Carambole (star fruit) pickles and Bubur Lambuk

I thought we were not going to get some caramboles (star fruits) this season, but how wrong I was?! MIL - next door - had given us a few off and on, but never a big amount. The funny is I mentioned it for a friend, and the next day MIL gave us a bag full of green star fruits. It has been blowing quite strong the last days and a couple of branches - with a lot of fruits - blew off the tree.

For those of you who are not familiar with star fruit, you may wonder what I do with it? After I settled here, I learnt from MIL how to make star fruit pickles, which is something I really love!

The green star fruits are washed, brown spots, especially from the ridges removed and then cut into slices. Some cut the fruit lengthwise too, but I think the star shaped pieces look more interesting! :)

A heap of salt goes into the sliced fruits and stays the night over.

The next morning, the salt is washed out. Of course you can't remove all the salt that has gone into the fruits, but that is to preserve it. The slices are dried in a kitchen towel, then put on a 'van' (huge plate) and put in the sun (outside) for drying.

The 'van' to the left is more than 50 years old! I got it from MIL, when she was going to throw it. :)

I was a bit worried in the morning; it was raining! No chance to dry star fruits in the rain! But after a couple of hours the sun was there and the star fruits went out for drying. Not very dry - medium dry.

After 4-5 hours in the sun, this is the medium dried star fruits.

What goes into the pickle paste, is garlic, turmeric (gurkemeie), mustard and a little bit olive oil. MIL kindly crushed the mustard seeds and even gave us turmeric powder she had bought recently. All the ingredients go into the blender, to make a paste. There's a lot of garlic and mustard added, which I love! I love the feeling of garlic and mustard vapour coming out of the nose! lol!

Here is the paste and star fruit slices mixed together. Look at the spoon; it's yellow from the turmeric! Now it has to stay like this for some days, before I divide it into small glasses and add olive oil.

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If you have read my previous post, you must have noticed I received a Malay cookbook together with the bookmarks (exchange).

I couldn't wait to try one of the recipes, and ended up with 'bubur lambuk' (savoury rice porridge)!

Malay cooking is not very familiar to me, but after reading some of the recipes, I find the mix of spices as well as mix of shrimps and different meat quite interesting!

As the recipe indicates; rice porridge - the rice has to be boiled for quite some time, together with cinnamon, cloves, star anis and ginger - a very interesting mix of spices.

Chicken is added...

Shrimps are added...

The recipes says beef too, but I didn't add beef. DH doesn't eat beef, so actually I didn't think of it - not until we reached home after shopping. I could have bought sheep, goat or stag (Java deer) meat, but it wasn't in my thoughts at all! Oh well, next time! I added more chicken though, to add up for the beef. I'm sure it'll taste different with red meat...

Coconut milk - from Malaysia - added!

VOILA! BON APPETIT!!!