EMPURAU SARAWAK, (Tor Tambroides), mahseer, Wan Bu Liau, 忘不了

 EMPURAU, (Tor Tambroides), mahseer or in chinese "Wan Bu Liau (忘不了)" 

means Unforgetable, only obtained it's name few years ago. The name Empurau, originally called from Sarawak's native people. Initially some West Malaysian chinese had translate it directly "Enn Bu Lau", with no much meaning :"Red Not Old". That time this fish only worth of good value in Sarawak, especialy among the businessman and tycoons in Sarawak. Because of it's popularity, many people would give themselves a chance to try on the fish at least once in their life time. It's happen when a group of Taiwanese Christian, being invited for a lunch of the valued fish. Then, when they go home, they cannt remember the fish name but recall the fish with chinese charactor "Wan Bu Liau". This few years, many people had use the name with slang similarity in chinese charactor and ease of remembrance of the fish name.

That's a batch of good empurau.....

The empurau's flesh and skin is cutted a bit to be cooked to check the grade of the fish....

After the fish are cleaned properly, all the empurau were QC piece by piece to separate between the spoilt, loko (hard skin) and good quality aromatic smell fish. Only then, the fish are label with sticker as indicator for their grade.

                      That one is one of the example of "Loko" or Hard Skin fish. The fish normally become loko or hard skin because of getting old. This piece of fish is graded as "B" fish. There are still no picture for grade "C" fish, which is hard skin and hard flesh. Although, the fish is very hard, some of the famous cheft cook manage to cook it and become a finest dish. One of the way is cook as curry fish. For them it is a good way to gain more profit because price for loko fish is cheaper compared to the normal fine fish.
                       The "Loko" fish normally is very thick skin. For a expert eater, some time they prefer this loko fish because it's skin have some thing to be chewed, the thick and sticky skin means high in collagen. The flesh of the loko fish are also very sweet and tastefull simply because it's  a matured fish.! You wouldn't find this in a normally fine fish.

For inquiry, you can e-mail me through tangkieongkuc@yahoo.com.

SEMAH FISH SARAWAK, SEMAH, Semah mahseer, (Tor Duoronensis), Organic Semah Fish

SEMAH, Semah mahseer, (Tor Duoronensis)
have a similar look with Empurau. It's cousin fish to each others. The main different is their size and colour of the body. The Semah's fish scale can be said more to diamond shape while Empurau's scale looked like "Old Time Chinese's Fan". The biggest ever seen by me was 6kg + +. For me buying semah fish is very difficult because it is very very sissy, the flesh decaying fast compared to other fish.
                  This kind of fish never became a fish of choice for restaurant because many the fish dealer never want to "GRADE" the fish carefully before sell it out. In my experience, some time almost 50% of the fish was
with problems, especially hard skin and spoil fish. In addition, the fish dealer never try to QC it thoroughly before sell it. If the consumer try it once, and comment it as bad fish, then finish......
                  For me, this is always a fish of choice to be serve on the table. Why?? I would say; Semah taste like Empurau but just almost half price of his cousin. That's why we do a proper grading to guarantee the quality and maintaining the good name of this fish.

 
This one is the semah that we always looking for. The fish will not so fast loko in size. Normally up to 2.5 kg consider safe. This fish will loko above the size of 3 kg more offenly.

For this reddish semah, it's mainly a small species fish where 1 kg /fish will be the loko point.

The lousiest semah is the black semah in sarawak. This kind of semah normally very skinny and mostly loko.





In the wild the overall availability of this fish is :«star  or  0.5-1 %

TENGADAK SARAWAK, (Puntius Schwnenfeldii), 丁加迖

TENGADAK  SARAWAK, (Puntius Schwnenfeldii) 丁加迖

    This is also one of the best fish among the "bad tongue" people fish. Why? Because the fish is very very sweet and good in taste. However it is not a good choice for not a non-profesional fish eater because of the tiny "Y" shape fish bones. The tiny bones is just because the fish is always not alvailable in big size.

