Day of good food

Around 10:30 AM, Siew Kai arrived carrying two bags of mangos and holding his GPS - it is the latest version, the Garmen nuvi 1350. He always has some new gadget with him whenever he shows up: shortwave radio in the past, new Renault, Ford Ranger, ....
We, of course, started with a couple of beers, and started talking about mangos, insect bites, poisonous inserts, etc. Referring to the last trip here with Becky, a trip in which I contacted the sap of a champeda fruit, and my face swelled up in response, he informed me that he didn't think it was the fruit, so I conceded that it could have been an insect bite. Siew Kai informed me, characteristically, that there are no poisonous insects in Penang. Oh, well.

Siew Loon and wife Lilian showed up shortly, and Seng came home and joined us. Now it is four Mui brothers, three beers, and a lot of noises and laughters. Mom and Lilian sat at the next table, talking softly, while Loon and the rest of us just had a jolly old time talking about HDTV. Loon has his eyes on a 52-inch HDTV, but has been awaiting the approval from the fininace minister (wife), and from there the topics goes on to hardware, software, DVR that won't die, Mao's TV (Chinese-made TV).

When Seng suggested lunch, it was welcomed by all. We filed into his new five-seater car (7-seater if your have two with very small butts.) Someone suggested the "Four Seasons" for lunch. Now don't get too excited. It is not the Four Seasons Sheraton hotel. It is a Chinese restaurant of the same name, and not too much of a threat to the sheraton's hotel. Even so, they serves up some good food, as evidenced by the full house when we talked in.

Bear in mind I don't have my camera with me, so I can exaggerate on how good the food is in this restaurant, but this is a repeat visit. We came here last time when Becky was in town with us, so it must have been pretty good.

We started with a bowl of free soup: Salted vegetable and chicken soup. Even though it is complimentary, it is good. The saltiness of the vegetable is subtle, and the chicken bones gave out a lot of good flavor.

Next was stir fried vegetable, very similar to the "water cress stir fry" I had in Langkawi. There is a good dose of shrimp sauce, and chili, making it very flavorful. We quickly devoured it with rice, before the next dish is server.

Next came stewed pork hock. The meat was cooked until tender, falling off the bones. The skin layer, with a small layer of fatty meat, is easy to scoop up and easier going down. The gravy is tasty, and went very well with rice.

The seafood tofu was next. A thin layer of green vegetables (like spinach) was bonded to a small layer of tofu, and cooked in a sauce. It was then sliced into one inch by three inch size, serving about eight to ten pieces. Despite the fancy work, it tasted so so.

The curry prawns is everyone's favorite -- a hot steamy spicy curry sauce bubbling in a earthen pot, with prawns cooking inside, I love the curry sauce on rice, and had a few helpings of that. I did not get to sample the prawns, so I cannot comment, but I can vouch for the curry sauce - it was great.

I wish I had brought my camera to lunch, to give evidence of such a great meal.

In the afternoon, I went downtown to Parkson, and bought a sorely needed USB cable for my camera.

On the way back, I swung by sister Sui Fun's office, and hitched a ride home with her. Peter and Sui Fun decided we should have dinner at Fish Mei Fun - fish with rice noodles. Now Peter mentioned the name of the place a few times, but they did not stick with me. All I can hear is Fish noodles, and my mind is frozen at the mention of food. I can tell you it is near the Fairchild Semi-conductor factor, on the left side of the Shell gas station.

It took us about an hour to get there, because of the Friday after work traffic. Peter thought it might also have been because of the holiday traffic. It is Hari Raya Puasa (New Year) for the Muslims, and they have to do some new year shopping.

We started the feast with Balachan Tofu, and Balachan chicken (wings). The tofu and chicken wings were coated in a Balachan (shrimp cake, a cake of dried, salted, sun-cured block of shrimps) sauce, and deep fried. This is the perfect appetizer. It is salty, crunchy, and very tasty at the same time, and not too filling.

For the main event, we all ordered Fish with Mei Fun (white rice sticks). We all picked the skinny rice sticks, preferring that over the fat rice sticks.

For the ingredients, you can choose to have fresh fish, fried fish, or other concoctions. I chose to have fish balls, sweet bamboo sheets, pork liver slices, and Taiwanese sweet sausages. These are cooked on very high flames with a broth, then the rice sticks were added to the broth, and every scooped out to a very large bowl.

The vendor put a good teaspoonful of fried garlic and oil on top of the soup before serving it.I can smell the fragrance of the soup before it arrived. Since it came very hot, I had to leave it to cool down before eating it. Ah, this is one good soup. As I savored the soup, I dipped the fish ball into a small plate of hot peppers soaked in soy sauce, the perfect condiment for the fish balls. It was fantastic! The rest of the food in this bowl is likewise fantastic, and tasty. It is going to be a memorable meal.

Sui Fun, being the generous one, also bough more chicken wings and tofu to go for mom, curry mee (to go) for me, sar hor fun, yee foo mein, all to go, for mom and Seng. I took a picture of the curry mee vendor, and I told him to look for the picture in tomorrow's paper. On the way home, Sui Fun was laughig at this. "The poor man is going to buy every paper in town tomorrow, looking for his picture. He is not going to find it. Next time you go, he is going to spit in your food." Okay, mental note, don't buy from him in the future.

Peter said "the guy probably thought you are a foreign newspaper reporter. He must think he is going to get international recognition." Just think, the guy may be rushing home to tell his family he is going to be famous. Somehow, I doubt that.