Haven’t seen you…

Those were the exact words that nice lady at my favourite fish and seafood stall said to me when I dropped by there late Friday morning, “Haven’t seen you for a long time, sinseh (teacher)!”

Yes, I did mention in my post that day that I had not gone there for a while simply because I had bought quite a lot of fish from her and we just ate the last ikan terubok two Fridays ago and sometime last week, we had one of the or chio/ikan bawal hitam/black pomfret and right now, there are two more left in the freezer.

I bought 2 kilos of the not-very-big pek hay (seawater prawns) in early May for use as ingredient (cho liao) when frying vegetables or noodles, for instance and there are still 3 or 4 packets left. Gosh!!! That was such a chore – removing the heads and the shell and deveining them. I sat there doing it the whole morning till my legs went numb, all needles and pins and it took quite a while before I could get back on my feet again.

When I got to the stall that morning, I saw the lady busy peeling the shell and getting rid of the heads of the prawns. She said that there were no customers at the time and since she was free, she decided to pass her time doing that and sell at RM18.00 for 600 gms., normal price RM18.00 a kilo (There were smaller ones going for RM13.00 only a kilo.). Of course, I was delighted to see that as it meant that I would only need to devein the prawns when I got home and I asked her for 600 gms.

I saw that there was sotong (squid) of assorted sizes too – my girl loves those but the last time I bought 2 kilos, my missus also spent the whole morning cleaning them (while I was doing the prawns). The lady offered to do that for me since she was very free so I told her I would take 1 kilo…

…of the bigger ones at RM20.00 a kg.

The last few times I was at the stall, she did not have any of the big prawns, RM45.00 a kilo and I was wishing we had those for our Father’s Day steamboat dinner that night. In the end, we just had to make do with the small cho liao ones.

I told the lady I wanted a kilo…

…and I got 30 altogether. That would work out to only RM1.50 each. They may give you two or three with your noodle dish outside and charge you an arm or a leg for such big ones.

Right now, we have not decided how we are going to cook these prawns and the sotong – we’ll just have to wait and see when the time comes and if it is anything blogworthy, I certainly would blog about it.

The total for my purchases that morning came up to RM78.00 and the kind and generous lady said she would give me the rest of the prawns she had peeled, at least 200-300 gms, I’m sure. In the end, I had quite a lot…

– I’m sure this will last us for quite a while.

I paid her RM80.00 and told her to give the change to her helper, a young boy from Daro, for a cup of coffee or something but no, she would not hear of it and insisted that I took the money back.

The fish stall is located to the right of CCL FRESH MINI MARKET against the wall at that end of the block to the right of the Grand Wonderful Hotel (2.309601, 111.845163) along Jalan Pipit, off Jalan Dr Wong Soon Kai, if you go in via the entrance where San Len Tyres is located, just before the Petronas petrol station a short distance from Delta Mall.