Marufuku Udon

2003 was exceptional. It was the year I stayed in Japan for work. During the long breaks, I would travel to different parts of the Honshu island. These exciting trips don't come cheap, of course. Nothing's cheap in Japan, anyway. To ensure that I have enough money to travel, I've devised a plan - economical lunches at work.

Unlike other colleagues, my lunch at the canteen cost a mere 600 yen. Yet, they were filling and rather decent. There were no fancy sides like hijiki or edamame or fried tofu; just a plate of plain curry rice and some udon. In the summer, udon was served cold and topped with chopped scallion and fried tempura bits. During the cold winter days, they came with piping hot shoyu broth and a slice or two of surimi-based ingredients.

Udons come from many different prefectures in Japan. The Sanuki type (from Kagawa) is probably one of the more familiar ones to us in this region. My favourite is the slithery, thin Inaniwa from Akita, which unfortunately is only available at more well-established Japanese restaurants.

I try not to pay too much for noodles like udon because I feel that it's something that I can make at home. Just throw in some bonito flakes and konbu into a pot of hot water and a stock's ready in minutes. The zaru version is even easier to make! And that is why I like Marufuku.

The menu has an element of fusion in it. Okay, so fusion may be too controversial a word, especially in terms of food. Integration then. Instead of chikuwa or crabsticks (shudders) or Hello Kitty-shaped kamaboko (faints), local ingredients like wanton and taufupok (fried beancurd skin) are used. If you ask me, blanched mustard greens sound more practical in udons than to be served with chee cheong fan (flat rice skin rolls) in those fancy dim sum restaurants. A cha (zha) cheong (minced meat stew with vegetables and fermented soy bean paste) topping should work too, and I believe is a hit with the local tastebuds.

For lunch that afternoon, we had the House Special, Curry, Salada and Nabeyaki (Claypot) Udon, along with sides like Kakiage - both the original and pumpkin versions. I should also note that green tea is refillable here. The House Special had the udon pre-mixed with soy sauce and when combined with the broken poached egg, was nice. The curry version came with lots of ingredients like minced meat, onions and diced carrot. Personally, I would have liked the curry sauce more robust in taste, and with a thicker, stickier texture. The ensemble of local ingredients used in the Salada (salad in Japanese) reminded me of a rojak, which is original and interesting. The sesame dressing was not as sweet as those bottled ones sold at the supermarkets, so that's good. Instead of the usual claypot yee mee or chicken rice, give the Nabeyaki a try. For the same price at some foodcourts, this is a refreshing change. A kakiage should be light and not overly soaked in oil. Marufuku's a good reference.

I had 2.5 bowls of udon at Marufuku that afternoon. That says a lot, doesn't it?

On a different note, I'm rediscovering Jaya One. Besides Marufuku, there's also a cafe at another block called The Bee, which looks rather pretty. With delicious cakes (I can be certain of that), ice cream from The Last Polka and a good crowd, I think I'll be visiting again. Soon.

Marufuku Udon
Blk L, Unit 18, Level G, Phase 1
Jaya One
Tel: (+603) 7957 6368

The Bee
Blk K, Unit 2A, Level G, Phase 1
Jaya One
Tel: (+603) 7960 1557

They call it Bawlmer...

On a sweltering summer's day at Inner Harbor, Baltimore.

Next up, Lexington Market. For food, of course.

Noodles @ Ban Lee

They said I must give it a try. Afterall, it’s only a short drive from home. And I did. Thank you, eager relatives.

As we approached Taman Ehsan, I still had no idea what exactly we would be having for breakfast that Sunday. Pork noodle, I was told. That’s a tricky one. This is KL, so it'll be either the liver sausage and pork balls type or those served with everything porky - intestine, liver, blood cubes, minced meat, etc. I asked no further and assumed that it’s the former. I wanted it to be! However, amidst the excitement generated along the journey, I was not informed of the one important feature of this coffeeshop - the erratic business hours. True enough, it was closed that day…and on our subsequent visit.

Some things are worth the wait, I guess. This is one of them. The gorn low (Cantonese for dry-tossed) dressing consisting of light and sweet soy sauces and sesame oil was quintessentially what I would have been able to formulate at home but of course, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. At Ban Lee, it was the really good noodle that had me. How would I describe it? Most probably a cross between yee and pan mee. So, on one hand, there’s the smooth, non-sticky texture of yee mee (sans the ubiquitous process of blanching in hot oil) and on the other, a hint of floury scent of pan mee. I’ve seen similar types sold at wet markets before but thought that they would not be any different from pan mee. Looks like it’s time to get a kilogram and make myself some gorn low mee. Or some mushroom ragout to go with it! The other ingredients complementing the noodles seemed pan mee-inspired; deep-fried beancurd skin and pork balls.

Don’t start eating yet! HairyBerry needs to shoot the food, said the relatives, almost in unison. Sweet.

