Stir Fried Celery with Prawns

I must thank my auntie for introducing me to this wonderful vegetable. Many years ago, I visited my auntie during one of my semester breaks. My uncle very kindly fetched me from campus and I arrived at my auntie's house in time for dinner. My auntie is a fantastic cook and one of the dishes that stood out that evening was stir fried celery with prawns. It was a new vegetable to me and when I ate it, wow I really loved it! What made it even more delicious was my auntie's sambal belacan which she always pounds by hand.

Besides my auntie's cooking, one of the things I looked forwards to was sampling my cousins' heavy metal and hard rock music collection. My twin cousins were very much into AC/DC and Judas Priest, among others during that time. I also managed to watch videos of AC/DC and Def Leppard in concert.

As I mentioned in this post, my introduction to hard rock and heavy metal started when I studied in Assunta, PJ. After my SRP exams (now known as PMR), my dad was transferred to KL. To cut the long story short, I was enrolled in Assunta. I remember meeting the then principal, Sister Enda Ryan, on my first day at school. Sister Enda is a very warm and friendly Irish lady. The first thing she did was grab my exam result slip and scrutinized it intently while leaning against the office wall. "Hmmm...you have a distinction in Bahasa! (Malay Language). Clever girl!", she exclaimed. She seemed very pleased. 

I was promptly taken to class 4 Science 3. The classroom was  in a makeshift building known as The Shed (sounds like the title of a horror movie, hor?). By the way, I subsequently worked my way up to 5 Science 1. I wanted to keep the Terengganu flag flying, to impress the girls that Terengganu people had the smarts. No lah, actually it's because I have a fierce mother. She expects excellence in academia but I better not talk too much. My mother reads my blog (Hi Ma!). And guess what? My heavy metal initiation happened during bible study. Gasp! How did that happen? 

In 1982 one Pastor Gary Greenwald launched an attack on rock music and there is a recording of his lecture titled Rock A Bye Baby.  Back in Assunta, the Christian students would go for bible study when the Muslim girls were attending their Ugama Islam (Islamic Studies) class. The Catholics had their Catechism class while the "lain-lain" (others) were made to go to the field to play netball. At that time, I was one of the "lain-lain" but you would need a few horses to drag me to netball.

Serve this with sambal belacan or sambal tomato. Guarantee you will have second helpings.

So I chose to follow the faithful and took Brother Steven's class. One fateful day in 1983, we listened to Rock A Bye Baby as part of our bible study. Apparently, according to Pastor Greenwald, if you played Hotel California by the Eagles backwards, you can hear satanic messages. And Hotel California was a hotel where Anton Lavey established the Church of Satan, or so the story goes. Hmmm....And throughout the recording, a few sampling of rock and heavy metal music was played to illustrate the good pastor's point.

And there I was, this fat bespectacled and not-so-sweet 16 suddenly listening with full attention to the song clips. "Hey, this stuff is goood!", I thought to myself. I experienced an awakening and revelation of sorts. Satanic or whatever, I don't care. And that was how I became a rock and heavy metal fan.

I guess I may have mellowed with age but I still like rock music, but the more melodic kind. Not that I was ever into the ultra heavy stuff like Slipknot which scares the hell out of me. 

So you see, strange things happen in life or in a convent. I don't think Sister Enda would be pleased this time :)

Stir Fried Celery with Prawns
Recipe source : Phong Hong

Ingredients :
- 4 stalks celery, sliced
- 10 prawns, peeled and deveined
- 4 big cloves garlic, roughly chopped
- 1 tablespoon fish sauce or to taste
- Dash of pepper

Method :
- Heat oil in wok and fry prawns until cooked. Remove and set aside.
- In the same oil, fry garlic until slightly brown.
- Add celery and stir fry until celery is tender but still crunchy.
- Add fish sauce, pepper and stir briskly.
- Add prawns and serve immediately.