Lor mee, comfort noodles

Mum made the quintessential Hokkien noodles lor mee for lunch yesterday… what a treat! Lor mee is a simple soup noodle dish in a thick-ish broth that is easy to cook and a staple fare in traditional Hokkien families. It is less well known than the dark fried Hokkien mee that KL is famous for, although a self-respecting fried Hokkien mee stall would serve lor mee, too.

The basic ingredients are garlic, pork, prawns, thick yellow noodles, whatever vegetable you can get your hands on (we used spinach this time round), eggs and black vinegar. Cut the pork into small strips and marinate with a little soy sauce and tapioca flour (or arrowroot flour if you prefer). De-shell the prawns. Beat up the eggs (we used two for the five of us).

Put a little oil (or, a lot of oil, if you are cavalier) into a heated big pot or wok, and cook the prawns. Remove prawns and then throw in come chopped garlic and the prawns shells and sauté until the combo smells heavenly and you’re reaching for some snacks to stay your hunger pangs.

Add in the desired amount of water (depends on how many people you are cooking for) and boil. Mum adds anchovies too to the soup to give it extra oomph. Add salt to taste.


After the soup has boiled and simmered for a while (oh, anything from 5-15 minutes, depending on how rushed you are), remove the prawn shells from the soup (use a sift) and then throw in the big fat yellow noodles and the pork, and bring to boil again, cooking for a couple of minutes. At this stage you might want to add a thickening mixture of tapioca flour dissolved into a little water. This gives the soup its dense, smooth character. Then throw in the vegetables (spinach cooks very quickly) and the cooked prawns, and simmer for another minute or so. Turn off the heat and stir the beaten eggs in evenly. Viola!


We eat lor mee with a couple of standard accompaniments. The first is fried diced shallots and ewe poke (or itsy bitsy pieces of lard). Mmmmmm, larrrrd.


The other is a combo of super hot chilli padi (Thai chillies), chopped garlic and soy sauce. Spicing the noodles up with some Southeast Asian heat marks the inevitable evolution of a community’s culture as it moves away from the motherland and assimilates and takes root in its new (chilli-eating) home.


The ingredient that makes the dish distinctive, though, is a generous helping of black vinegar. And not just any vinegar, mind you. Purists will insist on eng choon lao chor (in pinyin, yongchoon laocu, 永春老醋). This aged vinegar is one of the most well known products from Eng Choon/Yong Chun, an area in China’s Hokkien/Fujian province known also for its Mandarin oranges. I managed to sample both at its source over 10 years ago when visiting my grandfather’s ancestral village there. That was so gooood.

Don’t skimp on the vinegar – get in a good two tablespoon-full (at least) for the invigorating kick!


Why, you might ask (or you might not) are there no precise measurements for the instructions above? Well, I don’t pretend to be running a recipe site. And secondly, have you ever tried getting precise measurements from your Mum, especially if she’s been a homemaker all her life and doing this with her eyes closed?

Me: How much noodles are you using, Ma?
Mum: Depends. Are you hungry? [Yes, I was, so she added noodles!]
Me: And how much water did you put in?
Mum: Usually just short of the rim of the wok should be enough.
Me: And the pork?
Mum: I’m using a portion from a piece I bought the other day.

Hope that was helpful for you, too ☺

Our future holiday destination?

The Borobudur, in all its festive glory during Vesak Day, must be a sight to behold indeed! Full story from The Star. Don't know if we can ever swing it, since May is not usually a vacation season for us, but for sure we are going here this December or January to visit Siti :)

Gandhi fusion

UPDATE: Just realised that The Star covered the opening of Gandhi's Vegetarian Corner's latest location. I think his old joint is more charming!

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When there are so many different cultures living side by side in Malaysia, there is bound to be some borrowing, adaptation and assimilation. Not enough, by some accounts, since the government of the day continues to cling on tenaciously to the racial divide and rule tactics of the colonial authorities. But where seepages occur and people start living across ethnic and religious lines, it is indeed a thing of beauty, and often, very delicious!

And so, we come to Gandhi. No, not the great man of history, but the vegetarian restaurant tucked by the side of a parking lot in Brickfields (Kuala Lumpur). Well, this was as of a month ago, since they were supposed to have moved (directions below) on May 1, so this post is a tribute to a humble lil’ shack where my family and I enjoyed many a wonderful meal.


