Orang Iban

Special cuisines

Orang Iban special food is pansuh food, which simply means the cooking of food or dish in a bamboo stem. It’s naturally clean, easy and simple. The food (meat, chicken, fish, vegetables and even rice together with the spices) will all be put together into the bamboo stem, then directly placed over an open fire to be cooked. The uniqueness of using the bamboo stem to cook is that the bamboo will give a special aroma and texture to the food where it’s impossible to have using other methods such as using woks. One of the best known Iban dishes is pansoh manok (ayam pansuh), which features chicken and lemongrass cooked in a bamboo log over an open fire.

Forest ferns have a special place in the diet of the people, with the two most popular ferns used as vegetables being midin and the fiddlehead fern (pucuk paku). Midin grows wild in the secondary forests and is peculiar to the state. It has curly fronds and is very crunchy even after it has been cooked. Rural dwellers have always considered the fern a tasty, nutritious vegetable and the jungle fern’s rise from rural staple to urban gourmet green occurred in the 1980s with the increased urban migration of the Iban. Aromatic leaves from trees, such as the Bungkang, are also used in cooking to flavour food.

The other special cuisines is tuak, a home-brewed rice wine. The brew has a sweet fragrance and is highly alcoholic – a small glass is enough to send the unaccustomed to euphoric heights.

TUAK

PUCUK PAKU

MIDIN

MIDIN