YOU CAN ALWAYS BEND

Most of the time we make rules and impose conditions and adhere to them strictly without bothering to ask ourselves why. Take, for instance, the enjoyment of yee sang. Yes, yee sang is a festive delicacy and is associated with family reunion. I'm all for the preservation of this endearing tradition. That doesn't mean, however, the dish should be taboo at other times.

Last year, when April came round, I discovered that there were three packets of yee sang left over from the festive season. (They were the packagings not accompanied by sashimi, of course.) I decided to throw convention to the winds and hold a yee sang party at that time of year.

I invited a few friends over and treated them to yee sang out-of-season. We decided to undertake yee sang R&D by adding extra ingredients like jack-fruit and prawn-crackers! For the sashimi, we had boiled cuttlefish cut into thin strips.

Then we broke tradition even further by dining on the lawn, seated on a large mat round the yee sang platter. And, yes, we "loh hey-ed", wishing for everything from cooler weather to the jackpot prize of the forthcoming big-sweep draw! Our ancestors would have fainted!

But you see what I mean when I say you can really bend the rules, don't you? 

-BOLDWRITER-

YEE SANG A'LA MALAYSIA

Yee sang is versatile - or rather, YOU can be versatile when it comes to the enjoyment of the dish. Here's a suggestion of how you may go about it. Try concocting yee sang with a Malaysian flavour.

Add thin slivers of fresh jack fruit (buah nangka) to the ingredients. Make sure the flesh is finely sliced so that it will blend well with the dressing. 

Now for another element - finely pounded cashew nuts. This will give the dish a new texture as well as an enhanced taste. For a better effect, I suggest you sprinkle the pounded cashews over the dish after the sauce has been stirred into the other ingredients.

And there you have it - yee sang a'la Malaysia! Enjoy!