Here’s a good plan for a Sunday morning – start the day with a workout at the nearby Forest Research Institute of Malaysia (FRIM), replenish with some pork noodles at Ban Lee and head home for a peaceful afternoon nap. If Ban Lee’s closed, there are always other coffeeshops around Taman Ehsan. Good ones at that.

Kedai Makan Ban Lee
Jalan E 3/6
Taman Ehsan, 52100 Kuala Lumpur
Malaysia

Hup Choon Eating House

Stir-fried pork with scallion and ginger - could have been more flavourful and the sauce further reduced.

够两个人吃了啦!
(The order’s enough for two already!)

We get this all the time from the wait staff or captain. Most said it with a smile while some looked suspicious, perhaps thinking that we’re just fooling around. We’re not embarrassed about ordering more than what is expected of us. The rule is to not waste, and I can proudly say that unless the food has been contaminated or belongs to another table or if I’d mistakenly ordered the durian, we'll wipe the plates clean, every time. Take our last dinner on Monday at Crystal Jade Kitchen, for example. We had the ala carte steamboat buffet and ticked close to 30 dishes on the list. Oh, PLUS an extra bowl of congee with preserved eggs for the sick one. What’s left in the pot as we asked for the bill were the boiling stocks, disintegrated bits of unidentifiable ingredients and a plate of diseased cabbage. That's all.

Sweet and sour pork - I like.

Honestly, it makes perfect sense to go overboard at tze chars. You need your meat, vegetables, egg, noodles and soup. And perhaps the stall’s specialty too. That’s more than five dishes already, right?

Fried hor fun - wok hei-deprived.

How did we end up at Hup Choon? It all started when I saw the photo of a promising plate of sweet and sour pork on LiquidShaDow's blog and alerted XLB, who would sacrifice anything (except Flor's Waguri Millefeuille and the Kyo-Machiya cake) for the perfect sweet and sour pork. What we've gotten that evening was not any offset from that photo that got us all excited. The result of sufficient heat for deep-frying was easily recognized - a lightly battered, crispy, golden skin with moisture inside the meat well-retained. We liked it but Moonstone Cafe's take still remains as her favourite. I think it was the fruity sauce there that scored the extra point for her.

Stir-fried sweet potato leaves - a CHORE to peel the fibrous outer layers of the stem at home, so have it at a tze char.

Hotplate tofu - pleasant but we should have asked for a signature instead.

As the evening went on, the turnout at Hup Choon grew to a suffocating number. Expatriates (I would assume, considering that they must have lived here long enough to learn the art of reserving a table by standing really close to one that has just settled the bill) and locals were eagerly trying to catch the attention of the wait staff to be seated. Some were seen carrying boxes of takeouts that perhaps were ordered in advance. Besides the decent dishes, we wondered what makes Hup Choon a hive. The reasonable prices must be a major attraction here. I vaguely remember receiving enough change to buy ourselves a large cup of those ice cream/yoghurt thingy at Sogurt, Coronation Plaza. The extensive menu and good service must be part of the winning formula too, I'm sure.

Hup Choon Eating House
1 Binjai Park
Singapore
Tel: (+65) 64684081

LP Noodle Station

Ah, a blissful week. Just like slurping one steaming hot cup of instant kim chi ramyun after another. Perhaps attending a happy event like a wedding ceremony has brought back some good luck (I’m Chinese – the semi-superstitious kind). Work aside, life in the past 5 days involved enjoying a bunch of new songs, interesting reads and good food. By the way, does anyone know that in a traditional Chinese wedding, when a bridegroom ushers his bride into his house straight from the typically horribl interestingly decorated car, everyone has to literally turn their backs on them? Apparently, in failing to do so will have the luck of the guests be forced out of their system by the strong qi discharged from the newly wedded couple. It's only when they rejoin the guests after the bedroom ceremony (nothing sexually-inclined, unless potties are your thang) that they are allowed to meet face to face. Some valuable notes from the resourceful aunties there.

The weekend is here again but there’s no wedding or tea-ceremony to attend. Darn it. Let’s just hope that good luck from the previous week hasn't expired and will continue to run through the weekend (at least) and may there be more pork noodles too. The gorn low (dry-tossed) kway teow and bee hoon combination’s my favourite. Densely flavoured, moist ground pork is a must. A generous scoop of lard or fried shallots oil is almost necessary. Some thick slices of sweet liver sausage complete the universe.

I thought of LP (some Hokkien friends out there must be tickled by this acronym) Noodle Station as I had my gorn low meen for breakfast at a wet market in Cheras, a few hours before the wedding. Coincidentally, Qianli Xiang (the loh mee restaurant in my previous post is located just some lots away from LP. The universe has spoken. I had to, at the very least, flash this LP on my blog.

