Meat Ball Noodle Blues Buster

 

Pork Ball Noodles from Win Heng Seng, Jalan Imbi, KL goes upmarket to the Lot 10 food court

 My poor blog has absolutely suffered from a serious lack of attention. Just a quick check in and a little something to salivate over - it never fails to out a smile me face (believe it or not, I'm so deliciously hooked on Geordie Shore - for those of you not in the know how, it's the terrible wannabe Jersey Shore long lost relative but still a real stonker of a programme!)

Well, I'd say!

Malaysia Eats

I thought I should finally sort out my photos tonight, starting with those of Istanbul taken all those months ago back in April. But ... there's always a but ... bloody Windows Photo Gallery and Windows Live Photo Gallery keep crashing my computer so I've given up. I'm too tired to faff around trying to troubleshoot something I haven't a clue about. So I've turned my attention to some of the stuff that never made it to my posts about my last trip home. Just a few photos from various meals. Oh hush my grumbling tummy .........! Enjoy :)

Marco Polo Restaurant
1st Floor, Wisma Lim Foo Yong, Jalan Raja Chulan, 50200 Kuala Lumpur

This used to be one of the places to hold a Chinese wedding banquet when I was a kid. I haven't been back in years. The dim sum is decent - think a step up from your local coffee shop on a Sunday morning and not quite as fancy as the Chinese restaurant at your favourite downtown 5* hotel.

Steamed black pepper chicken balls

Lor mai kai (steamed sticky glutinous rice with chicken, mushrooms and various other bits)

Din Tai Fung
Lot LG-207, Lower Ground Floor, The Gardens, Mid Valley City

Famous for their xiao long bau (Shanghainese soup dumplings) and very popular with my family. The food is pretty good and seems pretty consistent from the two occasions that I've been here. The one thing that grates on me is their insistence of the waiting staff to only speak Mandarin to their customers. Correct me if I'm wrong but Cantonese is the accepted Chinese dialect spoken in KL, so why insist on Mandarin? The waitress is only giving herself more work since she'll have to repeat everything she just said to me in English anyway. Yes, I sound like a spoilt brat and I refuse to apologise for it ..... making me sound even more brattish :)

Xiao long bau ... yum yum yum! Good splurt of hot broth but eat too many and you'll start to notice how fatty each little dumpling is.

Thin slithers of ginger in black vinegar, the traditional accompaniment to xiao long bau.

Deep fried beans with mince. I always thought of this as a Sichuanese dish but apparently it's Shanghainese too.

Braised seaweed topped tofu with Chinese mushrooms

Beard Papa
Lot LG007, Lower Ground Floor, Mid Valley Megamall, Kuala Lumpur

I haven't had a Beard Papa custard puff in years and it seems like my mum had never had one ever so I bought us one to share. It's still good. And I still not a huge fan of choux pastry.

Ampang Yong Tau Foo (shop next to Foong Foong)
Jalan Besar Ampang, 68000 Ampang

Foong Foong is the family stall of choice when we want Ampang yong tau foo (like so many other families I suspect) but mum broke some rather sad news when I insisted we cross town in mid day traffic to eat here ... Foong Foong is closed. Seriously? Surely not ... it's been there since.... well, since I remember eating yong tau foo. We went anyway and sure enough the shutters were down and the gates firmly padlocked. I hope we went on a day they decided to close for the day or I shall be very upset. So we went to the stall next door. Usually sad and so in need of custom, they were doing a good trade with Foong Foong closed (I don't even know its name ... dearie me). To be fair the yong tau foo tastes (dare I say it .... ) almost the same as Foong Foong but years ago they cocked out and started selling other dishes to entice customers. Imagine ... assam fish with yong tau foo ... impossible!

Our miserly looking 15 piece yong tau foo plate for 4 people ... it just can't compare to my dad's order of 40 pieces for 4 people when I last ate at Foong Foong's in January 2009. This order was definitely enough considering our 4 this time included my 90 year old grandmother who now eats like a bird.


