WILTON — Next Friday the Wilson Grange’s Passport Dinner focuses on Malaysia.

There will be an exchange student with the Y.E.S. program to advise and inform the gathering of the country’s customs.

So this is a chance to get fed and educated. Please email [email protected] or call Trish at 645-3676 before Friday, May 8th at 6 p.m.

Below is a description of the food that will be served. As always there will be a vegetarian option available upon request, (made at the time of the reservations.)

Malaysian Dinner Menu

Rendang – this is a dry curry, containing beef, onions, garlic, unsweetened coconut, coconut milk, and a host of Malaysian seasonings. Some of the seasonings people may be familiar with include ginger, cloves, coriander, cumin, and chili. Unfamiliar or less familiar ones are kencur and tamarind liquid.

Ketupat – this is medium grain rice, plainly cooked, but compressed into squares so people can pick the squares up with their fingers. It frequently is served in a banana peel. This time, it will be served in squares. It frequently is served as a side dish with the Rendang, peanut sauces, and other entrees.

Saus Kacang or Peanut and Chili Sauce – a dipping sauce made from peanuts, chilies, onions, garlic, coconut milk and usually palm sugar. If palm sugar isn’t available, a light brown sugar will be used. It will be made without the usual shrimp paste so everyone can eat it. It’s served as a dipping sauce for the rice, the Rendang, and lots of other foods. The heat will be turned down a bit for New England taste buds.

Lontong – this is the vegetarian option. It’s a mixture of familiar and unfamiliar ingredients. The familiar ones include cabbage, jicama (yam beans in Malaysia), turmeric, chili, coconut, tofu, hard cooked eggs and the rice squares. New to many will be: candlenuts, long beans, lemongrass, and galangal.

Roti Jala – a crepe-like meal accompaniment, it can be used to sop up liquids. The Grange will *try *to duplicate the lace-like structure of the original. Come and see how successful they are!

Onde-onde – the dessert. It’s a poached rice flour dumpling, with a sugar filled center, rolled in coconut. Its hallmark ingredient is the pandan leaf. Pandan leaves look like grass and give the dumplings a green color and vanilla like flavor. The Grange hopes to be able to get fresh ones.

Teh Tarik – otherwise known as “pulled tea”. It’s made from regular black tea and condensed milk. The trick is in the pulling – the goal is to make the tea foamy by pouring it from one cup to another with the cups being as far away as possible from each other. The “pulling” will be courtesy of the Grange’s blender, but those who Google it will see masters at work “pulling” the tea.

Siti Afiqah Muhammed will be explaining the meal before the dinner and after dinner, she will give a presentation in our upstairs hall.

Fiqua is an exchange student from Malaysia with YES (Youth Exchange and Study), a program of the US State Department run by American Councils for International Education. After the dinner, she will give a presentation in the upstairs hall. Fiqua will share some experiences as a Muslim living in a country that is multi-ethnic, multicultural, and multilingual from the point of view of an ambassador, and aspects of how beautiful and captivating her country is.

She is a senior at Mt. Blue High School and is participating in Curtain Raisers improvisational theatre, dance, track, and Teen Faith Exploration. She is actively working on meeting a 100-hour community service challenge extended by President Obama to students while in the US (only 15 hours required of students here for half an academic year). Her host parents are Christine Merchant and Wayne Davis of Mt. Vernon.

A reminder – both floors of the Grange Hall are handicapped accessible.