Day 2- sunday March 11

We had planned on Dim Sum at 7 this morning.  By 7:30, it was obvious the children are not going to get up early just for Dim Sum, so Seng, Ann and myself started out.  Unlike the old time restaurant, this place, which is probably a converted coffee shop, and also serves dinner, is more like a self-serve dim sum restaurant.  You pick a table, get your tea and utensils ready.  The food counter is toward the back of the dinning hall.  You grab your score card, pick a tray, check out what is available on display, and point at it. The servers will pick up you want and put it on your tray, noting down on the score card how many items you have taken.  At the end of the meal, you pay the cashier.  Even the tea is sort of self service.  The first pot of tea is delivered to you.  When you run out of tea, you can refill the pot with hot water at a hot water tap situated somewhere in the middle of the restaurant.  All very efficient and labour saving,.

Well, the eyes are bigger than the stomach, as they say.  We picked up a goodly amount of the normal suspects. The pork dumplings, shrimp dumplings, spare ribs, fried yam dumplings.  One thing that is new to me is this one at the top right.  At first, I thought it is some kind of yam cake stewed in a broth.  I asked the lady what it was, and she said something that sounded like "woo".  It turns out to be fish.  Now I have had Dim Sum almost all over, but I have never seen this dish before.  Seng mentioned that he has never had fish before either. This turned out to be quite good.  A lot of ginger and garlic, very nice broth, and small pieces of fish that appeared to be thinly breaded and deep fried, then stewed in the liquid.  It was tasty, juicy, and the meat is sweet. It was quite an enjoyable dish.  Here, at the right, is a close up of the dish.

The fried yam is the usual fried goodness.  I can never eat this without feeling guilty.  This dish must contain a gazillion calories, but it is a light crunchy fried, sweet goodness that is so irresistible.  I bit into it, feeling the dry crunchy skin, and the gooey soft mashed yam in the skin, and tasting the salty pork fillings.  The person who invented this has to be a genius to be able to think of this combination.




We were so full after the breakfast that we didn't make plans for lunch.  I headed to my room to catch a few winks.  This is the life - eat and sleep.

Loon dropped in around noon.  Seng brought out Chinese lettuce and turnips.  The Chinese turnips are julienne sliced and cooked with pork until soft.  To eat this, you wrap the turnips in a lettuce leaf, roll it as best as you can, and eat it by hand.  This has always been my favourite dish since childhood. Mother used to only cook this on the big occasions like New Years and festivals.  Sometimes we will have Hoi Sin sauce and hot sauce on the side to spread on the lettuce.  I remember when I was in primary school, I used to walk to a store on Chulia Street, near and across from Love Lane, close to the Campbell (market) street.  I would go there with two bowls and buy the hot sauce and Hoi Sin sauce at five cents each.  The store keeper would give me a quarter bowl of each of the sauces, and that was enough for a meal.

Loon had brought some Kentucky (fried) chicken as well.  This is not the KFC we are used to, but a reasonably good imitation.  There were fried chicken pieces, and also some deep fried hot dogs.  I have never seen the hot dogs deep fried, but I tried not to eat it.  The picture here shows a single, lonely piece of fried chicken.  It is as good as the KFC, and goes very well with beer.  One might say there are not too many things that do not go well with beer.




At night, Ann had planned a big get-together party with everyone in the family. The venue is the CRC club or was it called the Hoi Tin Restaurant(?).  Hoi Tin is Sea and Sky in Cantonese.  I know for sure that it is near the CRC (Chinese Recreation Club).  When I  was in high school, I used to bicycle to school, and go home by the longest circuitous route.  One of those routes will bring me by the CRC.  Nowadays, I am not so sure if I can still find my way around, but once in a while, I can still recognize some landmarks in Penang.

We left in two cars at 5:30.  I went with Siew Kai in his still-new Mitsubishi Lancer. After we reached Green Lane, I begin to recognize some of the streets and buildings. As we get closer to downtown, I started to recognize more and more of the old landmarks.

At the restaurant, Loon had already arrived with his family.  Here we have William, who is partially cut off at the right side of the picture (sorry William), Loon, Lilian, May Ling, and her husband (sorry, please someone furnish his name. I am very sorry I don't remember his name off the top of my head for now.)

Here we have Peter, Sui Fun, and Mother.

This is William, in almost full view.

Siew Kai, speaking to Ann and Seng.  Next to Ann is Ann's niece and nephew from Kuala Lumpur. They are very nice children.  Kian Loong brings up the rear.







The food came shortly after 6.  This has been a very busy night at the restaurant.  There was to be a wedding reception, that took up most of the restaurant, so we were warned to start promptly at 6, and urged to leave promptly at 8.

The first course was four dishes of appetizers.
They were beautifully presented, but frankly, I am not sure I can tell you what they were.  I can only guess at it.
To the right, two bird's nests (made of deep fried rice noodles) contain stirred fried scallops with walnuts, water chestnuts, green and red peppers.  The two nests rested on pedestals on a large round dish, lined with orange slices.