Rubbish aside, LP is a fine, modern kopitiam. There are the usual nasi lemak, condensed milk-based beverages and kaya toast. What’s interesting is that, in between, there’s pork noodle. And from my observation, there’s at least a bowl on every table. I’m not going to exaggerate and claim this to be whatever bestestestest thing ever because it isn’t. But in all honesty, it’s a bowl of satisfying comfort food. The ground pork's well-seasoned and the sausage's sweet and smoky. A more daring splash of aromatic oil would have been appreciated. On the other hand, I wished the curry chicken was less oily. Oh, or was it designed to have the floating layer of oil be applied to the noodle? The curry chicken here relates to the Chinese version – less spicy and somehow dilute. In general, I think the pairing of chicken curry and gorn lou meen is a champion. Imagine the explosion of flavours when soy sauce meets curry leaves meet pork meets coconut milk meets shallot oil meets sesame oil and tell me it's not worth drooling over.

As mentioned earlier, I've been enjoying some new songs that I've discovered while mindlessly surfing the web. One of them is Melody Gardot's If The Stars Were Mine, which the unripe words seem like a cross between The Sound Of Music and Disneyland. But that's just old cynical HairyBerry babbling. It's a great string-backed, bossanova track laced with MG's sultry voice. So, while I'm still all chirpy and enjoying this rather peculiarly lucky week, here's wishing everyone a good weekend ahead. :)

LP Noodle Station
Jalan SJ 1
Taman Selayang Jaya
Selangor, Malaysia

Restoran Qianli Xiang

That was an unfortunate Saturday at The Gardens, Mid Valley City. Despite the pleasant surprise of bumping into LifeforBeginners, the Devil and the Diva, I had to keep a distance from the happy, healthy trio. In my hand was a bag of flu medicines (soluble tablets, pills, etc). The signs of a virus attack were clear as I returned home from a run in the drizzle that morning. I needed heat! A hot bowl of tau fu fah, some sweet horse legs and crispy yau char kway from the noteworthy I LOVE YOO! would turn things around, I thought. It didn’t take long before I started sneezing incessantly in front of the snacks and had to dash to the nearest pharmacy.

You don’t disappoint your family by cutting short a weekend outing. I survived MVC by wanton-wrapping by the dozen and napping at the public benches placed along the way as they shopped. Then, came lunchtime and the sick one was asked to decide. Remembering mum’s mention of an Ulu Yam loh mee restaurant in Kepong Baru, I suggested that we give it a try. Why loh mee? Because it’s soupy, hot and served with black vinegar - an appetizing, cleansing potion that I believe can prevent (and hopefully, cure) any ailment. I’ve read a report on a family in China that consumes black vinegar everyday and that portrait of them literally defines living in the pink of health. Inspiring!

My suggestion was not well-received. Apparently, there’s a better option in Taman Selayang Utama. Qianli Xiang or fragrance traveling a thousand miles in Mandarin (how paradoxical, considering my now reddened, stuffed nose!) has been around for a few years and is quite a favourite among the locals. I was told that the noodles are homemade.

There’s always this scene in family-run, small Chinese restaurants during the busy lunch hours - sweaty parents heaving and shouting in the kitchen, the young children reluctantly fill up your empty teapots while the grandmother calmly cuts the vegetables at a corner of the restaurant. But in the late afternoon, activities are minimized to a gathering of generations at a table as the kids take a short nap, in preparation for the maddening dinner crowd. The calmness in the restaurant at that hour was soothing for a patient like me.

When it comes to loh mee (be it Penang, KL or Singapore style), I prefer the sauce to be minimally starched (I'm disturbed by the sight of a gooey, translucent dark sauce). A good reduction with some whisked eggs will just do for me. What I liked about Qianli Xiang’s loh mee was the noodle. The inconsistency in size may not be visually pleasing and perhaps, even border on being amateurish but that’s what makes homemade food unique, I guess. Slightly chewy, smooth and with just a hint of floury taste, it was nothing like the typically bland, tough and thick yellow noodles that usually come with a lye aftertaste. Ingredients like greens and pork were aplenty too, here.

My deteriorating condition was no excuse to not try the homemade noodles, fried…Hokkien mee style, of course! Given my rather insensitive tastebuds that day, I still found their take pretty darn good. Noticeably different was the drier coating of soy sauce-based stock, perhaps due to the absorbing nature of the homemade noodles, unlike the usual oil-sealed thick yellow type. And that’s how I like my Hokkien mee, as compared to the watery version. What’s missing was that extra dash of fried lard bits, which would have added some crunch and aroma to the dish.

Besides black vinegar, minced garlic is another proven therapeutic condiment served at most Chinese restaurants. I must have had a few tablespoons of it that day. The nose didn’t dry up as I hoped but man, there sure was a serious windy issue going on later that day. It was only a week later that I’d fully recovered from that bad flu. Lesson learnt – do not run when it’s drizzling on a sunny day because the immune system, perhaps confused with the high/low temperature, is greatly weakened. So, run only on a clear day or...when it really pours!

