Sabah - LEMANG, a dish of glutinous rice and coconut milk cooked inside a hollow bamboo tube, is a must for the Malay community when there`s a festival or celebration. Families look forward to it as do visitors when they come to visit open house functions.
Making lemang is a lot of hot work and requires a keen, watchful eye on the rice-stuffed bamboo cooking over a slow, slow fire. The bamboo is first lined with banana leaf to prevent the sticky rice adhering to the sides of the bamboo.
Anything can go wrong during the process. Not enough liquid, for instance, or rice that has not be pre-soaked long enough. Then the bamboo must be turned at intervals to ensure thorough cooking on all sides or you may end up with uncooked rice on one side and burnt rice on the other.
As preparing lemang requires a big open space for the fire, most people don`t bother to make their own, preferring to purchase from lemang makers who set up stalls by the road from the day before Hari Raya and do a roaring business.
You`d be able to spot these from a kilometre away by the smoke from the open fires as well as long lines of cars erratically parked at the roadside.
Lemang is usually sold by per bamboo tube though in some stalls, it is available in shorter lengths. The bamboo is split into halves to get the lemang which is then sliced into round discs for serving and is scrumptious when eaten with rendang (a dry curry) or serunding (spicy meat floss).
Lemang is not the only food cooked in bamboo. The Orang Asli, for instance, often use bamboo to cook food, as do the natives of Sabah and Sarawak.
Pansoh, for instance, is a method of cooking food in bamboo as practised by the ethnic races in Sarawak. Ingredients can range from meat like chicken to fish, rice and vegetables. The bamboo seals in the flavour of the ingredients and lends its own natural fragrance to the dish too.
One of the best known signature Iban dishes is pansoh manok (chicken pansoh) in which chicken perfumed with sliced serai (lemongrass) is cooked inside bamboo over an open fire.
Even the Chinese community has its versions of bamboo cuisine in which rice and seafood are cooked inside bamboo and in Hunan, a clear consomme double-boiled inside bamboo cups are a gourmet`s delight. Rice cooked this way is called zhutongfan.
Local Indians sometimes steam a mixture of coconut and flour inside bamboo (as a substitute for stainless steel cylinders). Known as puttu, these fragrant cakes are cylindrical, shaped after being steamed in a hollow of bamboo.
In The Philippines, cooking food inside bamboo is known as lulut (Bagobo term). Binakul is a Filipino dish where chicken is steamed inside a bamboo over flaming charcoal. Tan Bee Hong
Source: http://www.nst.com.my (8 Oktober 2008)