Deep fried sui kow (like wontons but better!)


This is really what I come for ... the soup sui kow. This has got to be one of my all time favourite foods.

Restoran SS2 Murni
Jalan SS2/75, Petaling Jaya

Murni has got to be one of the coolest mamaks around. Run by a Chinese owner (*eyebrow raised .... "really?"), it's frequented by a truely muhibah crowd ... we sat next to a large Indian family finishing their dinner, a Malay couple eating roti and sipping teh ais whilst talking quietly to each other, a young Chinese couple sharing an extra large juice and a maggie goreng as they busily texted friends and practically ignoring each other, a large group of friends who were very possibly in college together. And there was me and my sister busy stuffing our faces, nudging each other and cackling out loud as we watched out our neighbours. I've been coming here for years and it's still as busy as it was when I was in college. The food is insane ... the menu combination is like no other mamak - there's your traditional rotis and rotis with a new twist - roti hawaii, roti seafood, roti salad. There's also the steak and chips, loh shu fun, spaghetti marinara. Brilliant!

The juices are also another reason to drop by Murni. We both got the medium watermelon juice special. Fresh watermelon juice blended with lots of ice, topped with lychee, chopped watermelon and nata de coco. So damn good on a muggy evening.


Candice had a hankering for fried chicken so we got fried chicken. The waiter gave us a choice which was - batter or not batter? Errr .... no batter please. Batterless fried chicken .. almost pointless. It was quite nice though. A whole chicken leg marinated in soy and served with chili sauce.


My must have dish when I'm back in KL - Maggie goreng. Probably not as good as other mamak stalls but it'll do.


Roti Jepun - we're still not entirely sure what was in this but we think it was egg, cheese and condensed milk (or the Malaysian version of dairy free condensed milk anyway). Not sure how this is in anyway Japanese and it wasn't particularly great.


Roti Hawaii - a new twist on the traditional murtabak. Filled with mince beef, sliced frankfurters, tinned pineapple and cheese. Topped with a generous squeeze of the mayonnaise bottle. Served with a blob of red sauce (chili or ketchup?), dhal and curry. What a combination. I oddly liked this. Give me frankfurters and ketchup and I can be very forgiving.

Penang Teochew Cendul
Lebuh Keng Kwee, Off Penang Road, Penang

Part of our search for good Penang char kway teow included a cendul stop (see post here). There was apparently a very good stall that we just had to try. Personally I wasn't too bothered to get to this stall. It was a horridly hot day, I was stuffed from too much lunch and it was too comfortable in the air conditioned car to tempt me out. But hey I was on holiday and it would be mighty unsociable to continue snoozing in the car, which would get baking hot the moment the engine was stopped. So we trudged along Penang Road, not quite sure where we were going until we found it. A dingy little stall down a side street with a crowd of people holding plastic bowls. The sign proudly proclaimed it as the famous Penang Road Teochew cendol. So how is Teochew cendol different from ... let's say the Indian guy who sells it? No idea. This stall does however add red beans to their concoctions. Ergh! Hate red beans.

I just had to be difficult - my special order of no red beans. Good cendol? It was ok cendol.Less sweet than many other I have tried. My mother who has a particularly sweet tooth would have complained they were too light on the gula melaka. Ahhh each to his own I suppose :)

A Trip Down To the Coffeeshop .... Malaysian Style

I've been feeling a little homesick recently so I thought I'll go out of my way and do myself absolutely no favours by digging up some photos from my last trip home. Some lovely photos of gorgeous food .. my last meal of my trip actually which I shared with my mum. Yup, that's right ... all this food for two people :) Looking at the food is making feel all warm and fuzzy inside. A quick fix indeed.

Teochew braised duck with tofu and hard boiled egg. I absolutely adore this dish - everything except the egg. It's not a dish that one comes by all that frequently.

