Opening day…

Ever since I saw their fish tail banners hanging from the street lamps all over town and the gigantic picture of the gorgeous roast duck in them beckoning to me, I was waiting for the place to open so I could go and give it a try.

From the name, I found out that it is an Ipoh franchise so I did not get my hopes up high – we already have a couple of Ipoh franchises here and let’s say they have been somewhat disappointing. I shared the post on Facebook and my friend, Annie, in KL said it is very famous/a favourite in Ipoh. Hmmm…that sounded promising!

Well, it had its soft opening yesterday, 31st May, so we made our way there at 10.00 a.m., the instant it opened its doors. Today is Gawai Dayak, a public holiday and with the long weekend ahead (holidays will stretch till Monday), I was afraid that there would be a lot of people flocking there, long queues by the entrance (they have placed some chairs there) in the scorching heat we are experiencing these days. Besides, it’s the early bird that catches the worm, so they say!

They’ve renovated the place – formerly, they had this here and later, they changed the concept to this. It is a bit bigger – I think they extended it to include the space outside on the right and I must say that it is very simple, not much decor to shout about or at least, not like what it was like before or at some places around town. I guess they mean business – it is all about the food (and service), no need for all those distractions.

A very nice and friendly waiter came to show us the menu – yes, they have the regular physical menus, none of that scan-the-QR-code nonsense…and he was very friendly, very knowledgeable of everything they are serving and very proficient in English. I was beginning to like the place already…a lot!

We asked for the Grand Platter, small (RM68.00)…

…so we could hit three birds with one stone. We were there to try as much as we could and with this order, we had the very nice and tender signature roast duck and the gorgeous char siew (barbecued pork), so moist, so juicy…

…and on the other side, there was the siew yoke (roast pork)…

…that the ladies voted as their No. 1! It tasted really great and the skin was absolutely perfect, so nice and crispy.

These came with the platter…

– the usual chicken rice chili dip, the sour plum sauce and another one that looked like ginger or something. I did have the chili with the Hainanese rice (RM2.20)…

…but not with the meat – when they taste so good, I would want to savour and enjoy them without drowning them in all these sauces. The rice was all right, nicer than a lot around town but no, it will take a lot more than this to get me jumping with excitement.

My missus does not eat duck so I asked for their roasted chicken, lower quarter (RM15.00)…

…for her and at the same time, we were able to try that as well and these dips…

…came with it.

We did not want the vegetable of the day – lettuce but I did see it ordered by some customers at another table. It did not look like much, quite typical of vegetables served at chicken rice places, blanched and served with oyster sauce. Usually, it is that or taugeh (bean sprouts) fried with salted fish.

We agreed to try their soup of the day though – the pumpkin soup (RM5.00) and yes, it was very good. It tasted like some herbal soup but there wasn’t any pumpkin inside, just pork that was so well-simmered, fall-off-the-bone tender…

We never cooked pumpkin like this at home – if it’s a soup, it will be like those rich and creamy ones served at the western eateries. Perhaps we’ll give this a try one of these days.

I must say on the whole, the service was excellent, very polite and cordial and very prompt – there were quite a lot of people, almost but not full, and despite that, we did not have to wait very long. I did notice a whole lot of packed lunches all lined up on the counter waiting for the delivery people to come and take them away and a number of customers sitting on the chairs outside (initially, I thought they were in the queue) waiting for their tapao (takeaway) orders.

There was only one cashier so there was a queue there when I went to pay for our most delightful brunch but it did not matter though as the young guy was very efficient and everything went smoothly and he could speak English fluently too!!! The total altogether came up to RM112.30 (inclusive of our drinks) and yes, they do accept credit cards here.

Everyone was wondering all this while as to who bought the Ipoh franchise to run this place here. I googled and found a whole lot of outlets in Ipoh and one in Subang or somewhere and now, there is this one here in Sibu. Well, this was on the serviette provided and it turned out that the people with this chain of cafés and restaurants…

…around town are the ones behind it. No wonder I saw some of them promoting this place quite aggressively on Facebook.

We certainly got off on a good start – this place opens from 10.00 a.m. till 9.00 p.m. daily (no off day) and rest assured that I will be going back again soon to try whatever else they may have on their menu that we have not tried yet, like their pipa duck, for instance.

SUN YEONG WAI 新揚威 – Sibu 诗巫 (2.302891, 111.842997)…

…is located at Wisma Liberty, Lot 4047, Block 3, STD 15, Lorong Dr Wong Soon Kai 7.

