Bubur Udang: A traditional family favourite

'Twas a sunny mid week afternoon in Melbourne when I suddenly thought about a dish that, as a child, I had looked forward to eating rain or shine, exam time or holidays, hot/rainy or hot/humid - it was something my entire family loved because it was super tasty and it could not be found at any restaurant. I half suspect now that it was a concoction put together by my Nyonya grandma, the bona fide born-in-Malacca sarong-toting epitome of virtuous housewife-dom that we all dearly loved and respected. It is at this juncture that I have to stop talking about food and share a bit about my grandma. 

She was among a rare breed of English-educated women during the early 1900s in Singapore, and I was told she came from a well-to-do Malaccan family which even had its own burial area marked out in Bukit Brown. Something didn't add up because even though I knew the Ong family owned lots of properties in Malacca and Singapore, I didn't think she had an easy life growing up because of a rather comical (to me, not to her) story she related about having to eat her pet pig. She had the most beautiful cursive handwriting, and always looked immaculate and elegant in her sarong kebaya, the top pinned together with an ornate krosang. Mama was one of the most gracious and polite women I knew, always friendly to shopkeepers and serving staff, and if there was any woman I wanted to be like, it would be her. I have such fond memories of staying with her in Joo Chiat when I was younger, and walking with her to buy "50cents of grated coconut" or "30 cents of tumeric powder". Every time we drove past Victoria Street, she would point at CHIJ and tell me this was where she went to school (Dad would point to Raffles City on the other side and say regretfully that his school got torn down for - of all things - a shopping mall, conveniently forgetting about the hotel and office towers.) 

But I digress. Back to the recipe - I managed to find tiger prawns at my favourite seafood shop in Victoria Street, which looked pretty fresh to me. 

I kept the heads and shells for stock, and minced the flesh

Mama's recipe also had tau kwa, which I sliced up into small pieces

The rice grains needed to be solid - think khau tom - Thai boiled rice/porridge. 

The tau kwa slices were shallow fried in oil until golden on the outside

Mama used streaky pork, but in the interests of health, I decided to go lean. Not as shiok but oh well. 

The tau kwa after frying

I fried the prawn heads and shells with some minced garlic and a tablespoon of tau cheo, or ground bean paste - the aroma was amazing! 

Beautiful thick orange prawn stock

I removed the stock, and then without wiping the pan, fried the minced prawn in there. 

Putting it all together was pretty simple - I had a pot of pork bone stock boiling away, so I added the prawn stock and all the different ingredients, and lastly added the rice. 

Best served with chinese parsley and fried shallots, but I didn't have any on hand

A family trick to make the bubur udang even more shiok - pounded red chilli mixed with soy sauce. 

More Asian Recipes - Chap Chye

Time after time, I find reasons to believe Melbourne is most definitely the BEST. CITY. IN. THE. WORLD. One of them being that I could find every single ingredient to cook chap chye at our favourite Asian grocer shop at Richmond. Tau cheo - check. Dried lily flowers - check. Belacan - check. Dried black fungus-  check. Dried mushrooms - don't insult them...different sizes, different prices. Check.  

I can't recall which recipe I used from the internet (just google chap chye and you'll get a few dozen, but I didn't want to end up buying things I was only going to use once (like tung hoon and dried beancurd skin) so I did compromise on the variety of ingredients used. I usually study the recipes and combine them together, so I don't think it will be possible to repeat what I did, since I didn't even take down notes. 

Soaked them and then tied them

Soaked them and then sliced them

Soaked them and then pounded them

I chopped up about half a cabbage for this

I fried the pounded shrimp first with some garlic and tau cheo

Then added streaky pork

Then I threw in the cabbage

And then I threw in everything else. I didn't have time to get fresh prawns so I just had to make do without.

It tasted pretty good, and was even better the next day after soaking in the flavours overnight.

You can even get belacan cubes and limau perut leaves in Melbourne. So I made some sambal belacan, praying that my angmoh neighbours wouldn't complain about the putrid smell of the belacan cubes roasting in the oven. It was perfect with the chap chye :)

Eating in Tangkak, Malacca and Johor Bahru

We recently made a trip up to Malacca with some university friends, and a large part of the weekend focused on food, with the itinerary planned around breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner with the time in between spent waiting for food to be digested so we could move on to our next meal. 

First stop was for beef noodles at Restoran Kuang Fei in Tangkak, although I would have been quite happy to have made it the second stop after Yong Peng :P. We first went there in Dec 2011 after a trip to Malacca, and found it to be really good quality. 