Mr. Gandhi (yes, that is his name) has a simple operation. His shack opens into a parking lot, with tables and chairs strewn all over under his zinc roof (too hot to open for lunch) or beneath the stars, side by side with the car you just parked. The man himself is poised over a wok by one side, with the menu pasted on the board behind him.


You choose your food either by reading the menu and pointing to it, or peering into Mr. Gandhi’s wok and asking him what he’s cooking, or stealing furtive glances/staring rudely at what other patrons are eating and pointing at those dishes. Nobody really minds, since everyone’s in good spirits (vegetarians are like that, except blood throwing, fur hating PETA folks).

What is distinctive about this joint is that Mr. Gandhi has fused successfully Indian and Chinese vegetarian worlds. He caters to the Chinese vegetarian predeliction for faux meat made with soy or wheat products – note the presence of ‘chicken’, ‘mutton’, ‘fish’ and so on, on the menu.


But he cooks the dishes with a zesty Indian sensibility – the spices making the dishes sing in ways that elude regular Chinese vegetarian places.

Yet, what makes us go back again and again to Gandhi's Vegetarian Corner is also his warm and welcoming smile, his winning personality…


… and his near-perfect Cantonese! Word is that he learnt his trade in a Chinese restaurant, and picked up the lingo along the way. We love watching him catch new Chinese customers unawares by launching into full throttle idiomatic dialect. You can see an initial wave of confusion in their faces, followed amusement and a grin that lingers for a fair bit.

The décor is appropriately eclectic (rojak is a word we’d use). There is a row of Buddha images keeping watch over the historical Gandhi in black and white.


On another wall are extracts from the famous Tamil teachings on living an ethical life (doing the right thing), cheek by jowl with somewhat more irreverent Irish quips on drinking the right thing(s).


And of course, there’s a small Hindu altar by the fridge. As you can see, this is not white tablecloth dining!


Our favourites from the menu are invariably the spicier stuff. The ‘fish’ curry is highly recommended (the family guzzled it down before I whipped out the camera) – the curry smooth and perfectly balanced. We once had their assam ‘prawns’ which was quite the winner – the wheat-made ‘prawns’ doing a respectable imitation of the original while the sauce was again well-balance between sourness, spiciness and savouriness.

The fried ‘chicken wings’ is not merely amusing – the coiled soy sheets are deliciously unputdownable.


But the best dish I feel is this blog’s namesake – the stir-fried petai with tomatoes and a slightly spicy sauce. Getting good petai is a hit or miss affair – sometimes the pods are too old, too bland, too small. On the day of this picture, the petai was plump and had deep flavours that suggested the plant had led a good life in some secondary forest along the spine of the country.


Our other favourites are regular ingredients cooked simply and without fuss. The lady’s fingers with dried chillies…


… and brinjals with potatoes are both regulars at our table.


Mr. Gandhi manages to vary the spice mix so that his sauces never slide into generic anonymity.

The restaurant was to have moved to a more proper space nearby on the first of this month.


Here’s the close up map. We’ll be there this weekend!

Quick and easy BBQ primer

What are the key ingredients to a successful home barbeque? Start off with some skewers, soaked in water, so they don't burn when you put them on the grill. Get a medley of vegetables (kinda like a ratatouille over an open flame).


Many folks like beef, which taste great paired with a juicy, lighter partner like pineapples.


Prawns...


... and pork chops are winners ...


... especially if they end up looking like this! Mmmmmm.


It's not all meat and seafood though. Get some brinjals ready.


Sweet potatoes and corn are always popular.


Start up the fire and get them buggers over the flame.


Arranging them neatly means you're sensitive to the wants and needs of amateur photographers the world over.


Get the oil ready, and baste occasionally.


Trot out the fish, if you have any. We had sole the other night.


Other key ingredients are a free-flow of wine, a group of hungry people, and a reason to celebrate – in our case, a friend's successful kidney transplant.

Oh, I forgot, you should also always have a Jack Russel or two handy, for all the bones etc.


Saves on the cleaning up!

