Loved you once…

This…

…was my favourite roti canai in town, the one at this coffee shop here.

I can’t remember the last time I went there to enjoy it – I guess it must be before the outbreak of the pandemic before March last year. I cannot recall buying any home either, not from here nor from any place in town. All this while, we would go for the frozen ones, the roti canai or the roti paratha or whatever they call it, even the made-in-China Jay Chou ones…

In the past, I used to see them giving a pouch of curry or whatever dip in the packs of roti canai but I have not seen that for a long time now and since we do not have the dhal curry dip, we would just open a can of tuna curry…

…for that purpose. It sure does not come cheap, I must say – that small can costs RM6.00 each. It used to have one red cili padi and a lot more potatoes inside but not anymore. At best, you may find two little cubes of potatoes besides the tuna.

Anyway, going back to the aforementioned roti canai, I went to town early the other morning, before 8.00 a.m., as I needed to stock up on my prescriptions. I like going early, as soon as they open, as I would be the only customer so there will not be anybody around other than the boss and one or two of his employees – #staysafe #staywell

Once I was done, before I headed home, I decided to drop by the coffee shop to buy the roti canai. I was sure my girl would enjoy that for breakfast. There were customers at three tables only in the double-shoplot coffee shop, two on the pavement outside and if I am not wrong, the couple having their breakfast inside were the people running one of the stalls there.

I passed by this stall…

– it was not open and I noticed that the photo of their Bovril mee had been slashed across diagonally with the initials, N.A. written by the side. It sure looks like they are no longer selling it so the only alternative would be the Bovril spaghetti here…

…at more than double the price…or you can cook your own at home.

I went to the roti canai stall – yes, they are still there, the same people and my order for 3 pieces (RM1.20 a piece)…

…was ready in no time at all.

My girl reheated one in a non-stick pan before sitting down to eat but I did not bother to do that. I found mine rather under-done, very doughy, very rubbery, nowhere near the nice ones that I used to enjoy before…

It did not taste great at all. I thought other than its texture being all wrong, it was kind of bland and lacked the lovely fragrance of any perfectly fried roti canai.

Even the dip…

…was rather diluted but I did like it still.

I must say I was very disappointed. I could have gone and bought something else instead and if this is what it is like these days, I sure would not bother to go back there to buy anymore, thank you very much.

TWIN CORNER (2.293179,111.820821) is located at the back at the corner of the block of shops to the left of Paramount Hotel, Jalan Kampung Datu.

Discounts…

I went out for a drive early the other morning. I do that every day to recharge the car battery.

In the past, I would just start the car and leave it running for 10-15 minutes but no, after a while, the battery just went kaput. The workshop guy told me I should not do that and I should drive around so that is exactly what I’ve been doing since.

I stopped by this bakery…

…in the commercial area round the corner from my house because my girl seemed to enjoy the buns that her ex-coursemate bought in Sarikei that day and gave to us. The other bakery opposite and the one beside the fast food franchise at the back were both still closed – it was that early in the morning.

I am not all that keen on dropping by these places as they did appear in the daily lists of places where there were people tested positive before but I have not seen them mentioned again lately. Anyway, it was so early in the morning – there was only one girl there at work, sorting out the newly-arrived buns that morning and placing them on the shelves, nicely labelled.

I saw a tray of assorted buns from the previous day that they were selling at discounted prices. Unfortunately, they were not tagged or labelled so I did not know what buns those were…and the girl was so busy that I did not feel nice asking her.

In the end, I just picked two of these…

…the only two in the tray.

I think they are usually called butterfly fritters but the Foochow version here is called ma ngee (horse’s ears) and of course, they are called by all sorts of names. In the past, prior to the outbreak of the pandemic, people would wait for these to come out of the kitchen, usually after 1.00 p.m. in the afternoon. The instant they appeared, they would all be snapped up, gone in no time at all.

They would be coated with a sprinkling of sugar but being a day old, obviously, that had melted completely. Other than that, everything was fine…

…and we enjoyed it so much especially when we had not had it for a while now.

They used to sell these home-made ones…

…in the afternoon at the fruit & vegetable sundry shop in the next lane from my house and of course, I would hop over to buy quite regularly. These were more authentic but the aforementioned ones from the bakery are just as nice, if not nicer even though they may not be as old-school as these.

