When we were having church's potluck lunch last week, people on my table discussed about food that they had when they grew up. That conversation reminded me of a brown square notebook of mine that was my sisters. That notebook was given by her boyfriend, and she dumped that book when she broke up with that first sweetheart of hers. Even after she torn down many pages, that notebook was still considerably thick.
Years after that time, grandma got stroke. The effect for having right-side stroke was she could barely talk and walk, although her brain was still sharp. She got various treatments, such as acupuncture, daily modern medicine, and physiotherapy. Then, miracle happened. She was totally healed. During that time, whenever I came home from my college town, I liked to sit on floor in front of her like what I did since I was little, then I asked her to tell me how to cook her regular cookings. I jotted down what she told me on that brown-square notebook. Unfortunately I haven't gotten most of her recipe. Not long after she recovered, came the second stroke then the third, and she never be able to speak what she thought and never got her full health back.
After that lunch time, I went upstair to find my brown-square notebook. Flipping through that book, I saw a fish recipe, written with Indonesian old spelling (that's how grandma wrote) called
Tjoan-tjoan. There's no measurement on the recipe. She never needed one.
Tjoan-tjoan
Ingredient:
1 medium Milk fish (grandma said sea fish (
ikan laut)
2 garlic, minced
5 garlic, chopped
5 shallot, thinly sliced
1 cm ginger
Sweet soy sauce
Salt
Soy bean paste
4 tomatoes, cubed
Marinate fish with minced garlic and salt. Deep fry. I baked the fish 30 minutes 350'F instead of fried it.
Stir fry garlic and shallot until soft. Add in ginger, soy bean paste and 1/4 cup water. After water drains out, put more water. Due to my mom, this will reduce the striking smell of the soy bean paste.
Add in sweet soy sauce and salt. Add fish to the pan. Simmer until fish is well coated with the spice. Add tomatoes to the pan.