Am going to share with you guys some (more) food pictures here; hawker food that the locals eat everyday. They're really just a tiny portion of all the local food that one can get in Penang, and I've missed out some really important ones (e.g. Char Kway Teow, Chendol and Hokkien Mee), so, I hope you guys don't mind!
Apom (or Apong in Hokkien), a fluffy pancake made from coconut milk, flour, sugar and eggs. Choice of filling can include jagung manis (sweet corn), peanut, banana and so on. They're usually small, soft, aromatic, easy to polish off, and all that makes them a good snack before/after meals.
Asam Laksa at Gurney Drive. A totally different kind of Laksa from our curried one; there's no coconut milk involved in the cooking, and it tastes sour (you can expect anything with Asam in their names to be sour). There's no fishcake slices, tau pok, bean sprouts or hum in it, but you can expect to find shredded pieces of fish (e.g. sardine) and cucumber, pineapple, raw onions and hei ko (sweet prawn paste) in a bowl of Asam Laksa. The rice noodles used in most of the Asam Laksas that I've tried in Penang are more chewy than the ones we have here. Not too many Singaporeans are used to this asam-based laksa, but I love it all the same! Oh and this one at Gurney Drive comes with fishballs.
Curry Mee; hawker-place outside Lam Wah Ee Hospital. This is actually closer to the laksa you can get here in Singapore; cept that it's called Curry Mee here in Penang. I find them more flavourful (& maybe more spicy too) compared to our laksa here though, and I love the ingredients used to make a bowl of this. In terms of ingredients, there are slight variations but generally, yellow mee & bee hoon, tau pok, cuttlefish, shrimps, hum and pig's blood curd (I really enjoy this!) are served together in a bowl of hot curry. Slurps. One of my must-eats when I'm here to visit.
Jawa Mee. It looks and tastes very similar to Mee Rebus! Yellow noodles, check. Sweet orange gravy, check. hard-boiled egg, check. Tau pok, check. Sambal belachan, check. Oh, but there are crispy bits of you tiao in this one!
Lok Lok; Gurney Drive. 'Communal steamboat', usually operated from the back of vehicles. Food items are skewered onto colour-coded satay sticks and then put up for display; customers pick the items that they want and drop them into a boiling pot of water, followed by drenching their sticks with the aromatic chilli/sweet/peanut sauces provided by the vendor. People used to eat these while standing around the lok lok vehicle, but I guess people are getting lazy these days and hence, hawkers offer to remove them from the satay sticks for customers (as above) so that we can enjoy them while sitting at our tables. There are different variations of lok lok around Malaysia; instead of just boiling water, some places have peanut-based soups (Satay Celup, Malaca), or you can also find deep-fried lok lok in Johor.
Lor Bak (the brown pieces on the right). This is like Penang's version of our ngoh hiang. Tastes exactly the same, but it comes with different dips; there's the sweet chilli sauce, and also the one made with cornstarch (not sweet). Here, we only have chilli and the sweet sauce. I guess that's the main difference?
And I'm going to introduce the people who've been bringing me around places while I was there; I think they deserve the Best Host Awards, or something along that line. My cousin's having her nursing attachment but she never fails to bring me out everyday, well almost. And I don't think it's merely out of courtesy that she's saying it's no trouble.
Night out with cuzzie and Shelene, her friend. At Batu Ferringhi, Sunset Bistro. Ordered a dozen chicken wings (after a very filling Thai dinner) and two beers; the Philippino waiter serving us was so bitchy but we loved him all the same because he was so funny!
Lunch with cuzzie and Shelene again at Queensbay Mall, Xian Ding Wei. Taiwanese cuisine chain that serves great mains but not-so-great desserts.
Korean BBQ dinner with cuzzie and friends at Daorae just before heading to Mois, the equivalent of Zouk here. Friendly but professional service, and delicious food. You should come here for a meal or two too if you're visiting Penang! Really! Google Daorae if you're really interested!
Dinner with my pretty aunt again and a few cute, younger cousins. I feel so old talking to them... sigh. Anyway, the two little girls pictured on both sides of me are doing really well in school, straight As and all, I'm very happy for them, for that.
'FamiLee' (because my maternal relatives have that surname) celebration for cuzzie at Haagen Daaz. Bought an ice-cream cake for her here, and had quite a shock when the cake alone came up to a whooping RM159.
Bingo is no stranger here. He didn't bring me around per se, but he did keep me company while I was alone in the apartment at times. Love this pom pom!
On my last night, we visited Bukit Genting for a Thai dinner (again). Digressing, I've been to 3 different Thai restaurants this trip and I can actually remember some of the names of the dishes; I think Thai cuisine's really popular here.
Meng Kam; an appetizer where you'll need to wrap lime cubes, raw onion cubes, raw ginger cubes, chopped green chilli, deep-fried shallots, roasted peanuts, dried shrimps in a piece (or two) of betel leaf, and then put some sweet sauce over it before eating.
You can put as much or as little of the different ingredients as you prefer; I left out the raw onions, ginger and chilli.
Not too sure what's the correct way to wrap it, so cuzzie rolled the first piece for me. I had problems biting into my first one because I wasn't sure what leaves those were and they looked really raw. Turned out to be quite yummy in the end, the sweet sauce helped a little, I suppose.
Shelene, bored while waiting for the rest of the dishes to be served.
Pud-pet chicken; stir-fried with some curry-based sauce. Spicy, but the meat was tender and it went quite well.
Seafood Tom Yam. Spicy & sour, but not the nicest that I've had here.
Kerabu; Thai Mango Salad. Young mangoes are shredded and mixed with onions, deep-fried shrimps and some special fish sauce. The sourness from the young mangoes are supposed to whet your appetite. Anyway, this particular Kerabu wasn't too sour and fell a bit on the 'dry' side instead. A Papaya Kerabu will be less sour, and just as tasty if you're not keen on the sourness.
Crab shells stuffed with pork, water chestnut, etc and served with some sweet Thai chilli sauce.
Dessert was Tab Tim Grob; red ruby + jackfruit pieces in coconut milk. They used shaved ice here instead of crushed ice so it was much easier to eat. It's only rm1.50 per bowl and I liked it so much that I'd almost wanted to order a second serving.
Right after our Thai dinner, we headed down to Esplanade to pack some Rojak before picking a spot along the concrete benches beside the sea to eat them. Such pigs really.
The rojak here's kinda different; there's the normal variation, but also one where whole slices of pineapple/turnips are cut into smaller pieces and then topped with a generous helping of the sweet sauce and peanuts (absolutely no mixing is done). I was the last one left standing.
Thank you girls!
It's been a great 2 weeks and I really look forward to coming back to visit! Miss you guys! Love.
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