I also bought two loaves of bread, one with walnut and cranberries and a plaited one with blueberry jam that looked a bit like the one from Sarikei that we liked a lot, minus the raisins. Both tasted great! Unfortunately, I did not ask for the breakdown of the prices so I do not know how much those ma ngee were after discount. They used to cost RM1.00 each, dunno now. Altogether, I paid RM9.90 for all my purchases that morning.

WeCare Bakery, Pedada outlet (2.311098, 111.846125) is located at the corner shoplot, back to back with the Sugar Bun outlet in that area to the left of Delta Mall, Jalan Pedada (now Jalan Dr Wong Soon Kai).

Not there…

The other morning, my girl had to go to school to settle some matters so I dropped her off there and in the meantime, I went to buy these tee peang…

…our Sibu version of the Singapore Foochow oyster cake (which is quite different actually), now available in the morning at this coffee shop…

Back in July, my sister stopped by my house to give us some and she told me then that they are now operating their stall at the aforementioned coffee shop in the morning so we can stop by to buy anytime, no need to wait till sundown to go to their stall at the pasar malam (night market).

I placed my order and chatted with the lady…

…while she was doing the cooking. Yes, she said that they are still running their stall at the pasar malam at night and yes, she added that despite the pandemic, they do get a lot of customers there.

I was able to watch her at work and I saw how she would use the batter to lay out the base on her ladle…

…before she put the meat filling…

…and added more batter to cover it…

Finally, she submerged the ladle in the hot boiling oil…

Once the tee peang was cooked enough, it would come unstuck from the ladle and would float to the surface of the oil.

I must say that I was impressed by how clean the oil was. I have seen people frying these peah on the spot for sale and the oil was already black but somehow or other, they did not seem unduly worried by that.

They also sell some other things at their stall…

…and I saw some customers ordering their picks from them and sitting down to enjoy eating at a table in the coffee shop. They had fried kompia with minced meat filling (probably the same as what they have in their tee peang), chai peah (vegetable fritters), sweet potato & banana fritters, deep fried or koi (yam cake) and Chinese French toast.

No, even though there were not many customers around, lots of empty tables so physical distancing was definitely not a problem at all, I had no intention of sitting down there to eat.

Once my order was done (RM2.00 each, with meat filling)…

…I headed straight home to enjoy them in the comfort of my own home – #staysafe #staywell #stayhome and yes, they were really good…

…as good as always and I sure wouldn’t mind going back there when I feel like having more.

No, that handsome boy was not there, probably caught up with his daytime job. I wonder if he is still helping out at his family stall at the pasar malam at night.

HOCK LOK HONG CAFE SHOP 福樂園茶室 (2.284690, 111.832669) is located at No. 1, Lorong Lanang 2 at the traffic lights where you turn in from Lanang Road heading toward the Sibu Rejang Esplanade and the Li Hua & Kingwood Hotels.

Slowly but surely…

The previous Friday, my girl was delighted when her mum told her that she would cook Sarawak laksa for our meals on our no-meat day.

Well, last Friday, I told her I would make popiah (spring roll)…

…or what they call lumpia in Indonesia and the Philippines and of course, she was very happy to hear that as well.

Unlike in Kuching, we can’t just go out and buy some decently good ones here and there – here, we will have to make our own. It isn’t very hard to do, just that it will take a lot of time, all that cutting, chopping and shredding.

It sure does not help one bit that in our family, we were very fastidious about how we did it – my late mum and her sisters, half Chinese and half Melanau, were something like the Peranakans, nyonyas and they took pride in what they cooked. Everything must be cut in their very fine and delicate ways, very very thinly so if you think you can just simply do it anyhow, as quickly as you can, be prepared for the lashing of tongues! You will not hear the end of it.

I have inherited that characteristic of the family so when I make popiah (or cook anything for that matter), I would prefer to do it myself…slowly but surely. I did blog about cooking the filling in this 2010 post here but I did not use any meat this time around. Instead, I picked 10 out of one bag of around 30 prawns, removed the heads and shell and chopped them up and minced them for that same purpose. This would be the 4th time we’ve used the prawns and yes, we still have a lot in the freezer!

Another difference is I no longer add taugeh (bean sprouts) to my popiah filling. For reasons unknown, they will go bad (chow sui) if you do not eat everything up quickly. These days, I use carrot, finely shredded, instead and that, of course, will give a little bit of colour to the filling. In my growing up days, our tau kua (bean curd cake) was yellow/orange in colour but the dye used was deemed harmful to health so the practice was put to a stop immediately. That, of course, means that tau kua is white these days so the use of carrots instead of taugeh is a good alternative, at least where the colour is concerned.

