Maudy's Cooking Journal!

We visited our mom's old friends in PA when we were on our road trip last week. Her friends are Americans who lived in Indonesia for more than ten years serving as a missionary. Hence their Indonesian is good, and they know our culture really well. Our mom wanted to meet them, so we arranged a meeting; and they ended up invited us for dinner. When we were circulating the dish one by one, the lady told us to try the fish, that was untouched in the middle of the table. I quickly saw the plate that she was pointing out. It looked like deep fried fish. Since next to it was a bowl of red sauce, I assumed it was fish egg foo young, a common menu from Chinese restaurants. Like usual, I tried every single meal available, including the fish. Yet, it was chicken that I thought was a strip of fish. I still had no luck on my second try. After leaving mom's friend's house, I asked the rest of my family if they got the fish. Who knew it was a mix of chicken and fish. Everyone said they got chicken instead of fish.

Why did I care about this fish-chicken thing? Because I was curious. In Indonesia, people often call main dish "ikan", which means anything that we eat with rice. The literal translation is fish. I think it is a misconception, because then people would say the fish is tamarind soup, or the fish is beef. So, I think our mom's friend, since she lived in our country for several years, she translated the word "ikan" into fish. This discussion was even funnier since hubby and I had been discussing funny translation of Indonesian to English and vice versa.

Yet finally, if someone had asked what was our fish for today's dinner, the answer would have been the fish was fish. Baked Sheepshead fish