akok pandan vs durian

Akok pandan
the aroma was so tantalising, was so tempting, menggugat keimanan kami anak beranak yang berpuasa. we were driving back home in our car,all the way from Kelantan to Kedah via the Timur Barat highway, can you imagine a plus minus five hour drive with that pandan aroma inside the car .......oh...tidak.,....



We were heading towards Rantau panjang ( thot of stopping by there ) on our way back yesterday when we saw this queue. It caught our attention , with so many people queueing, with smoke coming from the DIY dapur.Something must be really good if they were willing to line up for it. Could it be ayam golek?but it was still early, not even 12 noon yet and there were no sign of any chicken being grilled or tergolek....

"Curiousity Kills the cat"
but these two cats, my hubby and I decided to have a look and we made a U turn a couple of metres in front, just to find out what the fuss was all about. coming closer i could guess what it was after seeing the burnt charcoal on top of the covered pan. It must be akok, cooked in a traditional way.

true enough, akok it was!not the small individual one but a bigger one

While snapping some photos, I did manage to interview the guy in the yellow T-shirt...hehe....macam reporter lah pulak...

He said that they had been doing this for the last ten years but only during fasting month. No wonder we had never seen it before when we drove past this road during the non fasting months. hubby bought 4 plastic bags of the akok and in each plastic were two akoks. one for our neighbour, one for this person and one for that other person, etc....

with the pandan aroma lingering inside our car, we continued our journey and stopped by for awhile at Rantau Panjang

Along the way, just before we entered the timur Barat highway, we saw small huts selling durian, the small type, durian kampung, my favourite , not the big ones. I prefer, the small durian with small ulas and thin layer of flesh over the seed and we were contemplating on whether to stop and buy them or not.

William Shakespeare would say, "to be or not to be"

but we were asking this question, " to buy or not to buy"

One thing, a combination of durian smell and akok pandan smell wouldn't be too good for a five hour journey in a car, would it?

Secondly, there are two people out five in the car who simply couldn't stand the smell of durian. Are we going to be selfish and buy the durian despite that ? Or are we, ( hubby and I ) are going to sacrifice our cravings for the sake of our kids?

after much thought and no more durian hut seen on the sides of the road , we decided to continue our journey , without the durian:-(

and focus or rather divert our attention to the beautiful view around us instead.

but as fate had it, destiny has written that we will eat durian no matter what, when we arrived home, I asked my daughter to give the akok to our neighbour and look what we got in return, a durian! Allah Maha Kaya!
it may not be the durian kampung but it still was a durian.