Looks like we made it…

Yes, I have recovered somewhat and I am well enough to go back to church. That was why I was there last Saturday evening for the weekly novena and the sunset service at our regular church here.

The weather was scorching hot still these days so after we were done past 8.00 p.m., I was thinking of dropping by some place air-conditioned for our very late dinner/supper. I was delighted to see that except for one table, this place was quite empty so we went in quickly and promptly placed our orders.

I had their venison on a hot plate…

…in mind as I knew my girl would love that. It was very good and both the ladies sang their praises of the dish.

I did not know what else to order and the boss suggested their braised mui choy (preserved vegetable) pork belly…

…something we never had before here. Gosh! That certainly was so good it swept us all off our feet. Obviously the meat had been stewed for a long time and was fall-off-the-bone tender and the thick gravy was bursting with flavours. I would want to order that again the next time we drop by here.

My girl wanted the Four Heavenly Kings…

…but they were out of long beans so we only had three – ladies’ fingers, baby corn and my girl’s favourite, brinjal!

The tofu salted vegetable soup…

…was very good too, very strong on the fragrance of the latter. I sure enjoyed that very much.

The bill for the food came up to RM74.00 only, very cheap by today’s standard, I must say but anyway, considering how we enjoyed all the dishes that night, we sure would be back again soon.

I did ask the boss why it was rather quiet and he said that it was getting late – everyone had had their dinner and had gone home. We had made it just in time – it seems that they close at 9.00 p.m. these days, not 10.00 p.m. like before. Gosh! We would have to rush over quickly if we want to have our dinner here after the church service then. The boss did say that it would be all right as long as we could make it before 9.00 p.m. They would not mind staying a little bit longer for our sake, regular customers.

RUBY RESTAURANT…  

…is located at No. 71, Jalan Kampung Nyabor right next to HOME COOK CORNER  (2.292756, 111.825335) with the AmBank Tunku Osman branch in the very next block.

Different size…

I did mention in my blogpost the other day that I do enjoy eating the ikan kembong…

…and the other varieties of similar sizes such as the mak chik…

…for instance.

I do not know their names but there are others like these…

…or these…

For one thing, they’re cheap, all in the region of around RM10.00 a kilo, more or less. Of course, if I buy a kilo or two, there will be quite a number of them but the boy at my regular fish stall near my house will clean them for me, no problem at all.

Unfortunately, they do not get a lot of these – every day, there will be a lot of ikan bawal hitam/or chio (black pomfret) or kim chio (gold pomfret) or those from the lakes at the Batang Ai Hydro-electric Dams – the tilapia, the barramundi (ikan siakap) or the ikan sultan but those do not come cheap. The big ones can fetch around RM30.00 a kilo! I would have to go to the main wet markets to get these small ones but I have not set foot at those places ever since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

I love how they will cook these small fish at the Malay nasi campur (mixed rice) stalls and shops. Some will deep-fry them coated with some kind of kunyit (turmeric) batter…

…and I love the ones at one place here, served with their very delicious black sauce or they may cook my favourite asam fish dish (with tamarind – for their fish curry, they usually use the much bigger ikan tenggiri…

…or the ikan tongkol, the tuna, that is or the ikan bawal hitam) with them like what my missus came out with the other day…

She said she did not add any belacan (dried prawn paste) for its flavour and sweetness because at the moment, I am recovering from my terrible skin affliction so we are avoiding all those things that I should not eat lest I will end up scratching all night long. That was why she did not fry the ladies fingers with hay bee/udang kering (dried prawns) either…

…that day and substituted those with ikan bilis (dried anchovies) instead.

If you go to the Chinese chap fan (mixed rice) places, you may get these fishes in their selection too but they will just deep fry them like that, take it or leave it! I guess they do not have the time to be that creative about how they will serve their fish or they couldn’t be bothered at all.

At one time, at our favourite Indian/Indonesian restaurant here, they had the ikan kembong sumbat (stuffed ikan kembong), see 1st picture above. My missus loved it so much and would order it everytime. They would take out all the bones in the fish and stuff it with their very nice filling…

…before deep frying it to perfection and serving it.

I guess as they always say, size does not matter and as long as I enjoy eating these smaller varieties of fish and the price is right, you can bet I shall not hesitate to buy them anytime when I happen to see them.