The following blogpost shows how one can wrap a popiah but these days, we can’t get nice freshly-made popiah skin here so we have no choice – we just use the frozen ones, the brand that we like…

Other than that, I did not add any of the factory-made khong therng (kacang tumbuk)…

…anymore because I am on a low-sugar diet and that, of course, means that I had to do away with the starchy caramelised sugar “glue” as well. I bought a couple of cans of my favourite roasted & salted peanuts, sieved them well to remove the salt and pounded them to use in place of the super sweet kacang tumbuk.

Well, it did not matter much really, the things we had to do with or without, as at the end of the day, it…

…was just as nice and we enjoyed it a lot, both for our lunch as well as our dinner that day.

Despite it being so labour intensive, we still would want to do it all over again…and again…and again. We enjoy eating it so much but for the next round, perhaps we shall have our version of the Vietnamese rice paper rolls for a change. We’ll see!

Good together…

These two go so well together -the fried ikan bilis (dried anchovies) and peanuts…

In the good old days when I could drink, I used to frequent those places like pubs and cocktail lounges to listen to some live music and have a drink or two and more often than not, they would give this winning combination to go with the drinks.

Incidentally, it was at one of my favourite hangout spots, Crossroads at Concorde KL that I bumped into Jac Victor, remember her – our first Malaysian Idol but no, I did not drop by anywhere for a drink that morning and got that to munch. Those were the days – I no longer touch a drop anymore.

I fried some ikan bilis because there was some leftover rice in the fridge and I decided that I would have porridge for breakfast again. It so happened that my missus had toasted some peanuts in the oven and kept them in a bottle so I just took a bit and enjoyed the two together with my porridge.

Now, that wasn’t the only thing I did. There was one century egg or pídàn left in the house so I peeled it and cut it into bits and added it to my porridge…

Much to my surprise, it seemed to melt away completely in the simmering. I was somewhat disappointed as I wanted to eat those little bits of the egg. In the end, all I had left was its very light taste in the porridge. If I had known, I would have served it separately and eaten it little by little while I enjoyed the porridge at the same time.

Luckily, I had the ikan bilis & peanut combo and I also fried an omelette…

…with a sprinkling of some chopped spring onion from my garden so I did not have to eat that almost-plain bowl of porridge on its own.

Not mine…

Some people may like this…

…but no, it doesn’t match mine, my selera (appetite), that is, even though I do not mind things spicy.

No, I did not buy it – my missus did – she loves all things pedas (spicy) but she did say that it was not really nice. Well, I guess if I did not try, I would never know.

This is another one from the ABC people – their pancit canton…

…is not too bad, not as nice as the celebrated Indomie…

…also Indonesian, but it was all right. I know some people like their kicap manis (sweet soy sauce) and my missus will always have a few bottles of their cili pedas (hot chili sauce) in the house, her favourite.

There are three sachets inside…

…each packet, one with the oil and two conjoined ones with the seasoning and the chili.

I cooked one that morning…

…and served it, garnished with some chopped spring onion from my garden, with some leftover char siew (barbecued pork)…

…by the side and one fried egg…

…sunny side up, the yolk all soft and runny.

No, I did not enjoy it. It had a very strong smell of serai (lemon grass) or whatever, something like the soto ayam from another Indonesian instant noodle company. My missus liked that one but no, it never tickled my fancy. Other than that, it was way too salty and for want of a bit more oil, it was rather dry.

I told the ladies later about it and they were surprised that I cooked it dry! It was meant to be a soup dish, they said. WHAT? Oh dear! I did not look at the instructions at the back – I just assumed it was another one of those Indonesian mi goreng, dry. My bad!

P.S.:
Yes, I did cook another packet a few days later, the soup version this time and it turned out to be pretty good, just a little bit spicy. Maybe it may need a little bit of getting used to at the start, the exotic taste but after a while, I quite enjoyed it. I bet if I had taken the trouble to add my own ingredients, that will bring the taste to a whole new level. Anyway, at RM3.00 for a pack of 5, 60 sen each, I do not see any cause for complaint.

Pouring rain…

No, it did not rain that day, it poured…like somebody up there was pouring buckets of water down from the sky. The water in the drain outside the house rose and in no time at all, it overflowed and the whole neighbourhood was flooded. Actually, most parts of the whole town was submerged!

