Ikan Keli or Catfish

I was reading some blogs written by young people. One interesting blog is " My Imperfect Life" by Matts. But I thought he has a perfect life, especially when he can hook a catfish as big as this!!
He is from Malaysia. And we do indeed have huge fish in the beautiful natural rainforests.

Catfish is only one of the types of fish we have.

Besides, many people have started to rear their own catfish now. Usually to the size shown in the picture. As a result catfish is sold in markets all over Sarawak.

Today, catfish is cooked in bamboo, deep fried as nuggest, baked, roasted, and cooked in soup or curry. Any way will do. You can invent your own style too.


Years ago, my father used to catch catfish at the back of our house which was a piece of abandoned rubber land. We never knew the owner of the land as it changed hands very often. But in the stream I remember my father placed his fish traps and we would be so happy to get a few catfish some times and many more during the rainy days. He would enjoy selling them to the hawker in town. It was not much money, and he did not really want to earn a profit. It was just fun for him, to trap the fish and then sell the fish. he got a lot of satisfaction trapping them.





He used barbequed rubber seeds and bubu to trap his fish.





We never ate the catfish ourselves then.

Today, we sometimes buy a medium size one for a celebration dinner.

Very recently we had a great dinner in a Hulu Langat Beer Garden which serves beautiful pond raised catfish. We ordered a steamed catfish with fried onion sauce. It was heavenly.

If you are in KL, do go to Hulu Langat. Lots of Sibu people go there too. The place can serve up to 45 tables. In some good days, you might even meet your Foochow friends.