Why bother?…

There are people who take pride in their culinary skills and are very fastidious in their cooking – the Peranakans or the nyonyas, for instance. They will go through all the trouble to make sure that what they dish out is simply the best, second to none and woe betide you if they get to sample one of your half-baked efforts in cooking one of their traditional dishes. They will not mince their words, I assure you, when they tear your pride and joy to shreds.

On the other hand, there are people like me! I am all for taking shortcuts, the easy way out, the simpler the better as long as the end result is nice. Yes, I would insist on that – being just edible sure is not good enough, I’m afraid.

In an earlier post on using that very nice A1 Mountain Globe instant paste for cooking curry, I mentioned that at one time, I could buy curry gravy in a can, Yeo’s brand and I used that to cook sardines, rinsed to get rid of the tomato sauce, to come out with my own fish curry. I quite enjoyed it but the older folks in my family were not impressed – they did not like the “canned smell” that we would usually encounter in tinned stuff.

I never tried but I do think it would be good to use that to cook a bowl of vegetable curry – just throw in some ladies’ fingers, long beans, brinjal and so on…or egg curry by adding a few hardboiled eggs to it. The gravy would go well with rice, I’m sure…but unfortunately, I do not seem to see it in the shops anymore these days. Perhaps, it did not sell very well so the company has stopped its production.

I did mention in that aforementioned post another shortcut that we used to resort to when cooking one of our favourite dishes – wee’s satay sauce to cook our satay meat dish…

We would use that to cook beef (usually) and serve it during festivals and at our home parties/dinners…

It was very nice and something everyone would look forward to. For reasons unknown, they stopped production – one fine day, we found that it was no longer available in the shops despite the fact that the other products from that same company were still available.

My mum switched to Ayam Brand but theirs was yellow in colour, nothing like the peanut sauce they give you when you go and eat satay at the stalls or shops. She added a bit of tomato sauce so it would look nicer and for a time, we had to be happy with that.

Finally, at long last, this came out…

…on the shelves and it was as good as wee’s – the taste, the colour, everything so of course, if you take a peek into our pantry, you will find a few cans of this stocked up for use anytime we feel like having satay at home.

Of course, I am off beef and all red meat these days so we would not be cooking those anymore. When I was in Kuching a few years ago, at this place called Lao Eya Keng along Carpenter Street, the pork satay…

…was a crowd puller but I thought it was just all right – it sure did not get me jumping with delight. I love lamb but that too is red meat so left with no choice, we would use the satay sauce to cook pork…

…too. We already have too many chicken dishes so we are not all that keen to use poultry for the dish.

We’ve never tried but I do feel that another shortcut we can take is to use this satay sauce to come out with our own Indonesian gado-gado…

…or rojak Kassim/tambi…

I’m pretty sure that would be very nice.

This…

…seemed to have disappeared off the shelves at the shops and supermarkets as well. It used to be another shortcut that I used to take to cook my own sharks’ fins soup minus the unmentionables, the offensive stuff…

It was so very nice, just like the real thing that they served at wedding banquets. Everyone enjoyed it so much and would never fail to lick the pot clean everytime I cooked it. It was so easy – I could get it ready in minutes, I tell you!

Well, talking about soups, we had this fish maw soup…

…the other day. My missus cooked that and no, she’s not one who will resort to taking shortcuts when she’s cooking. She even went and bought some quail eggs to boil and peel and throw into the soup – my girl loves those eggs (Funny how she is not a fan of hardboiled eggs though – I would have to eat her share everytime!). Ah well! I guess it takes all kinds to make the world – we are all different in our own ways, right?

Things do change…

Looking back at my old blogpost, the last time I was here was in the middle of 2018 but for the same reason – I was craving for the awesome roast lamb….

…that they served here.

When we entered the restaurant, the very old boss was sitting by the side splitting the stems of the paku (wild jungle fern) like what I keep telling people they should do when cooking it. I noticed that there was a whole lot of those ferns and I couldn’t help thinking to myself, “Gee!!! Business must be really very good if they can sell that much in a day!”

Of course, we ordered that, their paku santan (wild jungle fern with coconut milk), one of their signature dishes (RM15.00)…

I dare say that here in Sibu, they do it best – nobody can hold a candle to theirs!

