Malaysia Food Trip

Went on a restaurant review trip (work meets pleasure) in M'sia for a couple of days. Here are the highlights:

Taibak
Taibak is a fast disappearing Peranakan dessert. Squiggles made from rice flour are served with sugared water. The blue squiggles are dyed with the petals of bunga telang.




Kue Koci
The owner of Banya Restaurant in Malacca gave us a bag of these beauties! They only make it occasionally for personal consumption as it's very laborious.



Made from glutinous rice flour dyed with bunga telang and filled with grated coconut sweetened with gula melaka. So sedap!




Ayam Buah Keluak
A favourite Peranakan dish usually made w/ pork. Buah keluak is the hard black nuts bobbing about in the chicken curry in the photo. The nuts have to be soaked for days before they are cracked open. The inside of the nut is scooped out and prepared, usually mixed w/ pork, fried and then stuffed back to simmer in curry. The taste of buah keluak is creamy, rich and very slightly bitter.




Outta this world okra
This dish from Banya Restaurant is simply best lady's finger dish ever! The sambal was AWESOME! It had an addictive lime-lemony zing. The sambal all other sambal aspire to be.




Lantern outside Banya Restaurant
A pair of these handmade lanterns cost over 2000 RM! An old master lantern-maker makes them to order in Malacca. It takes about 2 weeks to make and paint a pair.




Stuffed pig stomach
Shockingly ugly dish. This pig tummy was served in a soup tureen. I thought it was a foetus! The soup was very peppery, the way I like innards soup to be.



The pig stomach was taken back to the kitchen to be fried after all the soup was served. The stuffing of glutinous rice remains moist and flavourful while the skin of the stomach becomes crisp. Fried, boiled - it is still quite a stomach-churning sight.




No Campbell's canned soup here
Huge earthen vats in Toi Son restaurant in JB. The big ones are about 1.4 meters each. These vats were brought over from Guangdong, China. They are heated by charcoal inside and are used for double-boiling soups.


Pots of soup like this kampung chicken ginseng soup are double-boiled in the vats for at least 6 hours.




Goose web
Looked like the wrinkly fingers of an old witch.



So, it was an interesting trip. But now that the heavy coma-inducing fullness has gone away, what I want is my mum's beef semur. And roti bakar. The charcoal-grilled chocolate-and-banana kind. The kind that makes cardiologists rich and ensures their soccer mum wives get the latest luxury SUVs. Oo, and I am craving some kickass mangosteens too.