Spicy Lambikins

Growing up in Bangsar, I used to eat quite frequently at this small little stall in the nearby suburb of Lucky Garden. It was run by this gentlemanly Indian Muslim who came from India. He made one of the best soup kambing ever. The literal English translation of the dish, lamb soup, fails to do justice to what needs to be exactly right in order to serve up a great bowl of soup kambing. 

It is the mix of herbs and spices, roughly ground to a coarse paste, which is used to steep the pieces of mutton, bone, tongue, tripe and odds and ends in. The resultant dish should be fragrant, with the richness of mutton, but overlaid with the cleansing smell of the herbs. It should always be served boiling hot, with no trace of scum or fat on the top, garnished with fried shallots and a handful of parsley and coriander, both of which I hate and always requested to be omitted in my portion. 

The marrow was the best thing about this overly spicy soup.

Well, this ‘ayah’ (a friendly term for an older Indian man) has since returned to India, and turned over his stall to his son. My dad, out of the blue, decided to bring over a portion of lamb shank soup kambing from ayah's successor. 

At first I thought it was just me, but one look at Kit’s red, sweating face, and I knew that the soup base had gone way off kilter. There was an over abundance of pepper and chilli powder in the mix and it laced the soup with this unbearably hot taste which wiped out the soft melody of the other meeker spices. 

Kit's sandwich, made with the thick local bread which came with the soup.

This reminds me of the sandwiches I used to love at Riverbank in Central Market, when I was in college.

Needless to say dad was mucho offended that this blast from the past fell flat, but I truly have come to the point where I’d rather leave food than force myself to eat something not to my liking. 

Still, optimist that I am, and Kit, with his talent of making lemons into lemonade, made some great sandwiches out of the loaf of thick local bread which was supposed to accompany the soup. Talk about great saves!

Chinese Meat

I’ve recently had a slew of visitors who have come to KL via way of China. No little panda trinkets, for me, though! My brief to anyone visiting is that I want to try some interesting food. 

My cousin Ian returned from a missions trip and bought me this packet of meat. I was really surprised, upon feeling the vacuum sealed packet, to feel a bone. I thought it would be slices of goat. Not lamb. Goat. Mutton. 

Yeah, I know the packet looks awful, but it was carried in a backpack over many many miles!

What came out was this slightly obscene looking hunk of meat. It looked so red and raw but it’s actually precooked. The meat just fell off the bone. It was very tender, but it had a cloying after taste of Szechuan pink peppers, slightly fruity but metallic. Still, it was quite taste, and most of it was eaten up. 

My Chinese hunk!

The neighborhood strays were the happy recipients of that big bone!

My Cup Of Tea

Pretty drinks all in a row.

Sweet drinks have never factored greatly in my love of food. Or any drink, for that matter. I find coffee the number two biggest smell-taste letdown (the number one is bacon), because it smells so darn god when it is brewing, but when it is drunk, the taste just does not jive with the smell. So I prefer to save the calories which come with a Coke or after meal tea or coffee (the thought of black tea or coffee is revolting, hence the calories) and plough them back into real dessert. The solid, munchy type. 

Lately however, I have a new craze. I’ve always really liked bubble tea – it’s because it gives me something to eat as I drink – and now I have found a place where it is served well, and by really nice people. 

The Chatime franchise is a mega huge one, with new outlets opening seemingly at the blink of an eye. It is a good business model – automated to a point, and able to run on less than capacity intellect. However, business is all about people. And the food business even more so. 

Hence, despite the many Chatimes around our area, we keep retuning to the kiosk in SS2 Mall. It is run by the Kua family and it may be the evolution of the family run coffee shop. Mr Kua invested in the franchise for his daughters, whom he unabashedly tells me are not the most academically inclined. Well, I say power to them! I’ve had to interview a number of the so-called graduates the Unis are churning out and I have not been impressed. So bloody what if you have an Honours Degree? Your work ethic sucks and because mummy and daddy paid for your piece of paper does not mean you have an ounce of sense for the real working world. 

Anyhow, rant over, the F&B industry is more of need of intelligent people with real-life experience and a willing attitude to learn than hotel school grads.  So it’s always nice to be greeted by the Kua family. I get a good chat, in really good English, while savouring the great beverages. 

Chatime prides itself on using only hand-picked, sun-dried Taiwanese tea leaves. It is so much more than a bubble tea kiosk, because its signature lines (or series as they are called), all feature tea-based beverages. No powdered, coloured drinks here!

The teas are truly exceptional. There is a lovely flavour and aroma, and a smooth mouth feel. Depending on what tea one selects, you can even expect something with a lot of ‘meat’ in the mouth feel, a robustness that really surprises. 

