Gula Anau

Many people know about gula melaka or gula anau. They are not quite the same thing and sometimes mistake gula melaka is gula anau. Honestly I did until I had to do tomorrow's articles about Brunei cakes for Hari Raya (as usual will be published in Brunei Times Sunday Edition).

This sugar was and continued to be a very important ingredient for local delicacies. For those who loved cindul temburong, the gula anau in fluid form is packed separately. Without it, many local delicacies could not be made. Today gula anau is easily available at the tamu. In the past, searches for this sugar would start months before the fasting month. This sugar was not easy to be made and hence the long waiting period. It can take days for the sugar to be made.

How do you make gula anau? The process is similar to making gula melaka or palm sugar. The only difference is the source of the main ingredient. Palm sugar was originally made from the sugary sap of the date tree. However for local use, it is made from the sago or nipah trees (for ‘gula anau’) or coconut trees (for ‘gula melaka’). It is made by making several slits into the bud of a palm or coconut tree and collecting the sap.


Then, the sap is boiled until it thickens.



For ‘gula melaka’, it is poured into bamboo tubes between 3 to 5 inches long and left to solidify to form the familiar cylindrical cake blocks. For ‘gula anau’, it is sold in solid paste form and nowadays sold in plastic bags. For those buying larger quantities, it will be sold in large cans. The sugar is a hard golden brown paste.

Comments

ungkayah said…
yep i did my documentary on this gula anau last time. gula melaka is from coconut and anau is from nipah. often mistakenly interpret as the same.
Anonymous said…
where can we actually find nipah tree in Brunei specifically in Temburong? :)

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