Hakka mee - my first every bowl of Hakka mee at a coffeeshop, ever. But nothing beats my grandmother's version - oily, salty and brilliantly delicious.

Hong Kong char siew cheong fun. Soft, silky with a decent amount of meat and a nice dollop of chili oil. Not the best but not too bad either.

Ipoh kway teow - no self respecting stall in Ipoh would serve anything like this. Definitely two thumbs down but on the bright side the noodles where beautifully soft and silky.

Iced barley and iced local coffee with condensed milk. I really miss local Malaysian coffee with it's hints of buttery-ness. No wonder since it's roasted in margerine

In Search of Penang's Best - Char Kway Teow

For every plate of char kway teow that is served up in Malaysia, there are only a few that gets the distinct nod of approval. And apparently there are more heads nodding in Penang than anywhere else in the country. Good char kway teow is all about the 'ummph' factor. The big fire to lend that great 'wok hei' flavour, the right amount of ingredients that goes into the wok at any one time just so not to overwhelm the heat ... it's beautiful art and science rolled onto a plate.

Whilst Sisters on McAlister Road serves up a decent plate of noodles; with those big crunchy prawns and sprinkling of crab meat just before the dish is served, I have always been left with a twinge of disappointment of the lack of ‘ummph’ I felt. On this trip to Penang (for VO’s wedding ….or should I now say Mrs VT) it was straight pass McAlister Road and on to Heang Huat on Lorong Selamat instead. Look for the lady in the wacky sunglasses and you know you’re at another of Penang’s char kway teow institutions.

The noodles were good but I was still not feeling the ‘ummph’ . I was not throwing up my hands in the air and declaring it one of the best plates of char kway teows I’ve ever had. Even worse I was beginning to think that Penang food was standing on an extremely rickety pedestal. All the elements of a good plate of char kway teow were there – good wok hei, good balance of the ingredients, some very nice big crunchy prawns but if I were to be pedantic (which I am so totally not … ) there was not enough chives and it was so oily that at least a healthy half a teaspoon of oil was left on the plate after I had finished. I walked out of Heng Huat feeling slightly dejected. At this rate there was still no challenger to my all time favourite from Seng Lee in Damansara Heights.

A flurry of wedding festivities over, we were headed back to KL but not before one last plate kway teow. This time we let a local take charge. First impressions of Khoon Hiang were pretty bad. Tucked away in a corner of a not particularly busy area (but let’s remember it was in the middle of the afternoon on a Sunday), the coffee shop was dead quiet save a few old men gathered around a formica topped table sipping cups of iced tea and a few strays flopped about in the shade. And it was hot, not helped much by the corrugated tin roofs. Grumpy and eager to be on my way home (it had been a terribly long weekend with too much food and booze and not enough sleep) I wasn’t even cheered up with arrival of the first plate of noodles. But as the chorus of ‘emmms’ and ‘not bad, not bad’ (high compliments coming from a bunch of discerning Malaysian eaters) compelled me to dig in. It was good. Good flavours without the feeling of an oil slick in my mouth (which was perhaps my biggest objection to the CKT from Lorong Selamat).

If I thought the first plate was good, the second was better. For a few ringgit more they add extra prawns (those big crunchy babies that are so darn delicious) and mantis prawns (which look suspiciously like smaller version of a witchetty grub). If you want the full whack, spend an extra 50 cents and your run of the mill chicken’s egg will be upgraded to a duck egg.


Belly full and burping wok hei garlic I think I may have just eaten some very good CKT. Is it my personal favourite? Maybe not … call me a KL girl at heart. I like my noodles with a touch of thick dark soy sauce KL style. Penang CKT may just be too fine a dish for me ….


Kafe Heng Huat, 108 Lorong Selamat,Penang
Ah Leng Char Koay Teow, Kafe Khoon Hiang, Jalan Dato Keramat, Penang
Sister’s Char Koay Teow, Lam Heng Cafe, Jalan Macalister, Penang

There's Always Room for Mamak!

