More good eating

A few more exceptional meals in the last few days.

Eating at the Hawker Center

We decided to visit the market in preparation for cooking, and ended up postponing our own cook to eat at the bustling hawker center upstairs from the market.

Here I am about to enjoy a whole spread of different Malay foods (not by myself; I had help). There were several vegetarian dishes, as well as skate wing a spicy-sour sauce, and beef rendang which is an extremely common Sumatran dish. Eating off of banana leafs turns out to be quite common. At the train station we even saw plastic plates that were shaped and ribbed like the the banana leaf and colored green in imitation.

The beef rendang was especially good. Khir explained that it's cooked by boiling it in coconut milk (and spices), and as the oils release from the coconut and the liquids boil off it naturally transitions from boiling to frying in coconut oil. It was extremely tender and flavorful.

Another favorite of ours was a spiced potato croquet which we ended up cooking for ourselves the next day (about which more in a minute).

For dessert, we had freshly fried banana fritters. There are many different varieties of banana here that vary widely in texture and taste. My favorite fritter was of a banana that's much darker in color (the flesh looked , pulpier in texture, and which has a strong citris taste). Here are the ladies who ran the shop...

Cooking

The next day we cooked a 5-course lunch for ourselves (with Khir and two friends). At the market you can buy freshly grated coconut. Here is one of Khir's friends squeezing the freshly grated coconut to get the juice out to use in our curry sauce.

Here are Jen and I frying potato for one of the appetizers.

Here's the curry pot before adding the tempe, tofu, shrimp-paste and coconut milk.

Here is Khir preparing the layers of special 3-layer drinks he made for us. The bottom layer is reconstituted basil seeds (seen in the bowl on the bottom). I forget offhand what the other layers are, but the whole thing is topped off with rose syrup, crushed ice, and evaporated milk. Very delicious!


And here are the dishes: This was the potato fritter dish we had at the hawker center yesterday. You fry potatoes, then crush them with a morter and pestle, mixing in nutmeg, clove, cinnamon, fried shallot, parsley, salt and pepper. Form them into loosely packed croquets, dip in egg and fry.

Here are our boiled gong gong (the mini conch-like shellfish in the top bowl) and cockel.

Here are some crabs we steamed, the tofu and tempe curry, and our freshly made sambal.

And everyone (minus Khir who's taking the photo) sitting down to eat!