I looked around the place – it looked like nothing had changed at all. The (fake) flowers…

…on the counter were faded/discoloured and covered with dust (even though they seemed all right in the photograph) and I do think they should replace the very old menus…

…instead of desperately trying to salvage them using cellophane tape. Thankfully though, they had stuck to these physical menus instead of resorting to that scan-the-QR-code nonsense at those supposedly more canggih places.

The pictures and decor were minimal, not that anybody would notice and yes, the place was still carpetted…which isn’t very usual for a restaurant! They might have done a thorough spring cleaning though and that prompted my missus to comment that she could not detect the unpleasant moist/damp smell that used to put us off everytime we came here.

Yes, I did mention this before – that they should get rid of the ancient window unit air conditioners and buy some new power-saving ones. That would help them save a bundle on the electricity plus the place would be a whole lot cooler. It was always hot in here, never mind how many fans they placed at strategic places all over the restaurant…and at long last, that was what they did! I saw a few new ones here and there all over the place!

I must say that I liked how they had fine table linen (table cloth) covering all their tables, giving it a touch of class and they used ceramic crockery, no less…

This was their very nice sea cucumber soup (RM24.00) that tasted like sharks’ fins soup minus the offensive stuff and their rice (RM3.00 a bowl). Yes, I felt the pinch when I saw the latter in the bill but I thought it was very nice, most likely that highland Bario rice from the mountains of Sarawak.

I never noticed this here before but it seemed that now, they would fold the paper serviette for the fork and spoon…

…that way I always do when I have dinner parties at home.

The aforementioned old boss was assisted by his equally old wife and there was an even older lady helping them with the serving and what not. I was wondering how they would be able to cope when they had a full house – there was just one table that afternoon, us…and things were a bit slow but it was fine by us. We were not in a hurry to go anywhere.

I also ordered the umai, the Melanau sashimi or raw fish (RM20.00) and it turned out that they used the black pomfret (ikan bawal hitam/or chio)…

…and it was very very good, anytime a whole lot nicer than the ones at the Malay shops and stalls where they use the cheap frozen fish fillet from the supermarkets and vinegar instead of calamansi lime juice!

My missus asked for their cuttlefish with dried chili (RM20.00)…

…something we had never tried before and yes, it was very good too.

Of course, the star of the show was the roast lamb (RM46.00)…

…served with their lovely mint sauce and chopped garlic and what not, the main reason why we decided to drop by there that day. I was taken by surprise when it was served – the presentation on a wooden chopping board was so well done, so impressive and nicer than anything I had seen at those supposedly classier western cafés and restaurants.

We asked for two slabs of the meat only because my missus was not into lamb and that works out to around RM20.00 a slab – not that expensive, I must say, compared to the prices of those thin and not very nice lamb chops here, there and everywhere. This was so very good – so tender, so juicy, so succulent, so very nicely done, a perfect 10! I was so tempted to order more but I am supposed to stay off red meat, doctor’s advice.

The overall total for all that we had came up to RM139.00 (inclusive of drinks), a little bit more than what I would have to fork out at the Chinese chu char (cook & fry) places these days, mainly because of the lamb but it was so worth it! We certainly would love to go back there again a lot more often now.

FISHERMAN RESTAURANT (2.287413, 111.826648)…

…telephone no. 084-316888, is located at No 4, Jalan Chew Geok Lin, the road that leads straight to the Tua Pek Kong Chinese temple in the Sibu town centre with the seven-storey pagoda.

Deliver…

This café was here before, previously this one, and then, it took over the place where our one-time favourite Thai restaurant was or so I heard. We did drop by a few times when the precious owners were running the place but we never went to the present one simply because the name in English was barely visible from the main road and I did not even know it was there till my girl started telling me about it.

The other day, she came home with this chai kueh aka soon kueh…

…that she had ordered from there through her colleague in school. This was the second time and the first time was a disappointment – the skin was dry and hard in parts but this time around, it was perfect, very nicely done, smooth and soft.

The filling could do with a bit of improvement though – even with the nice chili sauce provided…

…we thought it was kind of plain and at RM7.00 for 5, we felt the price was a little steep. There are nicer ones elsewhere that are a little bit cheaper.

Actually, my girl and her colleagues at school are regular customers of this café. They have to stay back at school for meetings and activities and what not in the afternoon several times a week so of course, they would not have time to go home for lunch. Why, they had so little time that they could not even go out to some place close by to eat. Luckily, this café allows them to order what they would like and will deliver their orders to them at the school thus enabling them to eat everything quickly in the limited time available in between.

