Traditional Food or Dishes during Hari Raya Aidilfitri. 

          Assalamualaikum and good afternoon everyone. My name is Nur Afini Hidayah Binti Mohd Ashril from DUP4 in Polytechnic Metro Kuantan. In this page I would like to talk about traditional food or dishes during Hari Raya Aidilfitri. Fasting month is finished and numerous Muslims in Malaysia and abroad are preparing to celebrate Hari Raya Aidilfitri. It is safe to say that everyone is looking forward to the traditional food. In Malaysia, celebrating Hari Raya means that you’ll be devoured with variety of dishes from standard rendang to the must have lemang. This goes beyond the nostalgia for the older days, it is a clear deviation from the culture that we’ve once anchored ourselves with.

            Firstly, a must have lemang. Lemang is made of sticky rice, coconut milk, and a sprinkle of salt. It basically replace the plain rice during the season of Hari Raya and is eaten with rendang or curry. This unique dish is cooked in an emptied bamboo stick fixed with banana leaves and can take four to five hours long periods of roasting! Example, lemang is like bamboo in shape. Lemang also  resembles a ketupat or nasi impit, with an added layer of flavour by the coconut milk. Secondly, Rendang it’s the special Raya dish. It is served either wet or dry, and is additionally known for its natural preserving properties because of the antimicrobial flavors utilized as a part of the dish. Rendang is rich in spices. Along with the main meat ingredient, rendang uses coconut milk and a paste of mixed ground spices, including ginger,  turmeric leaves, lemongrass, garlic, shallots, chillis and other spices. Rendang is often served with steamed rice, ketupat (a compressed rice cake) or lemang (glutinous rice cooked in bamboo tubes). If cooked properly, dry rendang can last for as long as four weeks.

            Thirdly, is everyone favourite which is ketupat. Broadly picked as the image for Hari Raya, the ketupat is made in a diamond-shaped with rice boiled. Furthermore, it will be pack of handwoven palm leaf strips. Once cooked, the ketupat is peeled open, cut into cuts, and served customary steamed rice with different dishes. It is commonly described as "packed rice", although there are other types of similar packed rices such as lontong. Local stories passed down through the generations have attributed the creation of this style of rice preparation to the seafarers' need to keep cooked rice from spoiling during long sea voyages. The coco leaves used in wrapping the rice are always shaped into a triangular or diamond form and stored hanging in bunches in the open air. The shape of the package facilitates moisture to drip away from the cooked rice while the coco leaves allow the rice to be aerated and at the same time prevent flies and insects from touching it. There’s fun fact about ketupat history is kupat (in Javanese) means  "admitting one's mistakes" in Javanese language in accordance to asking for forgiveness tradition during lebaran. There are many varieties of ketupat, with two of the more common ones being ketupat nasi and ketupat pulut. Ketupat nasi is made from white rice and is wrapped in a square shape with coconut palm leaves while ketupat pulut is made from glutinous rice is usually wrapped in a triangular shape using the leaves of the fan palm. Ketupat pulut is also called "ketupat daun palas" in Malaysia.

            Other than that we have not so famous dishes, it is serunding but still it is one of the well known snack during Aidilfitri. Serunding is made of prepared meat that is cooked until dry, a strategy intended to help keep the meat for longer. The meats normally used to make serunding incorporate chicken, prawn, anchovy, and fish, and they are generally utilized as a filling for baked goods, buns, and even burgers. Serunding is made by stewing cuts of chicken or beef in a sweetened soy sauce mixture can be easily torn apart with a fork. The meat is teased apart, strained, and partially dried in the oven. It is then mashed and beaten while being dry-cooked in a large wok until it is nearly completely dry. Additional flavourings are usually added while the mixture is being dry-fried. Five kilograms of meat will usually yield about 1 kg of floss. In Northern Nigeria, beef is used to make a similar dish, called dambun nama. Next, popular snack during Hari Raya Aidilfitri is dodol. Dodol is a sweet toffee-like sugar palm-based confection commonly found in Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent It is popular in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, the Philippines, South India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Burma, where it is called mont kalama. It is made from coconut milk,  and rice flour, and it is sticky, thick, and sweet. Dodol is commonly served during festivals, such as Aidilfitri and Aidiladha as sweet treats for children. If  you have never seen dodol, it is wrap in pyramid shape and in green colour for pandan flavor and dark chocolate colour for durian flavor.

Lastly, tepung pelita. The double of the Lemang, the Tepung Pelita is the masterful concoction of coconut milk, sugar, and the impeccable pandan flavour. Coconut seems to be the recurring theme in this list of must-eat dishes for Raya, but how do you turn down these dainty green packages with a smooth-like top consistency. The flour is basically made of coconut milk and rice flour and cooked in a container made of banana leaves. In the middle it is filled with sugar water which makes it a sweet fat. It is easily damaged and does not last long. “Tepung pelita” is called by North and “takup” is called by south people. In conclusion, now we all have know about famous traditional foods and dishes during Hari Raya Aidilfitri for muslims people in Malaysia. Not only introduce the foods, but I also add on the history and the way of making it. I hope people who read this will get useful info ! thank you for borrow your time on reading this.