      Basically this fish is considered to be a small fish, with just mostly hook  up at the size of 300-500g in the river. Many do wonder why this fish is so expensive, it's really look like "lampan jawa" which is a pond fish. In West Malaysia, they even call this fish as "Lampan Sungai". But, this is really not a lampan fish at all! With the size  of 800g and above, this fish only being considered as expensive fish which the value of the fish will hit over RM 200-300 /kg. Below the size of 800g, this fish is just not so expensive.

  

 So many farmers had try to breed this fish because of the high value of this fish but almost can be consider facing failure. That is because, the age of 1 year of this fish only reaching the weight around 300g ONLY!! So now, do you understand why this fish is expensive? haha. I think, to reach the size of 800g, you need to breed it around 4-5 years. Any how, the biggest in tengadak weighted after gilled and gutted I found was around 1.7 kg. That's means it will be around 1.9-2.0 kg for whole fish weight.

Although this kind of fish is really delicious, many people still not consider it as "branded" fish yet because of the fish size in nature. Empurau fish, however had been a choice of fish as "Gift" or "Hamper" fish for the business men and contractor.



TENGALAN SARAWAK, MUNGALAN, (Puntius Bulu),丁加兰

TENGALAN SARAWAK, MUNGALAN, (Puntius Bulu),丁加兰

So...... Big............ 11 kg tengalan, 26/5/2011

JELAWAT SARAWAK, LEPTOBABUS HOEVENI, 苏丹王

JELAWAT  SARAWAK, LEPTOBABUS HOEVENI 苏丹王

Here, 1st of all, sorry for the king of Islamic country for the use of the word "Sul tan" or 苏丹. As this word means the King of Muslim Country. I really don't  know why so many people call it as "sul tan" fish. May be because this fish only can be served for King in the past. But as I know, the word "Sul tan" word is only exclusively used for a King, especially Brunei. One of my friend had been caught in Brunei and eat curry rice for a few days because sell this fish and called it "Sul tan fish"!!

The Jelawat/ sultan fish in Sarawak is slightly different compared to West Malaysia or Thailand species. No obvious red colour noticed for Sarawak's Jelawat fish.

That's is a good batch of good size fish. Jelawat fish may be taste better at the range of > 2 kg before gutted. But at the range of >6 kg, pre-caution to be taken as it will get loko. but really it's depend on the fish also.

           This one is a pretty matured fish for sure. Can be said old, for the bend of the neck of the fish as well. For a pretty old sultan fish, the head is very small compared to younger one. It's take me years to understand how to see whether the sultan fish is loko or not.
            This fish is really a loko sultan fish weighted just only 5.5kg. Not really hard. But anyhow I had manage to eat all of it. And it is really nice, many people thought that loko fish is= spoilt fish, but that is not true at all!!

UMUR- UMUR / KRAI BESAR SARAWAK,白丁加兰

UMUR- UMUR / KRAI BESAR SARAWAK, 白丁加兰

Cleaning Procedures And Packaging

That's the way how we clean the fish before the fish being frozen to -25 degree celsius.

The gill is still there.....

The gills of the fish is firstly removed using plier or small knife.

Fish stomach being totally removed, but the blood stains and dirt being still remain.

That's the fish without gill and stomach. With blood and dirt being wash away thoroughly.

That's another example.

This is the packing methods we are currently apply. The packaging method is very labour and time consuming but worthy because it is very economy and the simple packing can make the fish storage life much much longer.

The Patin Cleaning Prosedures are as below :

See the thick fat still attached there. But mostly most of the local fisherman considered that's clean enough. But... that's not the real story.   

Cut the layer inner "skin" and you will see more....

See...Thick fat and blood cloth still remain there...

Then, the fish anus has to be clean properly, since that's the part that always stinky.

The thick fat that attached to the inner stomach wall also being removed. Some time only the fat, we will lost almost 10% of the total fish weight !!..

Now, the throat of the fish must also properly cleaned. Since so many unwanted things in there.

Now, the fish gills gone...

The fish is properly cleaned and should proceed to the next stage. QC, Packing and lastly Freeze it to 

-25 degree celsius.