SAGON: A TRADITIONAL MALAY SNACK

The two containers contain a Malay traditional snack called "Sagon".  Sagon is made from a mixture of grated coconut, rice flour and sugar.  In modern times, the sagon is packed in long plastic strips. 

This Friday, the school library will be launching the Resource Centre Week and the theme we have chosen is "Traditional Malay Cooking".  One of the food that we wanted to promote is Sagon.  Thankfully, my library assistant Asiah and the library teacher, Roslina, knew how to cook this dish.  Here you see Asiah packing the sagon.  Traditionally, the sagon is packed into a cone shaped container fashioned from newspapers.

Since we wanted to expose the students to traditional Malay cooking, we decided to make the cone shaped casings from newspapers like times of yore.  The interesting thing was that a long strip of colourful crepe paper was also used to decorate the cone to make it more attractive.

One fun activity for the boys and girls to do was to make the cones, line them with crepe paper and pack the sagon in them.  I am sure that this is a learning experience that they will remember.  Perhaps, I could get either Roslina or Asiah to demonstrate to them how to make the sagon next week.

Here I am with some of my girls who were involved with making the cones and packing the sagon.  We will be giving the packed sagon to the teachers for the launching ceremony on Friday.  The remainder fo the sagon will be sold at 20 sen a cone to the students.

Some of the sagon that were packed by my students.  Since there were at least 10 of them working on the cones, we got different sizes of cones.  Also, some of the cones were neatly done while others did not look too good.  Nevertheless, the students put in an effort and that is what matters the most.

Want to try making sagon?  Here is the recipe.

Ingredients

200gms grated coconut/dessicated coconut

200gms rice flour

Sugar to taste

Method
1. Fry the grated coconut until fragrant. 
2. Add in the rice flour and fry until fragrant and crunchy. 
3.  When it is cooked, let it cool and then add sugar.