Begger's Chicken - How to eating guide?

Begger's Chicken - why is it called a Begger chicken? According to the China legend, there was a begger who was desperate for food but do not have the stove to prepare the chicken. So what he did was...covered up the chicken with mud & burned it in fire. There are a few stories behind the begger's chicken but this make the most sense the me. In today China in big cities like Beijing, they called the "Begger's Chicken" = "Emperor Chicken" = "Rich & Noble Chicken". It carried the opposite meaning of "Begger's Chicken". We can understand that a high class 5 stars restaurant can't have a "Begger's Chicken" on their menu.

We bought this Begger's chicken in one of our local tour, this is a more humble version. You can't really make the authentic Begger's chicken at home because it is really messy. These are baked in a traditional oven. However, there are simple Chinese herbal rubs that you can buy from the store for steam/bake from the Asia Store.

Refer to the above pic, we used a kitchen hammer to break the baked mud. Then, we use a jam spreader to open up the cracked mud. Be creative, use whatever tools we got in the kitchen.

Continue to work hard for a delicious chicken....

Finally, we removed all the pieces. Then, you will see there is a wax paper protecting the chicken from the mud.

Tear off the wax paper........

Carefully removed all the wax paper, then you will see the final aluminum foil wrapping "protecting" the chicken .....

Ta-da ...finally we can serve the chicken. Hungry....

The Begger's chicken was stuffed with lots of Chinese Herbs. The flavour is more intense & the meat is juicy. The cooking method using mud & traditional wood fire oven make it so special. It is just similar to the method making salt baked chicken, the cooking process itself is the main contribution factor for the delicious meal.

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Flower Crab - How to prepare ?

My friend bought us some flower crabs. These are local caught flower crab. You can only harvest 30% meat from these crab. They had less meat proportion to their body weight. But the plus point is the flavor of the flesh is more intense.  By the way, this is the first time we process the crab. Got to use some brain juices to crack the puzzle.How to "gut" the crab?? Hm.......
First thing first, wash the crab with brush & water. You can see in the below pictures, we are preparing to use the Chinese big knife to smash the crab clamp later. You can twist the arms or legs for bigger size crab. However, we just kept it intact because the size is not big.

We can still recalled he told us, look for the triangle flap on the crab belly. He is right there is a triangle flap. Can you see it?

Open the triangle flap; use force to tear open the body. It was pretty easy to handle because the crab was small.

Lastly remove the spongy gills & small paddles. Then use a knife to chopped the crab into two.

Use a spoon to scoop out the roe (crab butter). You can keep it or discard it depending on your preference. Those thing are quite high in cholesterol but taste freaking good. Eat sparingly.

For fresh crab, just steam it with some salt or can cook with plain rice porridge (flavors are better with the crab roe).

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Thai Wun Sen Salad with lots of corianders

I am craving of Thai food recently. I am so into Thai style salad. Honestly, we just can't get enough of it. Therefore, I had decided to make myself some salad.

You need about 20 mins to wipe up this dish.
Ingrediants:
180g bean thread noodles (Wun Sen or mung bean noodle)
2 clove of garlic, diced
2 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp lime juice  (lemon juice)
2 tbsp peanut oil
40g chopped roasted peanuts
2 spring onion, sliced thinly
half cup of fresh coriander (chopped)
2 small red Thai chili,sliced ( you can opt for big chili if you would like to reduce the spiciness or do without it)

Method:
1) Stand noodle in boiling water until just tender or become translucent. Drain. Use scissors to cut into shorter lengths.
2) Use fork to mix garlic, fish sauce, lime juice & oil in a large bowl to combine.
3) In the cooked noodle, peanuts, spring onions, coriander, chilies & toss toss toss to serve immediately.

TIPS: For most salad, please toss the dressing only when you want to serve. Otherwise, it will become soggy & not so presentable.

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Penang Streets Foods- Char Koay Teow

Almost anyone staying in Malaysia love streets foods. Last holidays, we had decided to visit the infamous Penang Sister Char Koay Teow @Lam Heng Cafe, 185 Macalister Road, Penang. It is so easy to miss the Lam Heng Cafe because it is just at the corner & it is quite difficult to get a parking. We have been circling the same street for at least 5 times just to get a parking. It was almost 2pm, I guessed whatever we ate must tasted so good because we were hungry. LOL.........

However, I was glad that we finally found a parking. Honestly the shop is very old, feel like I am going back to 80s. But the shop owner are e-commerce savvy, you can find them in Facebook. Take a close look at the Lam Heng Cafe signboard, it was tagged with "Facebook".

