Eating out - Penang Style!

On Sunday, Damian took me out for some Hawker food. That is: food sold in small quantities from a circle of vendors who deliver to your numbered table, and you pay on delivery. There's always a huge variety to choose from, from Indian to Chinese to traditional Malaysian...

1/ Roti Jala: Chicken curry with a kind of bright-yellow fried bread that looks like a fishnet made from cooked spaghetti. They make it by putting the liquidy dough into a device like an upside down pepper-pot and dripping it into the pan, so you get a web of just-cooked fried dough. Very nice, and good hand-food.

2/ Chicken clay pot: chicken and rice with bacon and some kind of fish-sauce to make it brown. And a fried egg on top. And Spam (no: just joking about the Spam).... and for pudding...?

3/ Rojak: sounding like a Japanese version of a device for preventing your car being stolen, it looks nice enough: sliced and diced fresh fruit covered in a brown sauce of some kind. Usually there is a mix of fruits in there, but this time it was mostly some kind of hard, not-very-sweet pear thing. "The best Rojak comes from Penang, everyone says that" quoth Damian, so I knew I was in the culinary epicenter. I got out the toothpick I was given and picked a piece up and ate it. Mmmmm...non-nom-nom.... bluuuurrgghh... a familiar taste was coming out. "Wass in this, Damian?" "Umm. Fruit. And shrimp paste. With chili sauce... " OK: it wasn't the worst thing I have ever eaten in my life (which I may Blog about at some point) but it will definitely be filed under N for "never again". Just for the record I ate a fair bit of it trying to "acquire the taste". I never did.

August is part of the rainy season in Malaysia: which means it rains every so often, usually in a torrential downpour, but they just put the blinds down and business goes on as usual - see photo.

Later that night I just walked a hundred yards from the G hotel down Gurney Drive to the well-known Hawker market there. I think well-known weird-food arsehole Andrew Zimmern did a show on Gurney Drive - may have been where he barfed the durian. Hahaha....
 
Safe travels! Des

Onigiri - Japanese Snack Food

In Japan, and Japanese influenced-countries like Taiwan, you can get sandwiches at the ubiquitous Lawson Stations or 7-11's, BUT you are missing out on a treat if you just stick with the Western food. Try an onigiri for a light, healthy and very tasty treat. About the size of a baseball, the standard triangular onigiri you can get in convenience stores is also an incredibly well-designed feat of packaging.

The central rice "ball" has a small amount of filling: in this case, if I read my Chinese right, it's creamy shrimp(?) - please correct me if I'm wrong here. But the crispy nori wrapping goes soggy if it touches the rice. Several years ago, Japanese design engineers came up with a way to keep the nori on the outside separate from the rice by a two-layer packaging design. You pull the tab (top dead center of the triangle) out and around, splitting the package in two, then pull off the plastic wrapping from each of the other corners, and voila - crunchy nori wrapped around the riceball. It's like the magician's trick where he pulls the tablecloth off the table and leaves the crockery intact.

Try two different flavors and a drink and you've got a great lunch for around USD$5.

Safe travels! Des

Soul Food: Malaysia (Singapore Style)

As part of the ritual of getting acclimatized to a new country, I always try to get as much of the local food into me as soon as possible. Depending on what I learn from my local colleagues or on the web about food-hygiene concerns, I either eat well-cooked food, and drink coffee or hot tea (e.g. in Mexico)... or just tuck into whatever is going (e.g. in Japan). The only time I have been ill from eating food was in Suzhou, China - it was Western-style food with Third-World style preparation.

One place you are very safe and can eat pretty-much everything is Singapore. You may need to take out a second mortgage if you want to drink the beer, however. ["Tiger, tiger, burning bright / holes in your pockets on a drunken night..." Apologies to Blake.] The pictured meal was the Grand Plaza Park Hotel's slightly off-kilter, but very enjoyable, version of the Malaysian soul-food "Nasi Goreng". The Grand Plaza threw everything but the proverbial kitchen sink into this one:

- Chicken satay

- Dried fish (similar to Indian "Bombay Duck")

- Chicken wings

- Shrimp and veggie fried rice

- Prawn crackers

- Vegetables with hot sauce on top

- Lettuce and tomato salad

- Fish sauce on the side

- Fried egg on top

...no Spam though. Which is always a good thing. Bloody vikings!

Safe travels!