The second dish, in the back, appears to be something stewed and wrapped in Chinese cabbage. Not sure what that was.

This appeared to be fried crab claws.  Or it could be shrimps stuffed with crab meat, breaded and deep fried.  It was good, I recall, but it was gone before I had a chance to sample it again. Oh well, let us say it is stuffed shrimps.

This interesting looking dish, lined in very thinly sliced tomatos, are oddly shaped fried balls.  At first I thought it is fried mushrooms.  Upon opening it, I can see it is made of mashed yam, and contained crab meat fillings.  I think that is what they were.

All four appetizers were very well presented and tasty. It was a very fine start for a great meal.

Birds Nest soup was next.
Birds Nest is actually made from, hmm, wait a minute.  Maybe I should not describe where they came from.  Let's just say they came from Southern Thailand, in the rocky islands off the shores.

The clear threads of the birds nests were cooked with crab meat and egg drops.  This is a delicacy, and according to Kai, is getting   harder and harder to find.  It may already have been banned, in fact, according to Kai who is in the know.

more pictures:

Siew Kai, Seng and Ann, and niece.

The niece speaks to Ann, while her brother and Kian Loong played computer games on the cell phone.

Mom and I next to Sui Fun.  Mom is a careful, if not picky eater. Sui Fun said she sits next to mom at parties, because she can take what mom's does not want, so she can get more food.  I thought I was going to get the extra food!  Well, the competition is on. :-)

The next course is made from cabbage.  Not the Chinese cabbage, but the regular western golopki kind of cabbage.  It is stewed until soft, and arrange to look like a flower with four petals.  The center pod contains a treasure of mushroom, oysters, peanuts and what-nots.  It was a very clever dish.

Ah, Becky and Kelly will be sad they missed this one - Peking Duck!  Their favourite. The waiters worked on the side to wrap the duck skins in soft buns.  A mixture of stir-fried shrimps, water chestnuts and vegetables was scoped into a lettuce leaf bowl and put on the same plate.  Each of us is served a bowl with the shrimp mixture and two duck skin buns.  Very nicely presented.  The hoi sin sauce and scallion brush was already on the table, so you can brush the sauce on the duck skin to your liking.
This is one tasty dish.  We all heartily enjoyed it.  Mother enjoyed her share slowly, and so no extra for Sui Fun and me. :-(

Here is the cabbage dish, with the hidden treasures excavated.  It was eventually devoured.

Ah.. Tong Poh Pork.  A three-layer pork belly (bacon meat) was cooked until it is so soft and tender you can cut it with a fork.
Here the waiter snips it with a pair of scissors into small cubes.
Ann specially ordered this dish for Kai, knowing how much he loves pork.  Once, when there was swine fever in the country, pork dropped in price, because nobody dared to buy pork.  Kai went to the super market and bought 7 Kg of Pork (or was it 70 Kg?) and stuffed the freezer.

On the bottom of the picture is the menu for the meal.

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The waiter honing his craft, cutting the pork into cubes.

With the pork came the pows. Small white meatless steamed buns that are used to sop up the pork juice and eat with the pork.  The pork is cooked with plenty of fresh peanuts.
Come to think of it, peanuts is used very liberally in most of the dishes we have today.  I shudder to think of anyone who is allergic to peanuts. They will have a bad day after eating a meal here.

The pow is a perfect complement to the pork. By itself, it was good enough to eat.  It has a slight sweetness and yet is plain enough to bring out the tastiness of the pork.  We made sure we asked the waiter to bag the rest of the pows home.

Tom Yum shrimps are just Yum!
These large shrimps have roes in the head and thorax cavity.  They are cooked in a spicy Tom Yum sauce, with a little bit of sugar or honey added, so they are sweet and spicy.  I like to just bite off the head and squeeze out the flavours, and spit out the rest of the head, then bite off the body in chunks and roll off the meat.  Everyone eats it differently.  Most people like to use their utensils or fingers to peel off the skin (after licking off the sauce on the outside) to get at the meat.  I find it easier to just bite it off.



more pictures:

Here is a picture of Ronnie.  I missed introducing him earlier.  Ronnie is Peter and Sui Fun's son. He and William are cousins.

Stirred fried vegetables:

May Ling's husband was very nice.  He dish out food and served Loon, Lilian and May Ling.

Fried fish.  Mom did not want to try this fish, but it was very good.  The meat is sweet and lightly fried.

Close up of the fish.

We were served small bowls of kuay teow noodles.

The fish was a distant memory before long.

For dessert, (to add insult to injury to anyone allergic to peanuts), peanut soup is served.  This is a sweet, warm dessert, the consistency of peanut butter with water.  Sui Fun preferred Sesame soup, which is equally famous.  Siew Kai remembered that our Dad made peanut soup once, and took many hours of boiling and stirring to get it to the final stage.  Nowadays, we can probably just used the blender to grind up the peanuts, and have the soup made in no time.

Pan cakes.  We were served two kinds - Black (red) bean pan cakes and (what else?) peanut pan cakes.