Reminiscence of Malaysian street food [2]

A great attraction of the Malaysian food scene is the Hawker center. A place where hawkers are garthered on a small perimeter, some having exercised their skills for years, or for generations, competing for reputation. Gurnley Drive in Georgetown on Pulau Penang is one of these places, and has acquired quite a notoriety. Some Islanders will tell you that it has become more touristy in the last years, but obviously I could not vouch for that, and I decided to see for myself anyway.
Gurnley drive is a long corridor with tables in the middle and hawkers on its sides. I did find that there was a repetition of dishes, and not knowing the reputation of each hawker, I had to try what took my fancy. But before eating I had a walk around, which did not prove to make my decision easier.

I took a few pictures of some interesting stalls, like what I would call the food on stick stall, with fishballs, sausages,seafood (shrimps, baby squids)...:

The Popiah stall, another very famous Malaysian specialty, a cold illed pancake:

The soup stall, which possibly of chinese origin, a huge choice of ingedients from which you choode what will make up your soup: noodles, seafood, tofus, leafy greens, fish ball, fish paste filled vegetables, offals... name it, it's there!

Soup which is prepared for you to take to one of the central tables.

By the way, on some stalls, you seat at the table, and somebody takes your order, and you get to pay at the end of the meal. On most hawker centers, you choose a table, then go and order your food and drinks and pay for it at the different hawkers, then the dishes are brought to you.

I loved one of the sweet stalls, the apom stall, where little banna pancakes (the poms) were baked and folded in two.

At the same stall were also made very thin pancakes that were rolled whilst still hot

No need to say, impossible to starve out there!
In the midst of our meal, came an unexpected downpour of rain, and most people left, although a few stayed under the umbrellas, undisturbed, including us...

I hope you enjoyed this little visit, I have not quite finished my series of posts on Malaysian foods, so keep your eyes peeled...

Reminiscence of Malaysian street food [1]

NASI LEMAK

I travelled to Malaysia last year, where I had a great food experience. I was looking at the photos I took then, and thought I should share some of the food I had over there. Here's a snipet of some of the food I had in Georgetown in Penang.

I will start with with Nasi Lemak, the national dish of Malaysia. As we were walking to town from our Hotel to town, we had the incredible luck to pass a (weekly!) craft market where one stall was local women had made food to sell for charity. So we were very glad to be served home made Nasi Lemak! the tasty cold dish was excellent and so fresh!

For the whole holiday, I had been looking for any opportunity to find some roti canai, an ossession of mine, since I have heard that it is the same bread used in Thailand to make the banana pancake (see previous blog post).
The dish is a roti bread served hot with curries for breakfast and originates from India and can be found everywhere in Malaysia. We ate the best one at a little cafe in the Little India quarter.

The Roti Canai was perfect (sorry, I started eating it before I took the photo, I could not resist...):

And it was served with a selection of six beautiful curries!
I also took the photos of the'making of' since making the Roti itself is an magic art and requireexperience and skills:

I could not resist and ordered other breads, like roti tissue (ahem, this one got eaten before it could be photographed but you can see what it looks like here), Dhosa:

And all the breads were the best I've had during the whole trip. Unforunately, I was too full to be able to taste one of the puri bread from the mountain that had just been produced:

That day, when I found that little Indian cafe the breads were so good, that I almost fainted, like the Imam!
To be followed...

Baked fragrant tofu

When I was in Singapore, I tasted a dish called fragrant tofu: a slab of hot silken tofu covered with a meat and herbs topping. I absolutely loved it, it was like a savoury creme brulee!

So recently I have bought some silken tofu, and it stayed in my fridge until I was reminded of my intent by an article about baked tofu I read on the internet. So my intents gave birth to a cross between fragrant and baked, hence the title!
And today, I wanted to eat something healthy and tasty, easy, and most of all satisfying.
Hence I knocked my own version of fragrant tofu with what I had in my fridge and baking it because I fancied it caramelised:

- 1 slab silken tofu
- 1 big slice of ham chopped in small squares
- 1/2 big green chilli chopped
- 1 spring onion chopped
- 1 teaspoon full of chopoped ginger
- 1 dash oyster sauce
- 2 tblspn sesame oil

Place the tofu on a small oven dish, mix all the other ingredients together and cover the tofu with it.
Place in the oven for 1/2h at 200 degC
I did not have time, but marinating the tofu in the mix first could have worked really well too, if you have the time. For vegetarian or vegans, skip the ham and replace by vegges.

Also, the same dish could be steamed, and I reckon it would be pretty tasty too!...


Source: my own food meanderings

Cheng Ho Cultural Museum in Melaka, Malaysia

We almost missed the museum as it is discretely tucked away although it is a beautiful traditional Baba Nonya Mansion which was the warehouse of the Chinese Admiral Cheng Ho (Zheng He). An old and very lovely Indian lady who was working at our hotel came to talk to us one morning, and said we should visit it, she gave us a flyer and said she was working over there too. She convinced us (as well as the flyer) and we did visit it. And what a wonderful visit it was!
The museum contained large and numerous rooms where the life and era of Cheng Ho was admirably told, some scene reconstitutionsartefacts, local objets and customs,We arrived in the beautiful main courtyard And there were greeted by the owner of the museum, a very friendly man who gave us the honor to make some tea for us, and to explain us how tea should be served. We were very attentive and interested.
His wife then arrived and was as welcoming as her husband. She fed us some sweets,
which I absolutely loved and asked the recipe for. It is hard boils eggs cooked in water sweetened with rock sugar, flavoured with chinese herbs: "Tong Kwai"
We had a great conversation with the couple and it turns out that they are planning to make a part of the museum unused for now as a B&B, and to organise a special event this summer for the Chinese Valentine Day, which will certainly be a great event.

