The first course

Right... food review.

For my first review, I thought it's only appropriate for me to begin with the food capital of Malaysia - Penang!

We'll be looking at 2 dishes that are the kings of Penang's famous hawkers' fare: char koay teow and prawn mee (in Penang we call it Hokkien Mee, but since the rest of the country knows Hokkien Mee as the fat noodles in dark soya sauce, I'll use the term prawn mee to avoid confusion)

Some of the best char koay teow and prawn mee on the island can be found in Genting Coffee Shop in Island Glades, Penang.

There may be other, more well-known shops but I think many of them have deteriorated in terms of quality due to too much demand. The famous Sisters' Char Koay Teow for example, is bloody overpriced. It tastes like crap and tries to justify the RM8.00 (or more) price tag by using big prawns and crab meat. The thing is, they can't cook proper char koay teow and the expensive ingredients are wasted since they don't know how to use them properly. Plus, the Sisters are bloody rude bitches. Too arrogant because of their fame. I pity the poor sods who still cram into their shop and wait for close to an hour and have to put up with their crappy attitudes and pay way too much for crap food.

Anyway, we're here to talk about good food. So here goes.

Char Koay Teow
The stall that sells char koay teow in Genting Coffee Shop serves up fantastic, moist, fragrant plates of char koay teow, and probably contributes significantly to the crowds that pack the coffee shop. There is a perfect balance of the flavours from the various ingredients in the dish:
- just enough of the aromatic garlic
- just enough saltiness from the soya
- a perfect brown colour to the koay teow
- firm, fresh, nicely-sized prawns
- a slight smoky taste that hints of traditional charcoal fires and greatly enhances the aroma of the dish
- egg nicely fried so that it's in good-sized chunks instead of being all blended into the koay teow (you can also ask for a duck's egg instead of a chicken's egg - duck's egg is the traditional egg used in char koay teow and gives the entire dish a unique, much richer taste... I'm not sure I prefer the duck's egg version, but it's an interesting variation as it's very different from the chicken's egg version that we're more used to and is definitely worth trying out)
- if you ask for it, they may also include small, crispy pieces of deep-friend pork fat for that extra explosion of flavour
- you get a very pleasant aftertaste when you finish the dish, makes you want to order another one... :)

Oh, and you may want to see who's cooking. The man cooks better than the woman (presumably his wife). The quality difference is quite obvious.

Prawn Mee
About two stalls down from the char koay teow stall is the prawn me stall.

Now, everyone knows the secret to really great prawn mee is in the stock. And the stock at this stall is absolutely fantastic. It's nice and spicy, with a wonderful flavour of prawns, just tasty enough but not too overpoweringly strong. I also love the fact that the soup is not too oily like some of the other ones I've had. It's got the unpretentious, home-cooked taste of really, really good stock.

The ingredients are simple and true to the traditional prawn mee recipe that I've grown up on: slices of hard-boiled egg, slices of boiled pork, small prawns that have absorbed the flavour of the stock, crunchy bean sprouts (I usually ask them to leave this out as I feel it dilutes the flavour of the dish), sprinkles of crispy deep-fried shallots. None of that crappy fish cake we get so often at sub-standard prawn mee stalls. Everything is quickly cooked and covered with the boiling stock. They even serve the prawn mee in those old-style bowls with paintings of chickens on the sides and you can use wooden black chopsticks. Really get a strong sense of nostalgia when I eat that stuff.

If you ask for it, they'll also add extra ingredients (at extra cost, of course). You can have a whole egg, roasted pork (siew yuk), pig intestines and more. But what I really recommend is the pork ribs. They've been boiled till they're fall-off-the-bone tender, and have absorbed the delicious flavour of the stock. Spicy prawn mee stock and tender pork: perfect combination, especially on rainy days.

And here's a bonus: prawn mee with ribs costs less than RM4. I ordered prawn mee with ribs from Lim Mee Yoke in PJ, I got oily stock with a slightly inferior flavour... and had to pay about twice as much.

So if you're ever in Penang... make sure you try those two dishes out! If you're living in Penang, be thankful that you can have this stuff every day. When I go back to Penang, I usually order small portions of both the char koay teow and prawn mee so I can eat both at the same time... heh heh...

Ok... first review over. Next review coming up very soon... I hope...