Restoran Qianli Xiang
27, Jalan SJ 1
Taman Selayang Jaya
Selangor , Malaysia

Yaleju - Dong Bei Ho Guo

The only thing that differentiated us from the rest of the customers was our local accent. Appearance-wise, we weren't that different. On a Sunday night, this seems like a preferred place for the workforce and students from the many provinces of China to gather and feast.

Our visit was unintended. It was one of those evenings when we were looking for good tze char (a rather impossible task since we were at Dhoby Ghaut) yet the tired feet were begging to rest. Strangely enough, the compromise was the few blocks of shophouses located nearby the Kallang MRT station. WtF, right?

The lanes separating the rows were dark and quiet - a contrast to the vibrant food streets of Geylang not too far from here. Was I at the other side of Geylang?

Further down the front (or back) row, we observed a single, well-lit lot. A restaurant! It didn't take long for us to make a choice.

Yaleju offers just 2 types of soup - clear or ma la (numbing hot, literally). I guess it has to do with the Dong Bei (northeast China) palate. Tom yum is not a staple stock there, I'm sure. The varieties of meat, seafood and vegetable were not unlike the many steamboat restaurants scattered around the island. The selection of pre-cooked dishes that night, despite looking abandoned and unkempt, were more interesting - braised pork ribs, trotters and chicken feet. They served these by the large plastic containers. However, I didn't find any of these interesting-looking dishes delicious. In fact, the bland trotters were a mix between a clean-shaven Monday morning and a Wednesday stubble. A few rare condiments are worth a mention though - fermented (red) soy bean paste, garlic/coriander/scallion/sesame oil paste (or what I called a Chinese pesto) and the simple black vinegar to go with some of the other dips.

Even at the late hour of ten, the restaurant was still packed to the brim. Tables were filled with glasses of beer (with ice) and plentiful crabs, prawns, beef and pork. Some looked serious while dipping their meats into the piping hot pot but most were just happily chatting the night away, intoxicated or not.

We left the restaurant with full stomachs and a feeling that we've just returned from a trip to China. That was fun.

Yaleju - Dong Bei Ho Guo
12, Jalan Ayer
(Near Kallang MRT Station)
Singapore
Tel: (+65) 6746 6619

Summer Splash at Hersheypark

We arrived very early that Saturday. That's good because the rides were just opening and there was basically no queue, except for the newest addition, the Fahrenheit. In less than 2 hours (and on an empty stomach), we’ve been to heaven and hell, and survived the most thrilling rides Hersheypark has to offer.

It’s no wonder that the Fahrenheit attracts the most visitors. The best part is the slow, suspenseful 121 feet vertical (yes!) ascend that plunges, again, vertically to just a few feet above the ground. The rush was intense and I think it’s a great stress buster. I would have gone for it again had the queue been any shorter. The Great Bear roars as it speeds through the track at about 100 kmph...hanging. Awesomest! When I saw the complex formation of the Storm Runner, I told myself that this was going be one helluva freakin’ long and exciting ride. The website described the ride best - ...one-of-a-kind coaster will launch you from 0-72 mph in 2 seconds flat. 18 stories straight up, straight down. And that's just the beginning. The Sidewinder’s route may be shorter, but that’s just because it moves backwards too! A boomerang motion, they call it. Perhaps physiologically impossible but the reversal at top speed did, in a way, untangle the (ahem, slight) dizziness the previous few rides caused. One of the very last rides we had before leaving was The Claw. Oh, I like the sound of it…because it makes me hungry thinking about crabcakes. As the hand swung to about 64 feet in the air, the view, which included glimpses of the blinding evening sun and enthralled riders sitting on the opposite side, was beautiful. My mind began to wander and for a while, the world slowed. And the music of Sigur Rós came to life.

At The Boardwalk, summery songs blasted from the speakers. California Gurls, Don’t Worry Baby, Soak Up The Sun, the massive splashes and baking sunbathers – it was what I’d always imagined a fun summer day would be like in America.

And just to be sure, we’re still talking about central Pennsylvania.

And there was Dippin’ Dots, an ice cream that defies all conventions by being made into tiny frozen droplets. My first impression of this marvel is the resemblance to certain pellet-form rodenticides. A read on the web revealed that liquid nitrogen is used in the manufacturing process. Molecular gastronomy stuff comes to mind. Deep freezing means that it’s more resistive to heat and that’s perfect for a day that peaked at about 36 deg C. I had the tasty Banana Split flavour and enjoyed tonguing the spheres. No spoon required.

I came to this century old amusement park thinking that it's a fun place for kids, only kids. And I was right. For that whole Saturday, I was a kid again.