Missing…

There was an immensely elaborate spread at the buffet table at Peter’s garden party that night to celebrate his mother’s 103rd birthday but despite that, as I did mention in my earlier post, I noticed that a lot of the nice dishes on the café’s menu were missing, those lovely hot and spicy dishes especially.

Surprisingly, their very nice kacang ma chicken…

…was not included either. I wouldn’t say it is difficult to cook this ladies-in-confinement dish but it may need a lot of effort and can be quite time consuming.

You can buy the leaves easily at the Chinese medical stores here, slightly green still even though they have been dried before hand. Consequently, you will have to dry fry them till they’re well done and black in colour and grind or blend them well before they are ready for use.

Other than that, you will need to pound/blend the top quality local ginger till really fine – nothing puts me off than getting bits of it in my mouth while eating the dish and yes, I did say local ginger. Those dehydrated ones imported from China simply do not make the grade. They are not juicy (which is squeezed out and used in the cooking) nor are they “hiam” (the strong and pungent spicy quality of the root) enough and no, you must not remove the skin – that is where the lemakness (richness) of the ginger is).

On top of all that, you will need a reliable supply of the top quality Chinese white wine (pek chiew thow) for the dish!

You can google to find the complete recipe and the steps to cook the dish. It shouldn’t be too difficult, especially considering that Andy, Peter’s Indian sidekick, at Payung Café can do it and do it so very well. I must say that what he dishes out is simply the best, better than many at coffee shops elsewhere (in Kuching) especially when they scrimp on the ingredients or do not use the best…or perhaps, they are not so good at cooking it.

We had our fill of it not too long ago when we were going to my sister’s house for lunch, those days when she was nursing her fractured wrist and since we did not have it that night at the party, I asked my missus if she would like to hop over to the café the other morning for it…

…and needless to say, she was 100% in favour of the idea. We sure enjoyed it and what we were told was that lately, they have had customers dropping by just for a bowl of this to enjoy for lunch with a plate of rice. It certainly looks like more and more people in this Foochow town have acquired the taste for it these days.

We ordered their pomelo salad…

…as well that day and the fruit this round was super sweet. We sure loved it a lot.

PAYUNG CAFÉ (2.284049, 111.833014)…

…is located at No.20F, Lanang Road, Sibu, Malaysia, back to back with the multi-storey car park of the Kingwood Hotel which faces the majestic Rejang River.