There wasn’t anything that we could do – we just sat there and watched the water rise and prayed very very hard that the rain would stop. The water had just reached the edge of our door when the rain eased, thank God for small mercies, and the flashflood subsided. It did not stop though – it went on all through the night till morning but thankfully, it was not that heavy anymore so we were spared the threat of another flashflood.

The rain finally stopped completely soon after daybreak and the sun came out. Gosh! It was such a mess outside, the flotsam and the jetsam, mainly dried bits of grass as we just had it cut the previous week and it all stuck to the walls and the flower pots and everything around the house compound. We spent the whole morning cleaning up the mess!

Seeing that there was so much to do, I decided to go out and buy some food for our lunch and dinner so my missus would not need to do any cooking that day.

I did not want to venture too far away from the house so I went to the coffee shop round the corner because I wanted to buy their very nice barbecued pork ribs…

I think I went there in July, and that was quite sometime ago but I can’t recall exactly the last time I had their ribs.

The thing was I would go around mid-afternoon when there would not be any customers around and all the stalls except this one would be closed but most of the things would be sold out. That was why I had not been able to buy their very nice ribs…

…nor their sweet freshly-made lap cheong (Chinese sausage)…

…that my girl seems to enjoy. That is often sold out as well by mid-afternoon.

Personally, I prefer their char siew (barbecued pork)…

…to those sausages but my girl is not thus inclined. Nonetheless, I also bought some…

…to enjoy.

This time around, I did not buy their siew yoke (roast pork), roast chicken and roast duck. That was a lot already for two meals for the three of us – we just ate to our hearts’ content and saved what was left over till the next day.

MEI LE CAFE (2.313147, 111.846968) is located along Jalan Gambir, a stone’s throw away from the Delta Mall, straight ahead from the first turning to your left as soon as you turn into that road from Jalan Pedada, now Jalan Datuk Wong Soon Kai.

Three times…

Some of you may remember that I bought a whole lot of pek hay (seawater prawns), over 5 kilos of those lovely crustaceans, from my favourite fish & seafood stall here.

The other day, my missus cooked some of them again…

…which means that all in all, we have had them for three times now.

The first time, she stir-fried around 20 of them in sesame oil and lots of garlic…

…her favourite recipe whenever she cooks those giant freshwater prawns or udang galah.

The second time was when we boiled some 20-30 of them to add as one of the ingredients in our Sarawak laksa…

…that day and of course, we used the stock, including what we got from boiling the shells and the heads for the lovely laksa broth. Needless to say, with those added, the broth was extra tasty, so sweet and delicious.

This third time around, she took out another batch of around 30 of them – these were bigger than the ones we had the previous two times and after removing the heads and the shell, she dipped them in some Korean batter (bought from the Korean Store in town), coated them with bread crumbs and deep fried them…

Of course, that was so very delicious!

The prawns were so fresh – so very sweet, firm and succulent…

…and with the batter and all, the tail was so crispy we just ate it all up. I’m sure if my missus did not remove the heads and the shell, we could have done the same with those.

There were so many, enough for two meals and at the end of the day, there were still some left so we just enjoyed snacking on them just like that as we reckoned they would not be so nice anymore if we kept them in the fridge till the next day.

I did mention a few times that we would buy the smaller (and cheaper) ones of these pek hay for chor liao (use as ingredient). I did not buy any that day as I had bought so much already but yes, we did set aside some for this purpose when stir-frying vegetables, for instance. We just need to add a few…

…and that will bring the dish to a whole new level – extra sweet, extra nice. You just can’t go wrong with prawns, I tell you…and that sure beats adding a whole lot of factory-produced sauces and msg or whatever flavouring in an effort to make your dish taste better.

The fish & seafood 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 (formerly Jalan Pedada).

You are the one for me…

In an earlier post, I mentioned that come Chinese New Year during my growing up years, my dad would order the bak kua (barbecued meat slices) from Singapore and the peanut farmer brand menglembu peanuts from Perak.

Some of the guests dropping by during our Open House would go for a beer or hard liquor such as brandy – Meukow, Hennessey or Martell V.S.O.P. usually or whiskey – Johnny Walker, VAT 69 or Black & White and much later, Chivas Regal and salted peanuts were a must to go with the drinks.

Back in those colonial days, this…

…was the brand that we were most familiar with and it is available to this very day, be it in a can or in bottles. Of course, they do not come cheap, not at all so it is quite obvious why we have not bought any for a long long time.

In the aforementioned blogpost, I was talking about one brand where they have the peanuts in small packets, something like what they would give you on board if you are flying on our national airline. We have bought quite a number of boxes already and we would finish all the packets in each box so very quickly mainly because there is so very little peanuts in each of them.

