Beef Noodle Soup, Part Deux, Part Deux

One thing about Kong Chan is, he knows about the food in Penang. He is a regular foodie. What I don't understand is why he is so skinny. He heard me talk about Ah Goo's Beef noodles soup, and commented that he does not like the clear broth. "That is the Tew-teoh (province in China) variety. You will like the Cantonese version better."
So, off we went searching for the Cantonese-style Beef Noodles Soup. Actually, we headed straight for the hawker at a coffee shop near Penang Road. We met at Komtar, and it was a pretty good walk to the coffee shop. Along the way, we were faced with many challenges and temptations: dim sum shop, curry-mee hawker, Chinese cakes vendors, Moon cakes,.. so many mouth-watering food along the streets to our destination.
I was glad when we finally sat down at the coffee shop and ordered our noodle soups and coffee. It took about three minutes for the soup to be served. When it arrived, I could smell the beef broth. It has a traditional Cantonese five-spice smell. The noodles are the type you have in a Wonton noodles soup, the very thin, long, yellow wheat noodles. On top of the noodles is a big scoopful of beef tendons and tripe, cooked until very soft and tender, and not at all chewy. They were tasty too. They were so good I did not want to swallow them right away. I savored the meat very slowly, trying to keep it in my memory.

To Kong Chan, the whole purpose of coming downtown, all the way from Sungai Ara (where I was staying with Mom and Seng), is to eat the noodles soup. Now that it is done, he has no problem leaving downtown and go somewhere else. He decided we should go to the Queensbay Mall next, to eat at a restaurant called Canton-I. So off we go, trotting through the backstreets behind Penang Road to the bus station at Komtar.

Along the way, we passed through a market place. Kong Chan is familiar with some of the fruit vendors. He stopped and bought some Langsat, which we peeled and ate on the bus to Queensbay. The Langsat is a yellow-skined round fruit that comes in bunches. They are about the size of a quarter to a half-dollar in diameter. The skin is relatively thin. When you peel off the skin, you exposed some translucent white meat in wedges, not unlike orange wedges. The meat is sweet and succulent, but sometimes with a small seed, which you must spit out (it is okay in Malaysian culture to spit out food.) The seed is green in color, and is very bitter. It will be a very bad mistake if you bite into one of these green seeds.

We took the new city council bus, number 401E, to Queensbay. Kong Chan paid for the fare, because he can speak Malay.
At Queensbay, we headed straight to the restaurant, Canton-I. As the name implies, it specializes in Cantonese food. The menu lists a lot of tempting, mouth-watering suggestions, but we finally settled on two dim-sums: bean-curd rolls, and spareribs. We each ordered a dry-mixed Wanton noodles with two toppings: wonton and roast port for Kong Chan, and soy-sauce chicken and beef tripe for me. For dessert, we each have a cup of peanut soup. (I am sorry I cannot find the pictures of this meal)

The dim-sums are okay. The bean-curd roll came three in a small dish, and in stewed soft in a very light sauce. The spareribs are very tasty, but not the 'meat-fall-off-the-bone' variety, so that is points off for the restaurant.

The noodles are pretty good. The noodles, mixed in a soy sauce mixture, is very tasty, as are the toppings. It would give it three out of five stars.

The best part of the meal is the peanut soup. Now if you are not familiar with Chinese food, you will think it is funny to have soup as the last course. It is actually a dessert drink. It is very common to have some warm dessert drink, like peanut soup, black sesame soup, red bean soup, and a fav of my family: bubo cha-cha, which is a sweet coconut-milk soup with cubes of yams and tapioca.

This peanut soup is thick, sweet, and warm. It brought back a lot of memories for both Kong Chan and me. We talked about the old street vendors where we used to frequent for peanut soup. They are all gone now. I don't think you can find a street vendor that sells peanut soup anymore. I recall one of my favorites, a stall near China Street, in front of the temple of the Goddess of Mercy. The stall has both peanut soup and black sesame soup. It was always a big dilemma for me to pick one. Peanuts or Black sesame? I love both.

This would have been a good food day, and one would have been satisfied for what I have today. I was surprised and happy to see that we have my favorite dish for supper. Pictured here is a vegetable, that can best be described as a Chinese turnip. It is like a turnip, the size of a small basketball. After you peel the skin, the white meat is of the consistency of a pear, slightly harder. Brother Seng cooked it by cutting it into julienne strips. It is then cooked in a pork broth with garlic, and shrimp, until it is soft. To eat it, you scoop it into lettuce leaves rolled up, optionally with hoy-sin sauce, or hot chili sauce.
The lettuce you see in the picture here is actually the wrong type of lettuce. It should be the long type, not the round one you see here, although they are both lettuce. The round type is for salads. The long ones are for wraps. We argue with mom for a long time, but when we asked the vegetable seller, they told us it should be the long type, so mother does knows best.
This is a fine repast to end the day.

What is with this picture of a leafy tree? When Sarah came to Penang as a little girl, she has an assignment from the teacher to find the largest leaf. She brought one of these leaves to school after the Summer. The tree is still there behind Seng's house, and is growing very nicely. Some of the leaves are even bigger than before when Sarah was here.