coarse paper that was used for cyclostyled documents – wow, that’s something we haven’t seen since the advent of [...]

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Egg Rolls – Wrappers

Despite the similar-sounding name, these are not the egg skins for poh piah, but instead the western version :)! My guess is that it is some sort of crepe batter. The reference to using a ‘rotary beater’ in the first line is a dead giveaway that this is not the traditional poh piah eggg skin!
The [...]

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Barbeque Sauce

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