All mixed up

It's not much, but it's the taste of home!

Rojak is the quintessential Malaysian fruit salad. And please, rojak means the Penang variety, made with fruit and vegetables and prawn paste sauce. It is NOT pasembor, which is the Indian Muslim version of rojak, which is definitely more savoury, not fruity and uses lots of fried crackers and tofu.

Rojak is the evilest way to eat your seven helpings of fruit and veg, because it is slathered with a mixture of sweet prawn paste (petis udang or hae kor), some chili paste, crushed peanuts and fragments of deep fried prawn cracker. Ingredients vary, but the staples of a great rojak are cucumber, young green mango, ripe pineapple, turnip (that’s sengkuang or bangkuang to the Nyonyas and Malays, and also called erroneously yam bean by some Western writers), hog plum (kedondong), unripe papaya, water convulvus (kangkong, also called morning glory by weird Singaporeans) and sometimes cuttlefish (sotong).

The most unhealthy fruit salad ever!

It is a taste that can only be appreciated with people who have it in their DNA. It’s a funny mouth feel - a sticky, sweet, dense sauce coating crisp fruit and crunchy crackers – but it is so ingrained in many Malaysians that it is often, the taste of home.

Most times rojak is bought from street hawkers, but I have found a weekly fix at the club where the lady who also sells rojak (and its often counterpart, tofu bakar) at the Wednesday night market in SS4 stations herself on Saturday and Sunday.

It has gone up phenomenally in price. As a kid, a packet would cost RM2. Now, a serving for one is RM3.50, and is not all enough for a big appetite. Hence I always order a plate for four which costs RM10. I comfort myself by thinking that at least I am adding to my fibre intake!