A handout photo shows Sarawak Dayak Nation Union (SDNU) supreme executive council members Peter Moni and Penghulu Adi Jala (right) cooking pansoh in Kuching recently.
KUCHING (Feb 28): The Culinary Heritage and Arts Society Sarawak (Chass) has extended an invitation to the National Heritage Department to visit the state and savour its traditional dishes.
Chass president Datin Dona Drury Wee said as the first city in Malaysia to be included as a Unesco Creative City Network (UCCN) of gastronomy, Kuching and the entire state of Sarawak have so much to offer as far as heritage dishes go.
“Chass would like to extend an open invitation to Mohamad Muda Bahadin and his team at the National Heritage Department to come over and savour all that Kuching and Sarawak have to offer,” she told The Borneo Post today.
“We have such diverse ethnic groups in the state that we could very easily fill pages with names of various dishes.”
She cited Sarawak Laksa as one of the first dishes as it has already topped several lists as the best dish in Asia and is regularly referred to, thanks to the late Anthony Bourdain, as “the breakfast of the Gods”.
Another iconic dish, which saw a popular resurgence during the Covid-19 lockdown, is pansoh, a method that many different ethnic groups use to cook food in bamboo, she said.
“Any meat or seafood can be used as the main ingredient, with ginger as a mainstay ingredient and others adding daun bungkang (a natural taste enhancer), tepus shoots (red gingerwort), or maybe bunga kantan (torch ginger flower), with cassava leaves, and or daun engkudu (noni leaves) added and also used as the stopper,” she explained.
“Nuba laya, senape, kacang ma, dabai, engkabang, durian flowers, terung assam, umai, tomato mee, linut, bubur pedas, that all Sarawakians look forward to partaking of during the month of Ramadan – the list of heritage dishes and our unique endemic ingredients is just endless. Gula apong is the original natural salted caramel,” she said.
Drury Wee was responding to the inclusion of bak kut teh in the latest National Heritage Food list.
“I remember reading the debates that were being had before its listing. It is a dish where the main ingredient, the meat, can be adapted to one’s dietary requirements. There are even vegetarian versions using the same herbal broth,” she said.
Apart from Klang bak kut teh, the latest National Heritage Food list also included mi kolok Sarawak, however, Drury Wee said based on a photograph published with the updated listing, it was a halal version.
