Mar 24 2008
Bird’s Nest
From the previous post, Looks like everyone is very familiar with bird’s nest! Hehehe… And no, Miche, I didn’t get it from the caves. 
It is actually from my hometown. In the recent years, my hometown in Sitiawan, Perak has been invaded by the swiflets. So “swiftlets hotels” started sprouting all over town to welcome the birds. Tall buildings like the one below which used to be a shoplot are the ones being converted. If you look carefully, you can see little rows of little dots on the building. Those are actually little opening for the birds to enter the building. Then they will play recorded bird sounds to attract the birds to enter & make their home inside and of course, hope that the birds will build their precious bird’s nests. Some of these buildings even have air-conditioners in there to make the birds comfortable!!
Not only are existing buildings being coverted, new buildings are built specially for these swiftlets like this one that looks like an abandoned building.
The cons about having all the birds in town are that it gets very noisy especially in the evening when the birds are returning home. Everyone plays their recorded bird sounds & it really gets irritating sometimes. Also there’s the danger of getting hit by bird poop as they fly by!! 
However since almost everyone that we know are in this bird nest business, we get freebies quite often. Unfortunately we get the unclean ones since they are straight from the source. So whoever wants to eat them has to do the tedious task of cleaning them! And boy, was it tedious!!! According to a relative, a seasoned hand will only need about 1 hour to clean each nest. My sister & I took almost the whole day to clean 2!!! Hahaha….
Tough job!!!
Stumble it!
7 responses so far
oh Yvette, i din know you are from Setiawan. My SIL is from there too, can u all be somehow related?
at least you are sure that this is not the fake one. ya, is a tough job cleaning the feathers off the nest. but it is so delicious after it has been cooked.
Hi!
My family consume a lot of these birdnests. To expedite the cleaning process, we soak the birdnests in filtered water overnight. The next day, add a drop of oil into the bowl of water. Use a chopstick to swirl the birdnests gently. You would be surprise to see feathers sticking to the chopstick. Once done, gently discard the water.
We normally, shape back the nests and air dry (for a few days) them before storing them into container. In this way, we can have birdnests anytime we want.
3princesses
Hi!!
I could not resist not commenting!!
I came across your blog while searching for food blog recipes. I’m from Sitiawan too, currently in Uk. Was wondering, which part of sitiawan are you from??
Linfoong
Looks like there are many bloggers from Sitiawan.
yeah….Sitiawan is famous nowadays….bloggers, birdnest, politicians, ministers,Chin Peng, Kong Pian,oil palm estates and you sitiawanites name it…..are all from this budding small town…….think if u r out of job….buy a plot of land in Sitiawan and build bird nest homes like these…..for good income….
i never eat a whole bird nest b4. the only one i had was from the bottle. too costly for me.