Pestles in Malay society

Pestles 


These are pestles, the Malays use them and the Thais (I understand) also use them. I am not sure about other people. Don’t really know who started using them. The Malays, as far as I know uses them to pounce their ‘sambal’ in them. “Sambal’ is a concoction odd semi-soft food staff in which chili is added to give the whole semi-solid mixture the ‘hot’ taste. And most Malays love them. The most famous in Malaysia is of course the Malay ‘sambal belacan’#, a sort of mixture of saltish prawn paste concoction that you pick up (using hands and while having your rice meals) with ‘ulam’; the raw green vegetable, used as appetiser with your rice dishes. And green raw vegetables (and ‘ulam’) have their own food goodness in them.

#Belacan (or sometimes spell as belachan) is a Malay condiment prepared from fermented shrimp. Some may descibe it as “Notoriously pungent, belacan is used as an ingredient in many dishes, or eaten on its own with rice.” But I would decribe is as “ Reddish brown shrimp paste and smells just a bit better than Gorgonzola cheese.”

But sometimes the Malays use the pestles to soften staff like dried squids or hard ‘ulam’ like old fruit of ‘jering’ (Pithecellobium jiringa),
jering 

a sort of seed they eat also used as “ulam’.

Very useful really this pestles device to the Malays. Most cannot live without them.

And I presume the Thais also use them for the same thing.

A drawback about using this pestles thing by the Malays is that when they live (and they tend to now especially those who have migrated to the towns and Cities) in apartments (or even condos) they still want to use the device for making their ‘sambal’, whereas they can easily use electrically driven food mixer. But they insist, “The ‘sambal’ does not taste the same” they say. You can imagine the noise the device creates when these Malays start pounding on them in their kitchen in an apartment (or a condo). When they lived in their own ‘kampong’ houses, it was alright as nobody really cares and also these houses are far apart. But in an apartment the noise will echo through the whole structure making all the neighbouring units hearing (and sharing the noise) the noise. Of course the person pounding will not realise this. If only they know. One of the mitigating mean to avoid the ‘spread’ of the noise is to pounce on a thick piece of cloth or on a soft sponge. But how many such Malay housewives realise this?

When it comes to this situation, sometimes one has to politely tell the creator of the noise or sometimes just live with (and get used to) the noise. But when they start pounding in early morning preparing for breakfast or late at night for their late dinner or even at 4.00 in the morning preparing meals for their early school going children, (or cooking for the night last meal during the fasting month of Ramadan) then can one tolerate it? It’s a social wake up call for a change.