The last part of the visit was a theatrical performance about the story of Cheng Ho, a wonderful work of beautiful painted panels crossing the theatre in layers and changing in a very poetical manner, we loved this bit, that lasted about 20 minutes, it was the cherry on the museum cake!
The owner also serve dim sum in the mornings, do not miss them!
If you go through Melaka, do not miss the visit of the museum, and if you want to organise an event or get some information, you can contact the owners there:

Cheng Ho Cultural Museum
51 Lorong Hang Jebat
75200 Melaka, Malaysia
Tel: 606-283 1135
http://www.chengho.org/museum

Oven Satay glazed Chicken wings

I did fancy some satay chicken, easy of course, in the oven. I did not follow a recipe, I was inspired that day.
I marinated the chicken wings in
- 2 tsp peanut butter
- 1/2 mashed ripe banana
- a big thumb sized piece of ginger chopped finely
- 4 cloves of garlic chopped finely
- 2 shallots chopped finely
- 1 lime juice
- fish sauce to equal the lime juice
- 1 slosh honey or golden syrup
- a dash of soy sauce
- 1 tblsp sesame oil
- 2 birdeye chillis sliced (I used a green one and a red one)

Marinate the chicken in the mix for at least 1/2h
Then dispose the chicken wings on a tray covered with foil (you don't have to, but remember who's washing the dishes in the end..) pour half the marinade on top.
Cook for 20 mins at 180 deg C oven combined with grill.

Provided you have the ingredients (and I always do...) it's easy enough and you spend a minimum of time making it and taking care of it cooking. Brilliant for parties.

Source: My own improvisation

Beef Hor Fun

(Hor Fun means Flat Rice Noodles)

Ingredients (for 4):
- 200 g dried flat rice noodles (did not find fresh ones in Chinatown, I'll look better next time..)
- 300 g steak, sliced thinly
- 250 g kai lan (Chinese kale)

- 2 tablespoons peanut oil (vegetable oil)
- - 1 clove garlic, peeled and chopped
- 4 shallots, peeled and sliced thinly
- 1 thumb-length ginger, peeled and chopped

Marinade:
- 1 teaspoon light soy sauce (coeliac use gluten free version)
- 1 teaspoon sesame oil
- 1 teaspoon rice wine

Sauce:
2 espresso cups of stock (1/2 beef stock cube in hot water will do)
1 tablespoon light soy sauce (coeliac use gluten free version)
1 tablespoon soy sauce (coeliac use gluten free version)
1 tablespoon rice wine
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon cornflour (I tend to use rice flour, it works too)

Method:

Slice the steak thinly in slices and cut each slice again in half if you want small pieces. Marinate in light soy sauce, sesame oil and rice wine for at least 15 minutes.

Soak the dried noodles in cold water until softened. Drain

Place the Chinese leaves with the noodles, and pour over it the boiled water from the kettle, repeat 2 or three times (drain in between the times, then leave it soaking in the water) (Omit this step if you are using fresh noodles)

Heat the oil in a wok large enough for the noodles. Make sure the wok is very hot and sauté the garlic, shallots and ginger until fragrant. Add the beef slices and stir-fry briskly for a few minutes. Do not worry if they are half cooked. Remove.

Mix the sauce ingredients in a bowl, stir well. Pour the sauce into the hot wok and allow it to thicken, stirring continuously.

Return the beef to the wok. Add the noodles and mix well in the wok so that the noodles are well coated with the sauce and beef .

(if you want that smoky taste, you can flambé the noodles...)

Serve immediately and enjoy!! (I certainly did!) Slurply good!

For vegetarians or even vegans, replace the marinated meat by caramelised tofu see my recipe there).

Last time I had this dish was in Singapore, in the little cafe in front of the Royal Peacock hotel, where I was staying. I had quite craving tonight and decided I'd make them..

Source: my memory of the dish, and a million of recipes on the net I made a synthesis of....

Melaka chicken Rice Balls

I travelled to Malaysia this year and had wonderful food experiences that I want to share with you. No recipe for this post I'm afraid, although if anyone knows how to cook this please let me know, I'd love to cook it myself.

On my way to the historic Square of Melaka (Malacca) from my hotel (Hotel Puri, I could make a whole post on it, it was beautiful), I got a bit Peckish and had a sudden want to try chicken rice balls in a small restaurant that was doing take away too. I would have preferred to stay in, but my travel companion did not want to spend too much time sat down in a restaurant so the consensus was that I took away the dish.

When I finally opened the box and tasted it I could not believe my tastebuds: it was so flavoursome, tasty, the texture and association was incredible. The chicken was juicy and moist, the sauce was soft and meaty, the vegetable were working perfectly with it, and the texture of the rice balls was perfect..

My travel companion regretted then not to have stopped in the restaurant and in the evening, we stopped in an other restaurant at a corner in the same street that claimed a bit louder to do that dish. I had something else then, but her chicken rice ball was nowhere near as good as the one I had for lunch.

So next day lunchtime, we came back to the older quainter looking restaurant (the one just before the mini roundabout and the bridge!), sat down, asked for the menu. No menu. Only one dish! So of course we ordered it! A family of other westerners sat down next to us and quickly went out as soon as they realised there was no menu, their loss!

It turned out that the owner, a lovely lady, had made that dish in that same restaurant for 42 years! No wonder it was so good!