A Few of My Favourite Things !

We only spent 1.5 days there but I think we manage to fit an admirable amount of food in during this short period! On our first night, we visited Guerney Drive. It was pouring with rain so we wandered through the shopping centre next door until the skies let up. As soon as the rain eased, we were out of the shopping complex and in amongst the stalls. Good timing because we managed to get seats just before the crowd descended.

We started with Assam Laksa, one of A.’s favourite dishes, and boy was it good. Fantastically sour and spicy, the only thing it was missing was the black sauce - what’s that called again? We also tried a cuttlefish salad (Ju Hu Eng Chai) and I cannot recommend this dish highly enough - I just couldn’t get enough of it!

Of course, after reading so much about Poh Piah, we had to try this as well. Nyeh, wasn’t the greatest poh piah that I’ve had. A little on the soggy side.

This was washed down with soya bean milk, which we kinda had to order whether we liked it or not because the tables belong to that stall. Good thing that we did like it. I was told off at another table because I didn’t want to order freshly squeezed fruit juice and the guy grumbled that I couldn’t just sit there and not order from them! Ooops!

A. decided that he couldn’t leave without tasting the satay too so here’s the picture.

We came back to Guerney drive another night, after spending a couple of days in Langkawi, and ordered the Assam Laksa from another stall. This one did come with the black sauce but A. thought that the Laksa from the first stall was better.

The ice kachang served in Penang is also slightly different, made more decadent with the addition of ice cream. The one you see here had peanut icecream. Yum, I love ice kachang. I used to just eat the shaved ice sweetened with rosewater and evaporated milk from the top and leave the other stuff at the bottom of the dish for dad. Naughty, huh? I didn’t like all that red bean, corn and attap although the grass jelly was okay. Now, I’m happy to try some of it but my favourite part is still the flavoured ice.

One of my other favourites is Ban Chang Kueh, a pancake sprinkled with crushed peanuts and sugar. I had a really hard time tracking them down both this trip and the last, especially the thin crispy ones, so when we came across this stall selling Apong Manis and Apong Balik, we got a serve of each. The Apong Manis just consisted of batter spread very thinly over the little wok so it’s very light and airy. Didn’t love it. The Apong Balik was better though and I think it was filled with corn and coconut.

A. loves anything with peanuts so we tried these thingys as well. I cannot remember what they are called although I’m sure some Malaysians could help me out with this. We really liked this version cos the pastry was really thin and it was choc full of peanuts (makes it sound like a Snickers bar, doesn’t it?).

We have been home for more than 2 weeks now and I still have not posted anything from our Malaysian holiday. Why not? Well, we had so much wonderful food that I have no idea where to begin. How’s that for an excuse?

I suppose I could start with one of our more memorable meals. Our two week visit coincided with two festivals, one of them being Diwali (Deepavali) the Hindu Festival of Lights. Deepavali is celebrated as a public holiday in Malaysia and traditionally small earthen lamps are lit to commemorate the victory of brightness over darkness, good over evil. The city was decorated brightly for this festival and we saw a number of colourful images like these in the shopping centres:

The night before the Indian community went on holiday, we visited a banana leaf restaurant with some new blogosphere friends. K.L. from Masak Masak had kindly offered to show us around when she found out that we were visiting. We made plans to dine at this restaurant but instead of just meeting there, K.L. and her boyfriend came all the way into the city to pick us up - typical Malaysian hospitality!

After selecting a few marinated seafood items that we wanted to try, we sat at the table in front of our banana leaf plates. The waiters then start piling white rice, pickled vegetables and potato curry onto the leaf - as you can see, my waiter got carried away scooping rice onto my ‘plate’ while I was busy taking photos!

A trio of curry sauces - fish, chicken & dahl - served in silver canisters are also placed on the table for you to pour over the rice at your leisure. We were also served papadums and deep fried bitter gourd (if I remember correctly).

We had a prawn curry, fried calamari, two types of fish and roe. We managed to eat all this without any cutlery, trying very hard to neatly mould rice, sticky with curry sauce, with the fingers of our right hand and manouvering it into our mouths.

A. & I both thought the deep-fried roe was fantastic in all its salty and crunchy goodness!

Here is an ‘after’ shot:

Thanks, K.L. & Y., for being so generous with your time