Cooking The Books

Leaving Penang: Ipoh Beansprout Chicken

We ended up leaving Penang about 3pm with a 4 hour drive ahead of us.  Whilst it might seem that after such a gluttonous three days we might not want to see food again I think the metabolisms had adjusted to frequency of intake and so we weren't going to make it through such a long journey without more food.  Luckily for us midway between Penang and KL is a town called Ipoh and as with everywhere in Malaysia it has food it's famous for - beansprout chicken and kuay teow.  With driving time we sat down at 5.30pm, a full 4 hours after our last Penang bite.

 

Penang: Day 3

I have to admit by now I was getting a bit full but we still had a few hours of Sunday to go before we headed home.

11am

Back to the source of yesterday's breakfast and some more noodle soup, this time a Hokkien prawn mee.  This had a slightly spiced broth, both egg and rice noodles, beansprouts, prawns, chicken, hardboiled egg and some little clams.  It's the little bits like the clams in these that make the dishes stand out.  There's just so many individual ingredients that making it at home would be a pain but here the stalls literally cook the same one dish over and over again though, just Hokkien prawn mee day in day out, so it doesn't matter to them if you only need 2-3 tiny clams per person.  All over Penang they served the chili sauce in the spoon.  I never did work out what you were meant to do if you didn't want to stir the whole lot through your soup.

Never one to turn down a new food opportunity I was intrigued by the rather Western looking Roti Baba stall which looking in the top corner had received a favourable review from the press.

Penang: Day 2

After a few hours sleep we were ready to start again.

10am

For breakfast we headed to a local food court full of hawkers.  To maximise the dishes sampled we shared a wan tan mee, curry mee and an otak otak, this time the fish and curry paste mix being steamed rather than grilled voer coals.

Wan tan mee with a nice addition of some shredded chicken

Curry mee, with the shocking at 10am addition of firmed pig's blood.  Black pudding minus the fillers, just purple irony tofu like stuff.  Then again black pudding's good in the morning so why shouldn't this be.  The curry mee had both egg noodles and rice vermicelli in it, something you see over here which I've not noticed back home.  It makes for nice variety in the dish.

Otak otak.  A small fish fillet was wrapped in a paste of various spices and fish flesh, then wrapped in a leaf and steamed.  Very tasty stuff any time of the day.

Penang: Day 1

Whilst everywhere in Malaysia is pretty good for food one place really renowned for its food is Penang.  All around the country folk speak lovingly of the varied and cheap street food there, people go there to eat, heading back time and again to a certain stall who does the best won ton mee or Penang laksa.  Whilst food is cheap in KL here your 4.50 RM noodles cost 3.50 Rm, and they do smaller portions for a couple of ringits too so you can have more than one flavour per meal, or have your meals more frequently, as we did.  Over our 3 days there we ate, we ate nonstop it seemed, travelling between different food courts, travelling across town to a specific hawker renowned for their Penang laksa or to seek out the world famous deep fried chicken skin (that isn't a typo).  Utilising the knowlegde of our friend who'd grown up there to full effect, going to her favourite stalls or stalls recommended by relatives of hers that still live there. 

I think it's easiest if I just go chronologically...

11am

The first meal of the road trip was in KL.  It was my second meal of the day too, having had a dosai and fish curry about 9am.  Laksa is a noodle soup from round these parts and it comes in many variations, the common theme is the laksa leaf (a herb that I though would be the thorn in my side when I came to recreate these dishes at home, google tells me it's Vietnamese coriander though so Hackney should sort it out) and the laksa noodle, a round cross section medium thickness rice noodle.  They all start life as a paste fried till fragrant with some being finished off with coconut milk and other less creamy ones using stock for liquid.  This was a Sarawak Laksa, one of the coconut variety, rich and sweet with beansprouts, prawn and shredded omelette.  Thinking about it after all the talk of the laksa noodle we went and ordered this one with plain old egg noodles.

1pm

Next stop was a service station midway through the drive.  Whilst we're blessed with such delights as trays of sausages, overcooked bacon and stale fried bread in England this service station was actually known for a dwarf variety of mango, fully grown, sweet and ripe yet not as big as a plum and with skin thin enough to eat with a little crunch.  Here they are with their somewhat larger sibling.

We also are guava, water guava and papaya, all served with a good shaking of asam powder, made from the sour asam fruit (a brown pod not unlike tamarind), sugar and salt.  It was a match made in heaven.  Another stall sold peanuts, not the roast kind I'm used to but peanuts soaked in salt water and turmeric then drained and steamed, losing their crunch and taking on a chickpea like taste and texture.  They didn't last long.

Little India Saturday Night Market, Kuala Lumpur

As long as they contain some food I love visiting markets and most holidays of mine will include a visit to the local wet market.  Whilst I love seeing all the weird and wonderful raw ingredients - laid out artfully by the stall holders in an attempt to make you choose their mangoes over the other twenty mango stall's produce (I think it's mango season here) - you can have a far tastier time when the market is full of cooked produce to eat whilst you walk.  One such market in KL is the Saturday Night Market in Little India, not far from the Masjid Jamek LRT station.  The weather was dire when we went but we managed to avoid most the rain and eat a few tasty things.

Satay - far less peanut than Western offerings with the nuts sitting alongside lemongrass, shallots, turmeric and other flavourings.

 

Apam Balik - I'd never seen these before but they were fantastic.  Crisp pancakes with peanut and sweetcorn (it's frequently eaten as a sweet here) inside

 

Indian Halva - I think it looks better than it tastes but the girlfriend likes it

Otak Otak - not unlike Thai fishcakes in taste, although lacking in lemongrass.  Fish paste and a curry paste are mixed then wrapped in a leaf and cooked over coals.

Fresh Naan - we finished the evening in a little food court where they were baking fresh nan, rolling, coating in garlic if you wanted then placing into the stone tandoor in the background where it cooked in what seemed like seconds.  Without a doubt the best naan I've eaten.