Twice…

The Muslim fasting month of Ramadan had just gone past and last week, they celebrated the Hari Raya Aidilfitri festival.  Melissa and her mum did drop by the Ramadan bazaars here and there in the town a couple of times and they did come home with some very nice stuff. I, however, did not bother as lately the heat here had been quite unbearable (to me, at least) or on some days, it would be pouring cats and dogs.

However, two days before the end of Ramadan, Melissa said she would like to have some nasi kerabu for dinner so we headed to the bazaar at Bandong in search of that. Unfortunately, we could not find anybody selling that as most of the stalls were not open probably because they had already wrapped up their business for the year to get ready for the grand celebration of the festival right after the following day. I saw the guy from whom I would buy his very nice nasi lemak in the morning – he wasn’t selling that though and by the time we got there, his mee jawa was already sold out and he only had some rojak mamak left.

This was something like what they call pasembur or the Chinese would call it Indian rojak but the people here used to call it rojak Kassim after the man who was noted for the very nice one that he once sold at his stall at a coffee shop here. To me, I would think it is something like the Indonesian gado-gado…

…and this one that I bought that day was selling for RM3.00, plus another 60 sen for an extra cucur (fried fritters) added. His cucur was very nice, big and crunchy and  the rojak, I would say, was pretty good though I would prefer the peanut sauce/gravy to be a little bit more like what we usually have as a dip with our satay.

The following day, Hari Raya eve, we tried the stalls at the bazaar in the town centre. Needless to say, most were not open anymore but I chanced upon one selling nasi bryani and I recognised the lady as being the wife of the nice Indian guy here and she suggested that we went to the shop instead for the sup kambing (mutton soup)…

…and the thosai…

…and that was exactly what we did!

Melissa also had the nasi bryani…

…with mutton curry…

…and we also tried the ayam berempah (spiced chicken)…

All in all, we enjoyed the food – everything was great. I would say that I would very much prefer the sup kambing here to the celebrated one at Penang Road in Penang – it was not so oily and they did tone down the use of those Indian spices so the smell was not as strong. It could have been a little bit thicker though – I thought that was kind of watery/diluted.

The owner said that he has managed to get two guys from India to work for him and he plans to add some new items to his existing menu after Hari Raya…and he added that the two, being on a working visa, would be more reliable and would not disappear without warning after a while – like the one who used to cook his white tom yam for him. Somebody did comment that he went to the shop in the hope of eating that but was informed that they no longer served it.

Together with the drinks….

…the bill came up to over RM25.00 but the nice guy just rounded it up for me. Well, even if he did not do that, considering that we quite enjoyed all that we had that day, rest assured that we would be dropping by again…and again…

So, going back to the title of this post, that was the exact number of times I went to the Ramadan bazaar this year – twice! What about you?