For Penang Chinese womenfolk, mastery of the classical Jiu Hu Char was one of the requisites that maketh a bonafide homemaker. If a wife failed in that skill, she would probably be retrenched and served fried cuttlefish — 被炒鱿鱼. Just kidding.
When my mum was around I used to help her, slicing the “mengkuang” and red carrots into thin sheets and then further into fine strips (these days we use a shredder). With added strips of meat, mushrooms, onion, and of course, fine slivers of dried cuttlefish, and then stir-fried with some bean paste….hmm, the final mesh of supreme savory delight was sure to send taste buds quivering in sensational expectation.
Better still was to have a handful wrapped in raw lettuce laced with sambal belacan — rasanya betul2 meletup !
