Brunei & Malaysia 2010

Malaysia is the food capital of the world. I love making grand sweeping generalisations, people laugh at me for it all the time. I know I haven’t been everywhere but no place I have been even slightly compares with the food obsessed Malays. I love it, I love them. Then within the food capital of the world there is the food capital of Malaysia, Penang.It is unbelievable and overwhelming.I never could have thought there to be such a thing as too much food but after Penang I am not sure.
This small island, home to about a million people seems to have an ADD, OCD obsession with food. Not even the slightest exaggeration, everywhere you look across the capital Georgetown there is a restaurant or hawker preparing the one dish they know best.At any time of day or night you can get noodles, soups, dim sum, rotis, curries, BBQ fish and fried chicken.The list goes on.
Then, like a Russian doll set, within the food capital of the world within the food capital of Malaysia is the food capital of Penang, the Gurney Drive night market.This area is home to a strip of hawkers lined side to side that must be two or three hundred meters long, there would be well over 200 hundred hawkers. I said to you last week the two signature dishes of Malaysia would have to be Roti Canai and Char Kway Teow, I am sorry but I was wrong.
To single out these two dishes would be just stupid. It is perhaps they are so digestible to the western palate, especially the Kway Teow that they have gained such acclaim.These specialties from Penang have just as much importance.
Curry Laksa is one of the noodle soup dishes and is a rich chicken coconut turmeric creamy broth with rice noodles, deep fried tofu and seafood. There are two styles of Laksa – Laksa Sarawak from Kuching and Laksa Penang or Asam (tamarind) Laksa. The first is the recipe I have included and the one we are probably most familiar with. The later is a more sour less creamy style. If you are from Penang you will claim yours is better and vice versa if you are from Kuching. I go with the Sarawak.
Char Koay Kak is similar to Kway Teow also having the smoking dark and slightly charred flavour imparted from the wok but instead of noodles a steamed rice cake is used. The rice cake is fried with egg, beanshoots, garlic, chilli and Chinese chives. An almost identical dish in East Malaysia that we found much better was the carrot cake. Goreng Kuih Lobak
A couple of criticisms of the food in Penang, amongst the various vendors there is a somewhat homogenous nature to all the dishes sold, and sometimes a sense of complacency can be felt in the food. It is almost as though no one wants to shine above the rest. Many signs can be seen claiming ‘The Best’ or ‘Penang’s Most Famous’ but the variations we not worthy of such accolade. One vendor, quietly and inconspicuously preparing his Char Kway Teow over a traditional coal wok burner was a rare exception. Another point, like all fast food, speed and quality are inversely proportionate. Even at the shops we were told had the best Kway Teow in Penang were there were many portions prepared and left to sit in the wok to overcook.

The place for Char Kway Teow though is Selamat Road. The two most notorious vendors appear to be as famous as the dish itself. One with her oversized bright red chef hat and the other with his ski googles on. When here also try Lok Bak, a pork and fivespice beancurd roll, deep fried with a sweet chilli sauce - completely addictive.
Rojak is a famous fruit and vegetable salad from Penang. I admit I only continued to eat it to be tough in front of Rachel who refused to but this is not my favourite. A thick dark sweet peanut sauce drowns raw fruits and vegetables with pieces of cuttlefish and chopped peanuts. It is a sweet and sour textural experience that I recommend once in everyone’s life.
The voice of one adorably unforgettable Gurney drive vendor selling Rojak and another Penang specialty is still resonating in my head. For the entire dinner he chanted “Rojak” to cheesy early nineties dance as he prepared Pasembur – YouTube “Rojak!Rojak!” for a laugh. Pasembur is salad made with a variety of deep fried aquatic treats, tofu, shredded vegetables and the sweet Rojak sauce. Another sweet and sour delicacy not for my palate, but probably one of the more popular dishes on Gurney Drive.
One curiosity in Malaysia is the idea where restaurants share a common dining room catered by 8 or nine hawkers with a drink vendor. Protocol is to order from the hawker, take a seat then pay as the food arrives. Drink order will be taken at the table. One such place was selling Burbur, a soup style rice porridge made with chicken, pork or fish, Kway Teow Soup where you choose your ingredients then hand it to the vendor who makes it into soup with thick rice noodles, Wan Tan Mee, thin egg noodles served with pork won tons either dry or as a soup, Hoiken Mee or Prawn Mee, a mixture of thick and thin egg noodles with a prawn bisque style broth, poached king prawns, hard boiled egg and fried shallots.