I started off with the first bowl of kuey teow having a mixture of various beef parts, including tripe and fatty brisket. The soup was brilliant, with an amazing beef stock flavour. This was a pretty small bowl, so....

I went for a second bowl of bee hoon with fresh sliced beef.  On the whole, I think the version with various beef parts was better, because the lean beef was rather hard.

The cooking area out in front. The beef noodle shop is located along a whole street of cookie shops. We went to Hua Bee to pick up some tau sa pia.

Next stop- Malacca. We headed straight for the Restoran Sin Yin Hoe oyster omelette for a tea time snack, and were most relieved to find the cook still frying away.

Heaven on a plate, with tiny plump juicy oysters on top.

Another shot of the oysters

We shared 2 large plates among the 7 of us - there was more food waiting to be eaten.

We headed to Jonker St for chendol after that.

Best chendol in Malacca, in our opinion, just opposite the Aik Cheong stall.

We tried the assam laksa but it was disappointing.

The chendol, however, was as good as we remembered. It was all about the gula melaka - I wish they had a liquid version. We bought some from the stall to bring home.

Chock full of beans

We went back to the hotel and waited until it was time to head out for dinner. One of our friends had heard that Amy's Heritage Nyonya Cuisine was reputable, so we went to check them out. When we got there, they said they were out of fish and squid, which was a good sign because it meant that it was popular (or a bad sign because they had really bad planning...we chose to believe the former!) 

We started with kueh pie ti - this was very yummy. It appeared that the shells were made manually since they were all shaped differently. The filling was delicious. 

We shared a hee peow soup - this was pretty tasty as well. No MSG, the shopowner declared to us.

 A pretty good bowl of soup.

These were some of the other things we ordered....

The udang masak nanas was one of the best I've ever eaten, except for what my dad used to cook. Super lemak and tasty, and excellent with white rice. The prawns were large and fresh. 

The ayam buah keluak was reasonable, considering there was no pork used. It was probably one of the better ones eaten in a restaurant. Nothing can compare to my dad's buah keluak. Except maybe my grandma's version.

Lady's fingers with a spicy salad/chutney mix. This was pleasant.

Can't go too far wrong with sambal kangkong.

The sambal udang petai was really tasty too, but too much udang and too little petai!

And at the end of the day, including drinks and dessert, the bill for 7 people came up to RM 222. We were absolutely flabbergasted. I still feel overwhelmed thinking about the amazing value for money and good quality food there. 

We were even talking about it during breakfast the next morning. We were recommended Donald and Lily, which was near our hotel.

Empty at 10.30am, packed shoulder-to-shoulder at 12.00pm.

We shared a plate of fruit and taukwa rojak - this was interesting but the sauce was not what we were expecting. It was like a combination of tomato and chilli sauce.

We tried various things - the mee siam was slightly less nutty than what we were used to in Sg.

And their curry laksa was really good.

Lemak, spicy, and tasty.

More like a dry mee siam version.

We tried the mee rebus too. Wasn't too impressed. I thought the gravy wasn't think enough.

But to each his own, I guess.

We stopped by Hua Mui, a Hainanese coffeeshop in Johor Bahru, for tea at 3pm on the way back to Singapore after leaving Melaka around 12 noon. Seriously old school, and we were very pleased with the find. It's located right at the junction of Jalan Trus and Jalan Dhoby in the old downtown part of the city.

We had to sit upstairs since the 1st floor was full. They use a pulley to bring up drinks and food from the 1st floor kitchen.

Kopi and bandung.

Kaya buns and butter buns. These were very very nice, with the buns slightly crisp on the outside and very soft and fluffy on the inside.

French toast-  didn't quite enjoy this as much.

But their chicken chop was brilliant - crispy skin, firm and juicy meat and really yummy gravy. Just steer clear of the fake green peas.

Addresses:

Tangkak Beef Noodles 东甲牛腩面

20 Jalan Solok, Tangkak, Johor

Amy Heritage Nyonya Cuisine

75, Jalan Melaka Raya 24, Taman Melaka Raya, Malaysia

Tel: +60 (06) 286 8819

Open Tuesday to Sunday 11.30am-2.30pm and 6pm-10pm (closed Mondays)

Donald and Lily's

No. 16 (Ground Floor),

Jalan KSB 1,

Taman Kota Shahbandar,

75200 Melaka.

Restoran Hua Mui 华美茶餐室

Address: 131 Jalan Trus 

80000 Johor Bahru