Dinner idea: Couscous, fried shishamo, omelet, and boiled green spinach

 

Dinner idea: couscous, fried shishamo, omelet, and boiled green spinach - Photographed by Acik Mardhiyanti

Hi all of you, how you doing? Please be safe, keep healthy, and help each other. Well, it looks like today is different from the past few week's articles that most likely talked about "kampoeng" style dinner. Let's talk what is the story behind this meal 😉

Let's talk one by one, first; couscous. I always keep telling you that rice is a luxury food in my hometown at the time when I was a kid. Thus, villagers substituted this food source with cassava, some other corn. But how I end up eating couscous? Talking about couscous, it neither my culture nor from the place I live today. Remember that I told you I was decided to study at a university that needed 24 hours travel by bus and crossed the sea for 2 hours from my father's house. Since then, I have tried to adapt wherever I stand up my foot. Food is the one that I have to deal with it. So, I ate a piece of cake or bread at breakfast before leaving for my classes. Meanwhile, for lunch and dinner had to eat rice and veggie. When moved to Singapore, I also wanted to find other food sources because it is easy to find products that come from all around the world. One of them is couscous to substitute rice. I was curious about why people in Europe and the US eat this kind of food. Many said it is a vegetarian food source. I tell you what, Either vegan or non-vegan I wrote it down as one of my food sources. Nowadays, for me, personally, I don't mind if I have to eat potatoes, couscous, spaghetti, or even salad for lunch or dinner 😊 The good things about being adaptable to the environment around is that during the Covid-19 situation, especially for the first a few months after the first case confirmed in Singapore; while many people vied for buying rice, flour, noodles, etc, I just kept calm and bought other food sources such as couscous, potatoes, sweet potatoes, etc. So, in this article, I encourage you to be a person who is able to adapt quickly. Remember the phrase from Darwinian evolutionary theory, "Survival of the fittest."

Shishamo is also known as capelin fish. Baked shishamo is a common method to eat this particular fish. Yes, inspired by the Japanese I created fried capelin because like I said that I can buy products from Japan or other countries here at the place I live. Trying and creating a new recipe or make a fusion recipe is one of the things that I loved because the challenge during the process will be upskilling my capability. I like to cover them with the season that contains Japanese oyster sauce, garlic powder, onion powder, sometimes paprika powder, then rolling the fishes on potato starch and fry them. I believe you can find this recipe easily in my other article 😉 

Dinner idea: couscous, fried shishamo, omelet, boiled green spinach, kiwi& grape - Photographed by Acik Mardhiyanti

Next is an omelet. Like I said in my other article that eating an egg whether boiled egg or omelet has been my habit since I was a kid. I also wrote some omelet recipes in this Ichi's Fusion Recipes. When you read my omelet recipe maybe you notice that slightly different. That's my style and my creation that could distinguish my omelet from another. 

Now time to talk about the spinach story. Back then in my hometown, spinach is a plant that could easy to find in the villager garden or yards. In my father's back yards and garden sometimes this plant grew without mercy 😄 No, we didn't grow it, it just appeared as they wish. So, yeah, spinach was a common plant at the time. Unfortunately, we couldn't rely on it to make a dish every day because after plucked some leaves we needed to wait for some time until the leaves grew again. I liked to eat spinach soup and rice with fried tempeh at the time. This habit follows me until today and that's why you can read many times boiled spinach or spinach soup in my recipe articles. 

Dinner idea: couscous, fried shishamo, omelet, boiled green spinach - Photographed by Acik Mardhiyanti

Finally, talking about fruit maybe some of you (or some of you) wondering that I put fruit on the meal just for taking a picture. Here the fact that my father taught me to eat fruit since I was a kid whether I like it or not. Before 1995 my father was a successful carrier man that had always been concerned about what I ate. Sometimes he bought fancy fruit such as orange, seedless watermelon, etc. Why I said "fancy" fruit? Because at the time most of the villager couldn't effort to buy these fruits. Surprisingly, I kept this habit even if my father felt down by eating other fruit that grew healthy in my father's yards and garden. For instance, mango, starfruit, rambutan, guava, pineapple, papaya, banana, jackfruit, soursop, or other fruit from my grandparent and my neighbor's yards. It was organic, healthy, and free 😁 I miss the old day!👍 

That's the story behind this meal. You can find the recipes from articles that I wrote in this blog. Thank you for reading my article, see you and have a nice Monday🖐😊

Note:

• Written by Acik Mardhiyanti
• Photographed by Acik Mardhiyanti
• Do not copy this article without permission
• Do not reuse these photographs anywhere else without permission