Among all the rice sets available, my girl likes their nasi lemak (RM6.00)…

…which she says is pretty decent just that she wishes they can be a bit more generous with the sambal. I, for one, would frown at their fried egg – obviously they flip it over so you do not get to see the sunny side up plus the yolk is no longer runny.

Yesterday, she ordered these very impressive-looking noodles…

…from them for her lunch. I was amazed by the amount of ingredients added. Gosh!!! Unfortunately, she said it was kind of salty so she did not enjoy it. I feel that many of the Chinese eateries here tend to be a little over generous with the msg – one must make it a point to remind them not to add any or to add less in their cooking when ordering. Other than that, I do think that they need a crash course in frying eggs!

Ah well…as long as they have something to eat to tide them over till dinnertime, I guess that is all that matters. Anyone interested in ordering his or her lunch from them can call the contact number below to find out the details.

In the meantime, my girl received this pack of sui jiao (dumplings)…

…from my sister’s good friend, Connie. Of course, they went straight into the freezer for the time being – we probably would take them out over the weekend, Saturday morning, perhaps to heat up…

*nice plastic container with a touch of Japanese there*

…and enjoy slowly. She does not seem to have that much time in the morning for a decent breakfast – two half-boiled eggs and she would be on her way.

No time for breakfast, no time for lunch!!! Now, who says a teacher’s job is easy!

U-Ni Cafe 有你茶室 (2.308429, 111.846071)…

…is located at No, 54, Ground Floor, Jalan Wong Soon Kai, somewhere across the road from Starbucks Sibu and may be contacted at telephone number 016-8536951.

Stay where you are…

I have said many times that I would not go to the other side of the world/town to buy something to enjoy, never mind how nice it may be. I would grab some and eat if I happen to be where they are selling some of those nice stuff but no, don’t expect me to go through all that trouble to appease my craving.

These days, however, it looks like there is some truth in the old English proverb, “If the mountain will not come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain.”

In the case of these curry puffs…

…they are now available at the Ulu Sg Merah here so somebody in that densely populated housing area would not need to go all the way to the Medan Mall shops to buy – they are now available at the shops on the left once you turn in that direction from the traffic lights junction. Many popular eateries have opened branches/outlets there e.g. Chopsticks Chicken Rice, Fish Culture, C & C Gallery and of course, they have their own nice places to go and eat there. One will be spoilt for choice, that’s for sure.

Of course, we have the convenience of all those food delivery services these days and have our orders sent to our doorstep and other than that, you get a whole lot of people promoting their own home-cooked/homemade stuff on social media – those traditional Foochow sio bee, sui jiao (dumplings), daging masak hitam, set meals…and here, even the celebrated Filipino Lechon or Crispy Pata! You just leave a message or call a number and place an order and when the times comes, you can go and collect or arrange for the seller to send it over.

The Chang Festival aka The Dumpling Festival (端午节 Duan Wu Jie), or Dragon Boat Festival is still a long way off – 22nd June this year but you get to see so many people making and selling them online. No, I did not bother to buy any because they certainly do not come cheap these days and I have no idea whatsoever which the good ones are that are value for money.

Well, the other day, my missus was in that aforementioned Ulu Sg Merah area and she bought these…

…from one of the shops there. The girl said that her mother made them at home and she was selling them there.

It seems that these coloured strings…

…are very popular these days for tying the dumplings. The dried grass/straw tends to break to easily so few would want to use that. Many use those raffia/nylon strings but I would not want to buy as I don’t know if that is safe for consumption or not after the vigorous boiling for hours while cooking the changs. Come to think of it, I don’t know how safe those dyes they use to colour the strings are actually either. To play it safe, I would just buy the one tied with straws…or to the most, with a white thread – those should be all right.

One of the two was supposed to have salted egg yolk inside but I don’t read Mandarin so I did not know which was which – I just had to open and eat to find out…

I must say that I was very impressed when I saw what was inside. These days, very often, you will pay through your nose for bak changs where you can hardly see the meat inside and when they tell you that they contain salted egg yolks, you may get a hint of the taste but you do not actually see any…

I am not really crazy about these Hokkien changs, unlike the nyonya ones that I love so much but these that my missus bought were very good, better than many that I have had all this while.

