PEDAS-MORNING NOON AND NIGHT

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The Pedas Man

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The food here on the island is what you would expect for a location not only in Malaysia but in The South China Sea (and that's definitely what it is). For every meal it is possible to have hot spicy food. There is no real milk to speak of because of the lactose intolerant East Asian peoples but there is a seemingly endless variety of sea food. At about six every evening the beach side restaurants fire up their barbies and as the sun goes down the meat and fish go on. It's not long before the delicious smells of seafood cooking amongst the herbs and spices gently waft up to our treetop 'apartment' where we are sitting having our sunset aperitif which now, due to the volume of duty free liquor now consumed, is reduced to local moonshine vodka and coke.
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Ali is a connoisseur of hot, spicy food. For every meal, including breakfast he likes nothing better than to indulge in a spicy cocktail of something or other. To start the day he will have Roti Chani. This is a flat pancake type thing but made out of a sort of puff pastry. It comes with a curry sauce and I tried it. Not bad but not as good as Fruit and Fibre. Trish of course has joined in with this culinary deviation. Proclaiming Roti Chani 'too fattening' her breakfast consists of a plate of anchovy noodles with lashings of hot chilli sauce. She has well and truly gone over to the dark side.

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In the evenings Ali comes into his own. He stalks the beach hunting down the restaurant that will make him sweat. However, his search has been fruitless. No matter how much 'pedas' he asks for (spicy) I have yet to see him actually perspire. The night before last we ate at Mama's. When the food arrived on the table Ali went through his usual ritual of sticking his nose centimeters from his fare and inhaled to test it's aroma. Proclaiming it as 'smelling good' he proceeded to tuck in. I had ordered squid curry 'pedas' so as not to seem chicken and like a errant schoolboy anxious to please the class bully for fear of exclusion from the gang I shovelled the dome of rice into the curry bowl and started eating. Very soon I was feeling like Tom in the Tom and Jerry cartoons, when sneaking past the massive, cat hating, ferocious bulldog, sleeping in his kennel, Jerry hits his foot with a claw hammer. The cat then has to stifle cry of pain for fear of waking the dog and gives the impression of a valve on a boiler fit to burst. My boiler was beyond bursting point as the spices began to do their best to rip off my head by way of exploding in my mouth. I gulped down a glass of water. 'Not a good idea to do that' informed The Expert 'it just cools down your mouth ready for the next mouthful and you'll go through it over again' Terrifying logic indeed. I glanced over at Trish happily spooning down another 'pedas' worth of noodle. Not a bead in sight, Annabel too looked as cool as a cucumber. Somewhere in the rainforest a small creature died.
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Local hooch with stuck on label