A conga line of anago

“A Taste of Tokyo” blared the Life! cover story headline of Tuesday’s The Straits Times. Yes, I am in Singapore, which has greeted me with the nastiest stomach flu bug I’ve encountered in a long time. I’d post a link to the article, except that ST has the pre-historic policy of charging for content. Even the NYT has abandoned asking for money to read its columnists, and while Maureen Dowd is worth paying for, the same cannot be said for ST. Anyway, here are the pages…



… that reminded me of the wonderful meals J and I had in Tokyo and Kyoto, which included sublime sushi and hearty monkfish nabe. Another memorable restaurant was Ginza’s Hakarime, which specialises in anago, or conger eel. J had been gripped by anago fever ever since reading this NYT article, and mentioned more than once that this was on her must-eat list. So, on a slightly drizzly Tuesday evening, after again walking around the block trying to find the address, we found our way going up a lift of a small building.

Hakarime is a long and narrow restaurant dominated by an impressive counter (pix below, copied shamelessly from their website).


Opposite the counter is a series of tiny rooms, many big enough only for two (seating for bigger parties are scattered over other parts of the restaurant). J and I got one of these cosy little spaces that were screened off, affording us a little privacy, yet placing us close to the action.

As usual, we were slightly overawed by the menu, and took the easy way out by ordering the omakase (chef’s choice) set. We were not disappointed.

First up were the trio of appetizers (below) – Hotaruika no sumi-tsukuri (top left), salted and fermented firefly squid and intestines with sepia (squid ink); sutamina nattou (foreground), which is natto mixed round with okra, yam and takuan (yellow pickled radish); and a pickled vegetable. The squid/intestines dish is yummier than it looks (trust me) and the fermented natto had just the right piquancy to open up one’s appetite.


By the way, we ordered a junmai-shu sake, Sougen, that was light, fragrant and medium dry, and the perfect companion for the meal.

Next up was conger eel sashimi dressed with shuto, which is salted and fermented bonito and entrails.


This was followed by the last ‘appetizer’, konjac, made from the starch of devil’s tongue, here dressed in egg yolk and mustard sauce. The smooth, jelly-like texture would be familiar to those who grew up with Chinese custardy type desserts!


A quartet of anago sashimi marked the start of the serious business at hand. . Like unagi, anago is popularly eaten grilled, with a sauce painted on it, and compared to unagi, it is milder and less oily in texture. This is not to say that anago sashimi is wimpy – when you bite into the slightly chewy slices, a mild and pleasant sweetness is released. This quartet was made up of standard sashimi, sashimi immersed briefly in boiling water, sashimi lightly roasted, and sashimi sliced so thinly (see the top of the picture) and so translucently, that it melts into the white plate! You can barely see it.


The best of the lot was without doubt the slightly roasted version. The sashimi was scored in such a way that only tips of certain parts of the cut was slightly blackened, leaving the rest of the sashimi raw. Grilling releases more flavours, and when the piece is put into one’s mouth, you can taste the roasty sweet portions melding with the fresh raw bits. Ummm, very good.

This was followed by a conger eel salad dressed with kombu (edible kelp) and Balsamic vinegar, refreshing because of the absence of the dreaded mayonnaise that seems to dominate most Japanese salads.

My first introduction to eel cooked Japanese style was the trusty ol’ broiled unagi, slathered with a rich dark sauce, in a bento box. I remember the unagi to be firm and the sauce sweet and delicious, if a little heavy. Having unagi (in Kyoto) and anago in Hakarime was a revelation, for the eel we ate was not firm, but soft, tender and delicious. We found that the better the sauce, the more likely it was used with restraint.

As you can tell from the picture above, Hakarime’s sauce is almost coyly applied, and why not? Why spoil a fresh ingredient that has been lightly cooked in respect to its natural flavours? The julienned cucumbers were a nice touch!


We also had the anago shabu (with mushrooms, tofu and herbs, above) taking care not to overboil the eel in the kelp flavoured broth (below). Again, light and a mild sweetness were the taste memories that come to mind.


And lastly, we were served the anago tempura, by which time we were frankly approaching full fullness, so we were glad for the restrained portions, the judicious use of batter and the expert frying (little residual oil).


Were we anago-ed out? Not at all. The meal was nicely paced; we had an early reservation, 5.30 pm I believe, and we finished sometime past 8. Our waitress was friendly and obliging, taking care to explain each course in detail. Our own little room was perfect – at once semi-secluded (you could peek into the other enclosures by your side) yet close to the counter action (the bustling sounds of the chefs at work and in conversation were a welcome background music). But the reason to go is to have a wonderful ingredient prepared in interesting ways with care and respect.

Check out the website for the address and full menu.