Char Koay Teow in Hokkien language (one of the Chinese language) means fried flat rice noodles. If you ever visit Penang, you must not miss this signature fried noodles. These flat rice fried in a sizzling hot wok with oil, bean sprout, eggs, prawn, chili (optional), cockles (optional) & chives. Most of the time, customer will drop the chili if they ordering for the kids. Some people do not take cockles due to personal preference. Please tell the stall owner when you order, they have very good memory even though the crowd is big.  Well, for myself, I will want all these ingredients in my Char Koay Teow.

Besides that, we also order Hokkien Mee (Hae Mee) & Loh Mee from the other stalls. I thought it was pretty good. Hokken Mee (Hae Mee) is noodles served together with hard boiled eggs, small shrimp, meat slices, bean sprouts and kangkung (water spinach) in a spicy prawn broth.

 

Loh Mee - noodles in dark soya sauce broth thickened with corn starch and beaten eggs, served with eggs, meat slices and bean sprouts.

We always prefer to stay in studios apartment. Gurney hotel offered a very reasonable packaging. In Malaysia, hotels price is higher on Friday, Saturday & Public holidays. It could be pricey to travel during those peak period. My recommendation is to travel off peak period because Penang had lots of tourist.

We continued our dinner "makan trip" around George Town. We recommend the below few dishes that you must try if you ever visit Penang. We just drive around George Town around 7p.m., then randomly pick an eatery full of people &  full of hawkers stalls. It will never goes wrong.

We had.......

Lor Bak - Marinated minced pork, rolled in thin soybean sheets & spices.Deep fried. Usually served with small bowl of Loh (a thick dipping sauces thickened with corn starch and beaten eggs) and chili sauces.

Rojak Buah- assorted fruit salad tossed in a special thick black prawn sauce. It is combined with sugar, tamarind  and lots of fruits (pineapple, guava, green mango, cucumber and pickles fruits) tossed in this sauce with crushed toasted peanuts and dried squid too sometimes. There are a few variations, Rojak Buah is my all time favorite after eating all those deep fried stuffs.

My kid favorite: Oysters Omelet is juicy & fresh.

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By the way, when come to feasting, you should follow the crowd. We see a lot of customers ordering this stir fried clamps. We tag along to order the same things when the waitress served it up to the table next to us. Oh....YES! It was good.

P/S: The only side effect is I put on weight. @_@

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Bidor Duck Noodle - Restauran Pun Chun (Perak)

On the North bound trip from Penang back to Kuala Lumpur on our last local trip, we stopped by Bidor for lunch. This is actually a very small town. Wikipedia is correct. Before the advent of North-South Expressway, travelers had no choice but to pass through this town through the federal trunk road. As this town is (still is) rather famous for its variety of food, travelers frequently choose to stop-by at one of the eateries before continuing their journey. That was what we did. The town is so 70s.........

 

The most famous eatery is Restaurant Pun Chun for its duck thigh noodle in herbal broth. While waiting for the food, we need some snacks to fill up the stomach & we bought these Chinese yam dumpling (wu kok), it was tasty. So old schools.

Honestly the queue was really long, we had waited for almost 30 mins. The surrounding was quite stuffy, a lot of customers and it is not air conditioned. Imagined it was 33'C. The building was old and my child started shouting for "Food!". Headache.......Phew....finally the noodles came!

You can order 2 types of duck noodles- dry & soupy. I preferred the dry duck noodles because the soup which was served in a single bowl tasted so much better. It was more concentrated. The broth of duck soup noodle was less concentrate. Besides, due to serving  the large customer crowd, the dry noodles was cool when it served.

The most pleasing experience for me is actually "shopping" for fresh fruits.Once you step out from the duck noodle shop, you can see a lot of stalls near by selling the local produce fruits. Surprisingly, the "GUAVA" were excellent! After we back from the trip, I have done some research to confirm that Bidor is the supplier of some of the better quality guava & mango. Yes, it was good. It is a MUST BUY if you are in Bidor. The mangos were tasty. I should have buy more mangos too.

Another MUST BUY item from Bidor is PETAI (the stinky bean).It was fresh, crunchy & juicy. These are good for kidney.

When we reached home, I immediately tested the Petai recipes which is quite unusual to me. Normally, most of us cook Petail Sambal Udang, but the aunty who sold us the petai said that is not probably the best way to cook. I was skeptical initially. However, what she said is quite true. The Petai taste even delicious if cooked in a more simple way.

Thanks for her recipes. I learn something new.
To share with you:
Ingredients:
Petai
Sliced onions
Ikan bilis
Soya sauce
Some water
Method: Stir fried all the above ingredients with oil. The full flavor of Petail shines.

 

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