Eventually, we were thinking that perhaps, we should go back to the ones in cans…

…and this is the brand that we usually buy, currently priced at RM3.50 each, from the importer and distributer of the celebrated Shandong peanuts…

– the Sing Aik Seng Company at No. 1, Aik Dee Road…

…off Lanang Road here. The peanuts are imported from China, of course, and you can buy them in their shells by the kilo at the address mentioned above or pre-packed in big packets at the shops and supermarkets.

My girl prefers this brand as she likes how they are harder and have more crunch like the ones in the little packets but no, I do not share those same sentiments, I’m afraid. Besides, when I tried a bit of what was in the can that she had opened to munch, I found that it was VERY salty. She said she did not mind that one bit – because it is so salty, she will just eat a bit and stop after a while.

Incidentally, I found that if you tap the can by the side, the salt will all settle to the bottom. That way, it will not be so salty when you eat it, only when you get to the bottom of it all.

Well, the mum came home the other day with this…

…also packed by some people in Sibu, the same Shandong peanuts from China…

This one is a bit more expensive though, RM4.00 a can.

I prefer the taste of this brand plus it is not as salty as the former – in fact, you will not see any trace of the salt until you have reached the bottom of the can -and the peanuts are not as hard/crunchy. However, it upsets me to see how there are mostly halves in the can…

…unlike the other brand. I would usually look for the whole peanuts and eat those first, my OCD. LOL!!!

I guess this is the brand that I will go for these days but of course, I shall have to go slow with the peanuts in the can and not finish them off at one go. The high uric acid content may trigger off a gout attack! Shudders!!!

Younger days…

On Friday last week, I dropped by our neighbourhood shop in the next lane in the hope of buying some more of the very nice nasi lemak bungkus that I got from there not too long ago. Unfortunately, there was none available but I did manage to get hold of a pack of meat-free sushi and we could have that for our breakfast.

I went over again on Sunday morning and yes, this time around, they had the nasi lemak bungkus (RM2.00 a pack)…

…so I bought 3 packs for the 3 of us. Yes, it was consistently good, as nice as the previous time I bought it.

I also saw these…

…that morning, going for only RM2.00 a pack. This is called yew chang koi or fried shallots cake, something that we loved and enjoyed a lot in our younger days.

In my post the other day, I mentioned how way back then, when we went to the movies at the Lido Cinema here, we loved going to the stall by the side of the building to buy the sotong bakar, squid grilled over a barbecue fire and clobbered till completely mashed and we would enjoy it dipped in the seller’s own-made chili sauce.

This yew chang koi was another thing that we would love to buy and enjoy either before or after a movie in those long gone days. They steamed it in those little enamel-coated metal bowls and using a bamboo spatula, they would cut lines in the soft cake for something like those tic-tac-toe squares after which they would sprinkle fried shallots and pour some sweet chio cheng (light soy sauce) over it…

I remember it was so cheap at the time, probably 10 sen a bowl and to us, it tasted so so so good.

This was not available for a long time – no one was making it and gradually, it reappeared. Some failed to make the grade, nothing like the real thing and personally, I felt that the best would be the one at a stall in the pasar malam (night market)…

…but of course, with the pandemic, I am not sure whether they are still selling it there or not and of course, you will not expect to see me there since it has been declared a high-risk hot spot, best avoided!

This one was good as far as the texture of the cake was concerned (it is actually something like chee cheong fun except that it is not paper thin) and the sauce was great too…

…but I had the feeling that they just used the factory-made fried shallots sold at the supermarkets. Thankfully, it was not smelly – some have this unpleasant smell that puts me off right away but I did not think it was all that fragrant.

My friend, Rose in Kuching, blogged about how one can make one’s own at home. It seemed that her hubby, a true-blue Foochow from central Sarawak, was craving for it and since they could not get it there, they had to make their own. You can hop over to her blog and have a look at her post on this and try making it if you so desire.

The one I bought was good enough for my missus, she enjoyed it too but it did not tickle my girl’s fancy. According to her, she would much sooner go for some chee cheong fun…

…instead but that is something that is not easy to come by here in this Foochow town – I think that is Cantonese.

SWEE HUNG (2.316161, 111.840441) is located along Jalan Ruby, in the block of shops on the right – next to a hair salon at the extreme end…and on the other end, to the left is the Kim Won Chinese Medical Store and Mini-supermarket.