They were very generous with the filling and I even spotted a chestnut…

…in each of them – frankly, I have not seen those in changs for a very long time. I love those slices of pork fat but I wished they had used meat that was a bit less lean…

…There were many chunks of it, all lean meat but they were a little hard, or what we say in Hokkien, siap-siap and yes, there were dried shitake mushrooms too…

…soaked in water to soften.

My missus could not remember how much she paid for them but I dare say they would be over RM6.00 each (it was around RM4.50 a long time ago, with salted egg yolk), more or less the same as a plate of our Foochow fried noodles which would definitely be more filling and more satisfying. At least, these two were decently good, QUITE worth the money unlike many of the rest but I’d probably buy once in a very very long time in a moment of momentary insanity…or to observe the tradition when the festival comes around. My money does not grow on trees!!!

Too hot to handle…

I don’t remember ever using any instant pastes when it came to cooking curry in my younger days.

The closest we got to it would be when my mum would send me to a stall by the river/stream where the Sibu Central Market is today to buy the curry mix from some ladies there, right next to the celebrated ngor bee therng stall, a ringgit or fifty sen, perhaps – I don’t quite remember now. They would have all the pounded ingredients ready and when you told them you would like to cook curry, they would take a bit of this and a bit of that and wrap everything together for you. People in Kuching would go to that shop near the mosque to buy something like this – in fact, whenever I went to Kuching, my mum would ask me to go and buy and bring home to keep in the freezer till she wanted to use it.

I still had to do a lot of peeling and pounding at home though, all the shallots, garlic, chili and what have you. My mum would enlist my service to do all that that and being the typical nyonya, I could not do it anyhow – I had to keep on pounding till she was satisfied that I had done enough. Yes, that was such a lot of work and do not forget that those days you would have to buy your own live chicken and slaughter it yourself, remove all the feathers and everything and cut into pieces ready for cooking. My mum did all that, of course – that would scare the living daylights out of me!

No wonder we usually had it on special occasions only like Christmas or Chinese New Year and family and friends would come by the droves to enjoy my mum’s curry with slices of sandwich bread or roti bayi (some Indian shortcrust pastry bread that my mum made herself). Not many people could cook curry and not many could cook it well – I might have eaten the very diluted curry powder plus santan (coconut milk) ones from some restaurant in town, take it or leave it.

I do recall the not-too-bad curry gravy that came in tins, Yeo’s brand. I used to take a can of sardines, rinse away the tomato sauce and cook them in the curry gravy to serve as fish curry. I did cook for some members of the family but they were not impressed – they said it had the smell of canned foods but of course, as they say, beggars can’t be choosers. I have not seen that Yeo’s curry gravy in tins for a long time now – perhaps they did not sell well eventually and they have stopped production.

I do not remember when I first stumbled upon this A1 Mountain Globe instant curry sauce…

…and there had been no turning back since. This was in 2008 and this was in 2009 – I was still taking blurry snapshots with my handphone then for my blog. Perhaps it started around that time and we loved it so much that we started telling everyone in the family and everyone ran to the shops to buy and take home to try. The verdict? Yes, everyone loved it! They said it was not the same as when cooking curry from scratch but when one was craving for curry, this was more than good enough!

Come Christmas or Chinese New Year, we would cook chicken curry using instant paste, this brand no less…

…and beef satay using wee’s satay sauce…

…which incidentally is no longer in production – these days, we use Sunstar, another one of our shortcuts to great dishes minus all the work and the hassle.

Gee! That sure is a very very long time and after all these years, we still enjoy it as much as when we tried it for the very first time. Yes, I did try some other brands but no, none of them measured up and of course, there was never a second time. Then, for reasons unknown, this particular instant paste got spicier and spicier till it was way too hot to handle. We are notorious for our ability to eat very spicy stuff but it seems that here, we have met our match. I told my missus not to use the paste anymore after that.

We did try a few more of the other brands – the Ayam Brand Thai ones are pretty good, but NOT hot at all and they are different as far as the tastes of the curries went.

In the end, I suggested to my missus to either use less of the instant paste or cook double the amount of chicken and this was what she came out with…

*2023*

She cooked a lot more than usual and gave half to her brother – he always enjoyed her curry. The colour looked a bit different than before…

*2021*

…as other than the santan (coconut milk), she added evaporated milk in the hope of reducing the spiciness. Thankfully, it did not affect the taste – it was still as nice as ever!