No trip home would be remotely complete without at least a plate of Maggi goreng. Curly wurly pre-boiled instant noodles fried with an assortment of shredded veg, tofu,egg and flavoured with that powdered magic that comes with the noodles in a little sachet - usually curry flavour. Drenched in limau kasturi. Just the way I love it.

To be honest, the brunch meeting with NH and WMF wasn't supposed to be about Maggi goreng. It was supposed to be about rotis from Nirwana but predictably tardy Justine was .. well, late. NH and WMF had already polished off their rotis by the time I arrived and Nirwana had switched over to their lunch menu - no rotis but everything else got la ... Hoping to track down a couple of rotis, we headed to Pelita up the road but no such luck. All the Mamak-isq places had stopped serving rotis for the daylight hours for that day. Not that I minded, I was quite happy with my noodles (they even topped it with shredded lettuce! :) Bangsar, eh?)

NH and WMF decided to share a cheese naan served with dhal, some sort of curry sauce and an ultra green mint sauce. I have no idea why naan is still served out of roti hours. Maybe because there's tandoori chicken on the menu? Naan and tandoori chicken seem to always go hand in hand. I wonder if this is always the case ... something to do with cooking naan bread in the tandoor, maybe?

A little poke around the cooked food counter and I returned armed with a deep fried chicken drumstick. I love the batter they use at these places - I think it's the fresh turmeric they add. The best deep fried chicken used to be from a run down stall by an outdoor parking lot on Jalan Perak in downtown KL. It's gone now - it made way for some building or other. I still miss that chicken. More often than not the pieces of chicken came fresh out of the hot oil. Crisp and juicy - utterly beautiful. My piece from Pelita was a little cold and the batter had gone a bit hard but will have to do for now.

I also chose a gigantic deep fried squid but unlike the chicken, the man didn't hand it to me straight away. He shoo-ed me away and told me he'll deliver it to my table. Ten minutes later and I was beginning t wonder where my squid had gone off to when it finally arrived - utterly transformed. It had obviously been sent back to the kitchen where it was re-battered and re-fried with curry leaves and shallots. Oh, it was so much better than I had dared hoped. Yes, the squid was slightly rubbery but the batter was so good that we promptly forgot about the rubbery-ness. It was hot,crunchy and fragrant - very nicely done.

A few days later and it was a breakfast date with VO and TL at Devi's Corner. I'm not quite sure I like this "new" location at the corner of Jalan Telawi 2 and Jalan Telawi 4. It's a little claustrophobic and I'm never quite comfortable when I'm there. VO ordered a roti pisang - normal roti stuffed with sliced/mashed (?) banana and served as usual with dhal and some sort of curry.

I had a hankering for roti stuffed with aloo marsala but couldn't for the life of me remember what it was called so I ended with with rawa thosai. This was definitely not what I wanted but it was good and I love coconut chutney but I was still wanted my roti stuffed with potatoes!

By a simple process of elimination, we finally worked out what I was looking for - marsala thosai! I got more of my favourite coconut chutney, a spiced version, dhal and a curry of sorts. Happiness!

Nasi Kandar Pelita
2 Jalan Telawi 5, Bangsar Baru, 59100 Kuala Lumpur

Devi's Corner
14 Jalan Telawi 4, Bangsar Baru, 59100 Kuala Lumpur

OK Porridge - Imbi, Kuala Lumpur

Smack in the middle of downtown KL, there's Imbi - undeveloped and more than a little seedy. Beneath the shabby exterior lies a wealth of good Chinese food and none more so than the little gem that is OK Porridge. If you're prepared to trot straight from your car to the restaurant and ignore the parade of ladies of the evening who use the premises as their meeting point before their business day begins, you're in for a treat.

