Turmeric fish could be next on the menu for Malaysian woman who cooked koi

Amanda Omeychua, at left, with a bowl of cooked koi fish (top-right) and dead koi fish on the floor. Photos: Amanda Omeychua
Amanda Omeychua, at left, with a bowl of cooked koi fish (top-right) and dead koi fish on the floor. Photos: Amanda Omeychua

The Malaysian woman who raised eyebrows after transforming her expensive Japanese koi fish into lemongrass and tom yam fish soups told Coconuts today that turmeric fish could be next on the menu if more of her ornamental pets die. 

Travel agent Amanda Omeychua, 26, said that she has already bought 30 more koi fish after 20 of them died of suffocation last week because her domestic helper had forgotten to turn the oxygen tank back on. Amanda had decided to cook them instead of letting the fish go to waste. 

“I felt OK, I accepted it. I couldn’t save them anyway. Better to eat the fish than let them go to waste,” she said today. “Maybe I’ll cook koi fish in kunyit [turmeric] if any more of them suffocate.”

Omeychua originally kept 40 koi fish in the pond of her Putrajaya home for four years before half of them died last week. After spending the last few days feasting on the koi fish with her brother, Omeychua said she bought 30 new ones just yesterday. A smaller koi fish costs RM500 (US$125) while a bigger one costs RM1,000 .

“I just bought more koi fish yesterday, now I have about 50 of them,” she said. 

Omeychua shared photos of her dead koi fish and the lemongrass soup dish she cooked them in on Sunday to the Facebook group MASAK APA TAK JADI HARI NI OFFICIAL (Official Cooking Fails Of Today), saying they tasted like catfish. 

“A recipe fit for royalty, tastes like silver catfish,” she wrote. The next day, she shared photos of the second batch of dead koi cooked in tom yam soup. 

“Fish from heaven cooked in tomyam,” she said.

Other stories to check out:

Gordon Ramsay to open his first restaurant in Malaysia in June



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