How Nasi Dagang Came To Live

I was having a nice moment with my nephew this morning. There was some incident happened, and we need to select some halba (fenugreek) from sesame seed, and my nephew's small hand was a really great help.

Halba is one of the main component in the making of nasi dagang, one of the main dishes in Terengganu. Whether you used beras wangi, or beras siam with beras pulut together, halba must be added in.

I don't really know why, but I would really like to guess. Okay here it is. Embrace my story dearly.

Long ago, there was a husband and wife, living in a rural place, somewhere in Trengganu. Despite of having a really hard, tough life, they endure it happily with one of their beautiful daughter, named Kuntum.

Enough with the intro I think. Let us go straight into the detail of nasi dagang.

One day, the husband went to the sea in order to seek a job in an island that is situated in the north of the South China Sea. So he did went, but on his pilgrimage to that island, his ship was wrecked by a storm. So after having a tough week on the sea, strayed with a piece of plank from his boat, he was finally saved by a merchant ship and was took on that ship as a slave.

Man, how I love my own story.

In that ship, there was some merchant stuff like halba and rice. It was said that the stuff is from Siamese merchant, especially the rice. The ship was from Trengganu, and it was on its way back to it.  The husband was put at the storage room with all of the merchant stuff.

I think enough with the bridge of my story. I just feel to lazy to continue it.

So, on one fine day, there was a storm, and the cook of that ship was struck by a lightning and dead on the spot with a spatula on his hand. So the husband took after his job and became a cook. And because of that storm, there was a ruckus happened down in the storage room and accidentally make the halba and Siamese rice mixed.

The husband know this and he just too lazy to separate those two things.

So he went to cook it both, without having a thought to separate it. After that, he served it to the captain, and the captain was having a mackerel on that day. So the Siamese rice with halba was served with a mackerel. The captain was shocked by the deliciousness of it. So the captain asked the husband, "Nasik mende gini eh awang?" The husband does not answer as he was scared of the captain because of his laziness in separating halba from the Siamese rice. The captain then went to named the rice as nasi dagang because he knew that the husband was a 'pedagang' back then.

So that's it.

Well some of you might think what about his wife and Kuntum? You just have to wait for it because his wife and Kuntum gonna invent something too.

But maybe in some other time.

Laters.