One drink is never enough. I try very hard to support the small business communities wherever I live and I consider it my duty to ensure the Kua family makes some money from me. 

A drink symphony!

This round we ordered the green rice tea with pearls, the roasted rice mousse tea and the grass jelly with fresh milk. Another thing that differentiates Chatime is that you can choose the level of ice and sugar that you want in your drink. Some drinks need no sugar at all, like the passion fruit. Some need the full sugar blast – like the slightly icky, powdery yam smoothie. But most do well with slight sugar, especially if you add in the pearls and the jellies. 

I’m slowly drinking my way through the menu, but it is hard to resist the ones I love the best. Still, in the interest of blogging, one must endeavor to differentiate. 

The verdict on today’s choices? Green rice tea with pearls is so good. There is that robusty flavour I wrote about, giving the feeling of largesse in every sip. The pearls lend another sensory dimension, with their chewiness. 

The roasted rice mousse is topped with whipped milk, making it sort of a tea latte. It is rather more serious, less fun. It has a woodsy, slightly nerdy character to it, but it is definitely a drink for people who don’t like stuff in their beverages, as it has no bubbles, no jelly. 

The fresh milk and grass jelly is ambrosia. The grass jelly (cincau) is the best to be had in the business. Smooth, fragrant, silken and not at all stodgy or lumpy. It is made fresh every day in limited quantities and needs to set in the fridge over night, so sometimes they run out of it! 

I have already filled my loyalty card with enough stamps for two free drinks! But I will save them for later! These drinks are filling, as they use real full cream milk!

Station Stop

I think Kluang Station in IPC (formerly Ikano) makes the best bread and toast around. I used to be baffled by my good friend Jenny Tan (she’s Singaporean and she is STILL a good friend, thank you very much!) who would always insist on meeting me at one of these toasted bread kiosks, and proceed to slurp down half boiled eggs and Milo. 

Time proves that skinny chicks CAN be right after all, and I have developed a great liking for half boiled eggs. It must be the soy sauce! 

I’ve eaten at Kluang Station a few times and I like how they make their eggs and toast there. I have a helping of half boiled eggs on toast, and another of kaya toast, and have to say it is good.  Simple.  Uncluttered. Parsed down, but with some skill yet involved. 

Perfect eggs on perfectly golden toast!

Buttery kaya toast.

The nasi lemak however was pretty bad. The rendang was stringy and the poppadum (and when did this Indian cracker make it to nasi lemak? I suppose the same time the salted egg did!) was undercooked and hard. 

The dish that knocked off chances of a three-for-three!

Oh well. I guess we should all stick to the things we do best.

Wing Wang Wong

Wong Kok used to be such fun for me. I guess it was because there seemed to be so much to choose from. And if there is one thing people who are close to me know about me, it’s my love for variety. Vin and Jessie, Kit and I used to spend quite a few afternoons at Wong Kok in SS2, Petaling Jaya, quaffing down drinks ranging from the traditional (almond milk, ‘sock’ tea) to the ghastly coloured iced confections served with all manner of fruit cordials and whatnot. 

So I blame it on nostalgia that I chose to dine at Wong Kok when at Sunway Giza. And again, I got carried away. Ordering on a growly, prowly stomach never helps anything. And so I ended up with a lot of food; some of which were shoo-ins for the kind of stuff American high school cafeteria jokes are made of. 

The hungries always make fried food appealing and I actually ordered wedges. I justified it by saying I wanted to try the wasabi mayonnaise. Cringe. Still, they were good. Industrial but good. The wasabi mayo? Completely copy-able. 

The other foods were completely industrial as well. Like these meatballs. Not an ounce of real meat in them anywhere. Completely spongy, covered with this faux cheese; this is the kind of food Jamie Oliver rails at.  

The baked bread casserole was another. As Kit puts it, 'you eat it and it has the same deliciousness of something from a Unilever stock packet.' True, they try to liven it up with some herbs and more sponge-passing-off-as-meat sausages, but it gets icky very fast, and when it gets cold, it really becomes the kind of food that sticks to your insides.

The only thing that really felt as if it were really cooked and not assembled was the Seafood Noodle. I loved the pretty little nest it comes in and this ball form helps the noodles stay crisp. The gravy tastes as if there really is some true chicken stock in it, and the seafood was fresh and tasty, with good bite.  Score one, at least!

The drinks remain their same old funky selves, with large glasses in all shapes and heights. I liked the different jellies and pudding in the Gentleman. It's like drinking a dessert! The passionfruit was alright, but it was massively sweet, which made me think there was more than just fruit in that drink. 

On the whole I don't think I'll be hankering for Wong Kok anytime soon. It's a place for youngsters and young palates. I'm looking for soul food now, not so-so food.