Their house specialty is porridge - good, old fashioned rice stodge cooked to order in a claypot with the seafood of your choice. On this visit we had two pots - the fish was subtle with a pleasing clean palate and the prawn had bolder, sweeter flavours from the cooked crustacean shells and heads. Garnished with ubiquitous spring onion and coriander for hints of freshness and for bite, yau char kway.

Another must is the silky smooth Ipoh poached chicken. Deliciously succulent meat served on the bone and topped with soy sauce, a splash of oil, cucumber pieces and topped with sliced spring onion and coriander. This would be perfect with garlic rice but steaming hot rice gruel would have to do.

Ultra thin and crispy choy boh (small pieces of preserved turnip) omelette - the perfect accompaniment to porridge.

There seems to be a craze at the moment for anything cooked with salted egg yolk. On my last visit I had never heard of it but it was love at first taste when I had it cooked with crab. It was to die for - literally if you have a wee bit too much. Those yolks can induce a heart attack quicker than you can say "haam daan wong"(salted egg yolk)!Dad looked a little guilty when asked what our obligatory vegetable was ... aubergine with salted egg yolk. Deep fried thin slices of aubergine in a salted egg yoke batter and tossed with dried chilies and curry leaves.No wonder he looked guilty ... this dish was beyond sinful. Crisp and aromatic, vegetables are never this good.

On a previous visit we had kam heong lala (clams). Whilst kam heong is not my choice style for cooking seafood, this was a sight better than the dish we had at Robson Heights. The integrity of the clams (tiny, yes) were, at least, preserved and not overwhelmed by the sauce. On this occassion we also had an extra dish of sotong assam (no photos, I'm afraid). Nice tender squid with a slight crunch cooked in a lovely spicy assam sauce - beautiful with a nice big bowl of rice, which we didn't have so we resorted to dipping our chewy fried bread sticks into the sauce instead.

OK Porridge serves some very good food but visit on at your risk. * Entertainment is also provided - see the latest trends in tight, see through and gaudy designs brought to you courtesy of Sungai Wang.

I Want Crabs! - Robson Heights Seafood Restaurant, Kuala Lumpur

I wanted crabs, I got crabs - some hefty babies drenched in a thick, sticky marmite sauce and some other suckers enveloped in artery clogging salty egg yokes. I was in high heaven - this was seriously good food.

Robson Heights Seafood Restaurant does some very nice food. The fried noodles are tasty - think it's the extra dose of lard that they use (surely it's near impossible to get food tasting good without a healthy dose of saturated animal fat? Roast spuds in goose fat, toasted crumpets dripping with butter, Hokkien mee with it's little pieces of deep fried pork lard ... ) and most of its seafood dishes are pretty darn good - like those scrumptious fresh water prawns with glass noodles. Heads heavy with roe cooked in a delicious broth flavoured with garlic, ginger, chili and the all important rice wine. However, there were some downsides to their food like the waste of time (and tummy space) lemon chicken and disappointing kam heong clams. Not that the clam dish tasted bad - more like the clams were so tiny, every other ingredient overpowered it.

* I had incredibly sticky fingers from probing every yummy crevice of the crabs, so not many photos.

The Robson Heights Seafood Restaurant
10B, Jalan Permai, Off Jalan Syed Putra, 50460 Kuala Lumpur

Dim Sum - The Ming Room, Bangsar

I haven't had much luck with my recent dim sum visits in London - Chuen Cheng Ku was atrocious and the usually fail safe Royal China was having a bad day (I refuse to even consider the possibility that Royal China is not as good as it once was). Dim sum in KL is usually a whole lot more fun - not awe inspiring stuff but good, cheap and cheerful. And I get to share it with some of the best dining companions - my dad and sister. Blessed with hearty appetites and greediness to match, we do tend to eat very well together.

