Going to the Country, gonna get me a lot of lemang!

I'm not totally lost when it comes to the art of kitchen science. I'm proud to say that I can boil some eggs and maybe even cook curry for myself when I'm really desperate. But traditional cooking is something totally different. About 2 days before Eid Mubarak or Hari Raya, I decided to help out my friends in their lemang business and learn about making lemang the traditional way. So I drove to Kuang, Sungai Buloh to see what's so hard about cooking lemang. All of us had limited experienced in cooking lemang. You can just imagine the havoc of clueless people trying to act like experts. I know nothing about cooking lemang, and the last cook book I read was Perl Programming Cook Book, which had nothing to do with cooking or that sort.

To make it short, Lemangs are glutinous rice, cooked with coconut milk in bamboo sticks. The ready made lemang will have glutinous rice ready in a cylinder shape. Then you have to crack the bamboo open to serve the glutinous rice.

Kuang, Sungai Buloh is about 30 minutes away from Shah Alam. It was the closest suburban town that they could find, and it was the best location to have an open burning fire without the authorities bothering us about it. The moment I arrive at they production house, I saw one of my best friends Ayen in the production pipe line. He was in charge of filling the bamboo sticks, filled with glutinous rice with coconut milk. Inspecting further, it looks like they have successfully made some lemangs yesterday and are now in full force of production.

My other best friend Syirman was mostly in charge on Marketing the lemang. He was busy that day doing some quality control work and making sure all the lemangs was ready to be distributed to strategic areas in the city.

After a short chit-chat about their lemang production process, I found my niche in the oven section. I made sure the fire was up and burning to right temperature by adding optimal amount of dry logs. Then, I stack the lemang on the sides and made sure it was turned every now and then. It was fun for a city folk like me to be in the country experiencing traditional cooking. It feels as if I am a host in a show from the travel channel. The only thing lacking is the English accent and my cameraman crew.

I've managed to bring back some ready made lemang for myself that day:)
Out of four lemangs that I brought back, Only one was perfectly cooked. I guess my friends and I still need to practice more to master the art of lemang making. And because of our inadequate experience, the lemang business only managed to cover our cost of production. They didn't managed to make profit this Raya season, but we all managed to have priceless fun. And that's something mastercard can't buy....