One of my objectives of this trip was to learn about the use of alkaline water in noodle making. Apparently adding ‘draino’ to the noodle batter results in a more elastic texture. The dish where this occurs most is Chee Chong Fun. Imagine rice flour lasagana sheets rolled up with tiny shrimps drizzled with sweet soy, dark soy and a thick chilli paste. It is delicious but most of the vendors use a pre bought product that omits the traditional alkaline water for health reasons, however the one place that hade home-made noodles containing the toxic ingredient were inedible due to the foul taste.
One regret in Penang our inability to find a hawker at the right time of day for Poh Piah. It seems that within the maze of food that is Malaysia there are also rules about what time you do and don’t eat certain dishes. Our bad timing meant we always missed out. Poh Piah is like a big spring roll filled with egg, seafood and lettuce. It originates from the Nonya style of cooking, born in the south of Malaysia in Melaka, this style combines Chinese, Malay and Portugese.
I also mentioned to you the integration of Chinese food into Malay culture but Indonesians influence is also prevalent and wide spread, even as far as Sabah in on the East island. I am not sure who influenced who or weather the close proximity of these two country simply created an endemic style. Such dishes.
Pangang Style BBQ is where fish, prawns, squid or my addictive favourite sting ray, is first either dusted in Tamarind powder or soaked in tamarind water then grilled sitting on a banana leaf on a BBQ. The banana leaf imparts a wonderful smokey herbaceous and slightly piquant flavour, then when the seafood is half cooked a dried prawn and chilli paste is spread across the top. I could eat Ikan Bakar every meal.
Nasi Kandar or Nasi Padang is like the Indo/Malay equivalent of an Islamic Sizzler. You are first given a plate of rice then you choose a selection of meat, vegetable of seafood curries to eat with the rice using your hand. The dishes are prepared in the morning then left sitting out until they are consumed.
I think it is clear everyone in Penang is the gastronomic equivalent of athlete on steroids, say the love children of Chairman Kaga (iron chef) and Flo-Jo. It would be easy to go forever about it but as always in life, there is often a quiet achiever that goes simply about their business in the shadows of the bright lights and often producing better results. This is Ipoh.
According to some internet based pseudo research more than 100 million chickens are killed worldwide every day. After a visit to Ipoh I think most of them must die here. Every restaurant sells chicken. Fried chicken, salted chicken, chicken porridge, chicken wings, chicken satay, chicken noodles, chicken soup...One famous establishment is Lou Wong’s. Here more than two hundred people seated at one time with people fighting for your table as you left all wanting to eat bean shoot chicken kway teow. Steamed chicken with rice noodles in a chicken broth. If you felt like something different you could have their also famous chicken feet but it didn’t seem like there was anything not of the poultry food group available.
What I liked about Ipoh though was all of the dishes famous throughout Malaysia including those from Penang, Melaka, Sarawak and Sabah are available here. Plus, they’re of the finest quality, it is easier to negotiate your way around this smaller town and the vendors have a sense of pride in their product that stops them employing the services of a spruiker to try a force their menu down your throat. One restaurant we walked past was hosting a function for several hundred people that evening, so to cater for this increase they had moved the kitchen out onto the street. It was fantastic. We tried to go in but sometimes the Chinese take their privacy very seriously!
Ipoh is only two hours from KL and I think if you are serious about food check it out on the way to or from Penang. Have dinner at Lou Wong’s and breakfast and lunch at Ipoh Central Cafe. Oh another place to eat at is one of the various shops doing another Ipoh chicken specialty, Ayam Garam. Chicken is wrapped in paper then roasted in a wok filled with coarse rock salt. It is delicious.
And you cannot forget another Ipoh delicacy, and one that don’t cause man boobs, the various cakes, Nyonya Kuih.
Finishing our synopsis on Malaysian food and finishing our time in Malaysia is Kuala Lumpur. An international city and very similar to others. I am sure with a little local expertise it would become a gold mind of culinary delights but I feel the rest of Malaysia had fed us so well. Chow Kit market was one of the more interesting markets we visited, at times like a bovine anatomy class, there was every bit of a cow displayed on wooden boards in the 35 degree heat. Perhaps it was the bar on 32 floor with the swimming pool we spent too much time at the night before or perhaps it was the fact there were big buckets of shit filled with moving snails in them but Chow Kit will make even the strongest feel a little queasy.
And finally, we would like to apologise to entire population of Malaysia for failing to mention all of the wonderful dishes, snacks, treats & meals we ate. We will be back.