Yes to Yumminess!

This filling follows a traditional family recipe, where the flavour is closer to the briyani taste than the curry. With more complex ingredients and a nutty boost, it makes for a more sophisticated but delicate filling. 

Its shape is small and round, rendering a more dainty tembosa.

It's no secret that Hari Raya is an excuse for a food fest. Nina Ninot joins in a little! Ours arissa is most definitely beef. 

We stick faithfully to my mum's recipe. Just as well this is a once a year affair, really! If you do not know this dish, leave it at that because it's a lot of effort for something so dreadfully unhealthy. Arissa demands:

• Spices prep from scratch
• Cooking on high heat for 2 rounds of 3-4 hous. 
• Heavy and constant stirring and splattering

 Johor Bahru: That was where I grew up. In our family, any major event or discussion seemed to be against the background of food.

My mum was always a stickler for home-cooked food and my sister caught the baking bug

early. I was enthusiastic about eating but not the least bit interested in cooking.

My authoritarian aunts: confident, relentless, no-nonsense cooks. Cooking was no hobby: it was an essential part of daily life. When we arrived at an aunt's house, no matter how fleeting the visit is, we were always offered a snack or something and "tembosa" was a great favourite. Their pastry finishings were delicate and perfect. We do not promise such finesse but I feel we echo the pastry. 

It is said that you have to watch tricky dishes being cooked before you can master them. That sounds quite polished to me. My learning curve started in a boarding house kitchen in Edinburgh, cleaning after cooks who merrily ordered the "hens" around. The most valuable lesson was to how to dry multiple plates at once at the fastest speed. Breaks from boarding school life, exposed my sister and I to farm life, including seeking fresh eggs in the farm next door. Part-time work for a friend's mum showed me the realities of pedestrian catering but "an adopted sister,"  Later, I worked part-time for a good friend’s mum, serving for a catering company – tedious - but I gained an inkling about the practicalities of smooth kitchen operations. 

Later, I met my “adopted family,” who had returned to Edinburgh from Australia. Suddenly, the magazine recipes my mum used to pour over had a context. My

“adopted sister” was a Cordon Bleu cook who catered private functions. I helped, mainly to earn a bite.

Over my student years, my mum and sister traipsed around kitchen shops endlessly and bought enough cookbooks to sell! 

I remained bored and waited in Lala land.

Years later, when I opted out of the corporate world, finally, or desperately,

 ooking occurred to me, probably because I still loved to eat! Nina Ninot is a small, no-frills, high-indulgence, 

food service offering Johorian and Western food.

For some dishes, we dug up old recipes, did some

research and conducted repeated trials to

finally arrive at the present Nina Ninot end-product.

As for the other dishes, we adapted recipes or

created them.