Ming Room at BSC (that's Bangsar Shopping Centre to the non-KLite) has been around for quite some time, part of a new wave of Chinese restaurants with modern decor and a traditional meets modern style of cooking. Think Baked Foie Gras with Stuffed Sea Clams or Pan Seared Foie Gras with Garlic Rice ... you get the gist. I've been to Ming Room several times and I don't recall the being particularly great or all that bad either. It's one of those places where the memories of the food just sort of disappears into oblivion. Definitely OK for a dim sum then.

We started with their "free" starter. A real rip off. The starter was good - tiny pieces of deep fried tofu, peanuts and dried silver anchovies coated in a sweet chili sauce - but forget the free part. Chinese restaurants used to serve a plate of peanuts when I was a child, which I'm pretty sure was free. A few years later they started charging for the same plate of nuts and soon more enterprising restaurants began jazzing up their "free" plates and it became a hidden charge on the bill. You could of course say no, thanks, send the plate back and earn yourself a huff from the waitress. Most don't bother ... just eat it la!

No dim sum meal would be the same without an order of har kow and siu mai even if they aren't particular favourites. These were alright. Not much else to say about both these dishes.

One of my absolute favourites are steamed fishballs. I could happily just have fishballs and nothing else. Not those ultra bouncy kind that you buy from the supermarket, thank you very much. They have to be chewy rather than bouncy - I like to think it's because there's a higher ratio of fish in the recipe. The Ming Room fishballs hit the spot. I even requested a second portion. Ah happiness!

For a touch of luxury these seafood dumplings had a a few strands of sharks fin on them.

Lor mai kai with gloppy brown sauce. Sticky rice with chicken, pork and mushrooms - good. Pretty hard to get wrong.

Wu kok - deep fried yam dumplings stuffed with meat. Another favourite of mine but sadly not many places get it right. Very often the dumplings are served cold and clogged with oil. These were quite delicious. The yam was light with crisp edges. Delightful.

I don't recall eating these prawn and mango rolls but apparently I did since I have photos of them.

I have been dreaming of sui kow for a very long time now. My sui kow dreams usually evolve around the dumplings from Foong Foong's Ampang yong tau foo. Sadly there was no time for yong tau foo this time but Ming Room's sui kow managed to quell my cravings for them ... a little. Where the food in Foong Foong's is ultra cheap and cheerful, Ming Room is a touch more refined. The sui kow was really quite lovely and the soup it was served in was delicious. It was the sort of broth you can imagine 10 chickens being boiled for 20 hours to achieve.

Another favourite of mine is the cheong fun. At Ming Room the noodles was soft and silky, the meat lean. Very nice.

For it's non-halal status, I was a little surprised when the waitress shook her head when we asked for porridge (I refuse to use the word "congee" to refer to rice porridge ... it somehow gives me the creeps) with lean pork and century egg. Surely it is one of the cornerstones of dim sum? Alright, har kau and siu mai are the cornerstones. Cheong fun, char sui bau, pei dan sau yuk chuk are second tier stones if you must - in my book anyway. So we had porridge with shredded chicken and century egg instead. Nice, but not quite the same is it? I poked around the menu right at the end of the meal and found that they had porridge with dried oysters and lean pork, which I just had to have. Oh it was good, very good. Reminds me of the stuff my grandma used to make.

The food at Ming Room really wasn't too bad. There were some dishes they did well and was quite hard to fault, whilst others were a bit hit and miss. The service, however, was definitely a miss. We ordered some vegetables that never turned up, the waiting staff had the attention span of newts (if and when you could get them to understand you) and the the bill took about 10 minutes to arrive. Fancy restaurant The Ming Room would hope to be but it's really no further up the ladder than a glorified Tai Thong. It's not an insult - it's just not quite as refined as it would like to be. The saving grace, for me that is, was the bill. All that food for 4 (let's not count my nephew as a full eating person) and it only cost Rm150! It works out to be roughly about £7 a person. Bargain!

The Ming Room
3rd Floor, Bangsar Shopping Centre, Bukit Bandaraya, 59000 Kuala Lumpur