So, was it still spicy? I would say it was but not unbearably so. It was within our threshold so we could sit down and enjoy it like before. I guess we shall just stick to this same brand for the time being.

Not as good…

My girl dropped by this bakery in the town centre, one of the oldest surviving bakeries, if I am not wrong, because she wanted to buy some of those mini-steamed buns that I got from a shop here the other day.

As far as we can remember, when these little buns took Sibu by storm a long time ago, there were a lot of flavours and my girl wanted the ones with lotus paste filling. Unfortunately, when she got there, they told her that these small buns are no longer the craze anymore so they do not make them in so many flavours – just the char siew that I bought that day and these pandan kaya ones…

Well, they are nice too but when it comes to kaya buns, my favourite is still the ones from Sarikei…

I have not bought any for a long time now so I am not sure if they are still available here in Sibu or not.

Well, these mini ones are nice…

…but not so nice as to get me rushing back for more.

My girl also bought their meat and egg steamed pao (RM3.00)…

They did not have this at the shop the other day.

It was quite disappointing though – I do not like it when they press the meat filling in paos into one lump like that…

…plus the taste wasn’t anything to shout about.

My favourite is still the ones at the ban chiang koi stall in the next lane from my house in the afternoon (RM2.50 each) or the old lady’s ones at the shop next door (RM2.80 now, no egg and the filling is getting less and less…so I do not bother to buy anymore). I guess should I feel like buying anymore, I would just stick to the char siew ones that I bought that day – the skin was well-made and the filling…

…was very good, maybe even better than all the rest in town.

BIG THUMB BAKERY (2.293889, 111.826492)…

…is located at No.71-73, Jalan Tuanku Osman.

How to do it…

My girl’s good friend/ex-coursemate in Kelantan was intrigued by the Bovril (or Marmite) noodles that I kept blogging about and she told her that she would like to try using the Australian favourite, Vegemite. I did send her a link to one of my posts where I cooked the noodles using one of the two but I don’t know whether she has made any attempt to cook it yet or not.

Anyway, not one to rest on my laurels, I went ahead and cooked my own – Vegemite noodles/mee…

…using the Vegemite…

…that I got from my ex-student, James, home from Perth the other day.

Take the amount of noodles that you need…

– I was using the freshly-made mee pok (the flat version of our kampua mee), easily available at the market, shops and elsewhere by the kilo in plastic bags that my missus bought and was keeping in the fridge. You may use any factory-made instant noodles or dried egg noodles sold in abundance at the supermarkets, no problem at all…or mee sua (longevity noodles), if you so desire.

In the meantime, get the ingredients ready…

– a spoonful of cooking oil (best if used to fry some sliced shallots first for the fragrance), half a spoonful of Vegemite and half a teaspoon of Aji-no-moto (msg). I also added half a spoonful of dark soy sauce to give the noodles a darker shade of brown so it would not look so pale. It would be darker with Bovril but even then I would still add a bit for the added taste (and to reduce the amount of Bovril used as it is so expensive). Of course, you may vary the amount of the ingredients according to taste.

Vegemite is not so soluble, unlike Bovril, so you may want to dissolve it in the cooking oil first…

…but do not worry if it does not dissolve completely. Later when you put in the piping hot noodles and toss them altogether, it will melt readily and you can mix everything together well.

Bring some water to a boil in a saucepan and cook the noodles till done…

Drain it well and rinse thoroughly under the tap to remove the excess starch. Add some more hot water and bring it back to boil – you would not want to eat cold noodles, I’m sure even though I do know they have that in Japanese cuisine.

I spotted some of my missus’ fried chopped garlic and sliced shallots in the kitchen and I decided to throw a bit in for the added flavour and fragrance…

This is optional, of course.

Last but not least, drain the noodles…

…really really well. I hate it when I go to eat at the kampua mee stalls only to find the noodles swimming in the water underneath. That will affect the taste adversely, no question about that. I do wish those “professionals” would be more careful with these nitty-gritty details.

Toss well with the ingredients you have prepared in your plate…

…and serve! I did add a sprinkling of chopped spring onions on top – if you wish to add any meat or fish cakes slices or thinly sliced omelette or whatever, it is entirely up to you. At places where they serve halal versions of such dry noodles, they usually top it up with shredded chicken or thinly sliced boiled beef.

Yes, it was very nice but I would still rank it at No. 3 after Bovril and Marmite, in that particular order. Good luck, folks! Bon appetit!!!