Dinner by Orang Laut

I've been super curious about Orang Laut, the community project, as well as its cuisine. The project and dinner pop-ups are spearheaded by Firdaus Sani, and his mother Madam Noorani. They wish for their family history and the story of Pulau Semakau (in its original incarnation) to live on. In an interview with Prestige on 2 June, 2021, Firdaus spoke about his vision for 'Orang Laut Singapore', 

In the long run, I hope to be able to shape part of Singapore’s history from the perspective of the indigenous Orang Laut community through food and digital storytelling. Eventually, I also hope to be able to have a physical space to represent Orang Laut cuisine and share the stories of its people. With oral interviews, I am working towards publishing a book that aims to capture the life of an Orang Laut: our fishing methodologies, beliefs, livelihoods and reliance on the sea for sustenance. Through this, I hope that our stories can be narrated not for us, but by us – with the help of a fourth-generation Orang Laut descendant.

Among our friends whom we would want to see nowadays, only S and N share our tastebuds for fiery and elegant South and Southeast Asian spices. Hurhurhur. Asked to see if they would like a touch seafood and spices that weekend, and we hopped over to their dining table. I missed out on the Orang Laut x Crane storytelling and dinner in April. The private kitchen only cooks and delivers on weekends. Glad to be able to taste their food this June. 

We took 'The Sampan Set' which included prawns and flower crabs. It was meant for six people in terms of number of dishes. The portions were very manageable by four hungry people. The delivery timing is between noon to 4pm. This means that we couldn't bank on the food for lunch. We also needed fridge space to store the food till dinner, and then transfer out the items into serving bowls to re-heat either on the stove or the oven (worth it) or in the microwave. 

'The Sampan Set' consisted of six dishes — asam pedas ikan tenggiri, sotong hitam, sambal udang, ketam lemak, gulai nenas, kacang panjang asam rebus. They also gave ikan kering with cucumbers to be paired with sambal and kicap manis. These are the spices I crave when I travel. Every family's flavors will be unique. I'm always curious about each family's interpretation of 'traditional' recipes. It was nice to taste Madam Noorani's food. I don't know if she's the one cooking, but the food was EXCELLENT. The seafood was fresh and nicely cooked. It exceeded our expectations!

These dishes aren't unfamiliar to us. Our tastebuds are geared towards spices and growing up, we've always eaten these foods. The table's mothers and grandmothers used to cook asam rebus loads for the families. It was a taste from our childhood. The sotong hitam, hands-down, was the best commercially available that I've tasted so far. We didn't order an additional siput sedut in spicy and savory lemak gravy because we couldn't possibly have that much stomach space!

The sambal belado was great! They were nice enough to agreed to give us more sambal. Wheeeeee! N's mom had fried up a batch of keropok and of course we dipped that into the sambal too. NOMS. We ate up everything! The dishes came with steamed jasmine rice. We were suckers and mopped it all up with the curries and gravy. I guarantee you that the rice portions are insufficient for five or six people. HAHAHAHA. Cook more rice to get ready for this meal! 

Loved the little postcard and the explanatory note that came along with the meal. Super thoughtful, and that added a personal touch to the menu. For the sambal udang, they recommended, "Many times, we fought over the last remaining sambal prawn. When all was gone, we paired the leftover sambal with boiled eggs and rice — because sambal is life." OMG. SO TRUE FOR US. SAMBAL IS LIFE! Told N to do that. We ate up the prawns. Well, I couldn't resist and ate the last prawn. Gotta justify that antihistamine pill. Oof! N kept that sambal and would boil up eggs to go with it for lunch the next day. 

Nobody wanted alcohol that night. Wow! What a surprise. Okay, the friends were hungover from drinks the night before, so they stayed away from alcohol. Everyone had a 5am start the next day, so we might as well not bother with alcohol that would just give us a headache. But sugar was welcomed. An old-school pandan kaya fudge cake appeared for dessert. Hahaha. I know that the men like dessert loads, but I didn't know they share a love for pandan and kaya. LOL 

The cat and the dog were rather well behaved. Cat wasn't stressed, the dog didn't insist on nosing her. I suppose they get each other's vibes. They didn't bother each other, and went off to separate corners of the room, and snoozed. It has taken a loooong time to get to this comfort level. Still, we don't let down our guard. When the furries move or shift to a new spot, the humans will move with them too, just to ensure that all fur stay intact. Heh.