I heard of a place in town that sells very nice sio bee or the Sibu-style meat dumplings or siew mai so I made a beeline to the coffee shop and bought some to try….
I understand that the taukeh-neo (lady proprietress) makes them herself and they’re selling at 70 sen each…
Are they really that nice? Ummmm…I would say that they’re very tasty, that I cannot deny. However, somehow, they remind me of those from that so-called dim sum place in Kuching and I never like what they sell there – the pao (steamed bun) skin is yellow in colour and chewy and when you bite into it, the whole chunk of minced meat ball would drop out onto your plate or the table. As for the har kao, you would have to eat the skin (thick like anything) and the filling separately as they would have come apart…and the sio bee is one tough ball of meat. They all taste all right, no doubt but I cannot understand why people are so crazy over them and those in Sibu would buy boxes of the stuff home. Not me, that’s for sure!
Like the ones from that Kuching shop, these here have a whole lot of meat inside…
…but they are not as hard/rubbery. Personally, I think I prefer the ones I had here – and they’re only 50 sen each. Smallkucing loved it so much that he had three at one go!!!
Traditionally, people would make our Foochow/Sibu-style sio bee using meat and sengkuang/mangkuang (turnip) in the right proportions – not too much of either…and there are good ones and not-so-good ones where they would scrimp on the ingredients and add a lot of flour instead…so strictly speaking, these aren’t exactly like what our local sio bee should be…but they’re not bad really, not bad at all.
I also bought the bak zhang that they say are also made by the taukeh-neo herself…
I’ve purposely placed the mug beside them in the photograph so that you would have a fair idea as to how huge they are…and these giant ones are RM3.50 each with a salted egg yolk inside…
It tasted really good…
…with quite a lot of meat and some Shitake mushroom inside besides the yolk but some people may feel the pinch if they have to fork out RM3.50 for one dumpling. But at least, it is better than paying a lot of money for something that really isn’t worth the calories, don’t you think?
So if anybody is interested in trying these, they are obtainable at Kiaw Hin, the coffee shop right next to the Methodist Book Room (across the road from the Inland Revenue office and this coffee shop) in the town centre. Somebody told me before that the Hinghua fried mihun (the one with cangkuk manis) is good there but I have never gone to try – traffic is usually heavy around that part of town and parking can be a real pain. Perhaps I’ll drop by there again someday. We’ll see…
...STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS! 