Up up up…

We had Vietnamese rolls on one of the days when Melissa was home for the holidays and I went to the Central Market in town in search of some nice prawns. There was a stall selling udang galah (freshwater prawns, also known as big-head prawns) – big ones…and when I asked for the price, I had the shock of my life. It had escalated to RM55.00 a kg…no, thank you. There were no medium ones and the smaller ones were by no means affordable either. In the end, I bought some pretty big tiger prawns at RM35.00 a kg which turned out really nice and sweet – very fresh and succulent indeed.

I removed the heads and the shell and I boiled those and kept the stock.  The following day, I decided that we could have a steamboat dinner, using the very sweet stock as the soup base…

It was a simple one really, nothing fancy – we had sweet corn in it…

…and meat balls, fish balls, two kinds of mushrooms, crab sticks (my daughter loves those – I’m not too crazy about them myself), tung hoon (glass noodles), green vegetables and more prawns…

I bought these prawns at another stall for RM25.00 a kg. The lady put back about 4 or 5 as it exceeded one kilo and I remarked that she could just add a few, no need to be so accurate…and she put back ONE! But when I thought about it, that one prawn would actually cost more than 50 sen, less than RM1.00 if I counted the number of prawns altogether in the end.

This variety is kind of slimy and slippery and not easy to de-vein. My missus said that was why she did not like to buy those but they turned out to be very nice too – I particularly enjoyed the taste of the gooey stuff in the heads. We did not use all of them for our steamboat and one morning, I took some to cook the celebrated made-in-Singapore instant noodles that my friend gave me – the Laksa La Mian that the website claims to be numero uno…

Of course, mine looked a lot nicer than what they had in the picture in their post…

…and as a matter of fact, it tasted very much nicer than the ones we can get at this place in town especially with the prawns and thinly-sliced omelette that I had in mine.

Since my previous post on the noodles – the time when my niece got me the No. 2 – the curry flavour one from Singapore, they have appeared on the shelves at a supermarket right here in our little town – at RM12.90 for a pack of 4. That would work out to RM3.225 a packet but actually it is quite big and can be shared by two so a bowl like this…

…could cost over RM1.50 only and if you add the cost of the prawns and the egg, it would total up to less than RM5.00 – not bad, cheaper than the one at the laksa franchise place (with hardly any ingredients and the noodles drowning in the broth) and of course, cheaper than our own local version of the prawn noodles here or even here. According to my friend, they are selling that at SIN$10.90 a pack in the island republic so what we have to pay here can be considered really very cheap, especially after the conversion of our currencies.

Well, back to the prawns, after using some for our steamboat and also the noodles, I still have about half left so I guess if we use and eat sparingly like that, it isn’t too bad after all. I certainly would consider buying this cheaper variety when I see them at the market instead of those ridiculously-priced monstrosities.