Japanese touch to yee sang

THIS Chinese New Year, feast on yee sang with a Japanese twist at the Kofuku Oriental Cuisine at Seri Pacific Hotel Kuala Lumpur.

While you toss for good luck and prosperity, there is an array of colourful sushi adorning the side of the yee sang plate

Culinary sifu: Chefs Steven (left) and Leong presenting an array of sumptuous food offerings in the set menus.

The hotel’s sous chef for Chinese cuisine K.K. Leong said there are five types of yee sang served and each comes with sushi.

The five yee sang are Salmon, Abalone, Abalone and Salmon, Jellyfish ‘Thai style’ and Crystal Pear, served with condiments like plum sauce, sesame seed, onion oil, roasted peanuts and crackers.

They are available in small and large portions with price ranging from RM45 to RM230.

Yee sang aside, the restaurant is having three set menus of eight-course dinner for Chinese New Year.

Lucky food: The Prosperity Yee Sang with Salmon which is given a colourful twist with an assortment of Japanese sushi on the sides.

During the review, we had some of the specialities that included the Steamed Cod in Cantonese Style, Baked Tiger Prawns with Golden Egg Yolk, Deep Fried Chicken with Oats in Thai Sauce, Braised Sea Cucumber, Scallop, Pacific Clam and Broccoli with Fatt Choi, Braised Shark Fin’s Soup with Dried Scallop, Seafood Fried Rice with Crispy Anchovies and Chilled Honeydew, Sago with Vanilla Ice Cream.

The steamed cod was a favourite for its tender flesh that melted in my mouth.

The baked tiger prawns was fragrant and a delight to savour when cooked with the golden egg yolk.

The fried rice was simple and not oily while the sea cucumber dish was one to be savoured for its premium ingredients.

Classic: The Braised Shark Fin’s Soup with Dried Scallop is among the dishes featured in the set menu.

The Chinese New Year set menus are priced at RM1,088, RM1,288, and RM888 for a table of ten persons.

These menus are available on Chinese New Year Eve and from the Feb 5 onwards.

All three set menus include steamed and deep-fried nian gao.

The hotel executive sous chef Steven G. said there will be a counter near the hotel main lobby for those who want to purchase takeaway yee sang.

“However, we may not include sushi in the takeaway packages as it would not be fresh. But if guests still wish to have sushi for immediate consumption, we will still pack it for them,” he said.

KOFUKU ORIENTAL CUISINE,
Level 4, Seri Pacific Hotel Kuala Lumpur
Tel: 03-4049 4413/12
Business hours: Mon-Sat, lunch (noon to 2.30pm)
and dinner (6.30pm to 10.30pm).

By LIM CHIA YING
chiaying@thestar.com.my
Photos by CHAN TAK KONG

Spicy treat on a banana leaf

RESTAURANT Two Two Six in Pulau Tikus (opposite Wisma Perkeso) in Penang is a good choice for banana leaf rice, with its bold and robust dishes.

Tantalising: Tuck into the vegetarian banana leaf rice.

The serving counter offers some 30 selections a day. Customers can state their preference and go with the rice of the day which can be either briyani, tomato, coconut, pudina (mint) or white rice.

The best way to enjoy banana leaf rice is to eat it using your hands as the Indians believe this is the way to really appreciate the full flavours of the dishes.

Among the specialities are pepper chicken, chilli squids, mutton rendang, pineapple chicken and fish curry.

A personal favourite is the pepper chicken which is deliciously imbued with spices.

Cooked with homemade sambal, the squid is ultra spicy while the mutton is slathered with masala gravy.

The pineapple chicken has a strong pineapple taste to it and the fish curry is the Indian interpretation of the assam pedas dish.

A must-have is the rassam, a refreshing and titillating blend of pepper, assam and tomato soup. Believed to aid digestion, it is served with every meal, to be taken after you’ve finished the rest of the food.

Other popular selections here are the vegetarian set, briyani sets, mutton or chicken murtabak, home-made curry puffs and nasi lemak.

Daily specials like chicken kurma, prawn briyani and bulgari briyani are also served.

Dinner is a more toned-down affair with the a la carte menu offering limited but popular choices including chicken or mutton masala, chilli chicken, mutton rendang and mutton mahsuri.

Don’t forget perennial delights such as chapati, tosai, roti canai, mee goreng, fried koay teow Chinese style, kottu poratha (fried roti canai), appom with coconut milk and roti jala with chicken sama. All are available throughout the day.

For light bites, consider popiah or vadai (a fried delicacy with onion and green chilli).

Kesiri (Indian sweet), pulut kacau, pulut indi kampung style, doughnuts and kueh are available for dessert.

Options on the drinks menu include Milo, tea and ginger with cow’s milk as well as the usual mango lassi, butter milk and sweet lassi.

Also providing catering services for all kinds of functions, Restaurant Two Two Six is open from 6.30am to 9pm daily except Sundays.

For more information, contact 016-4160091.

Source : The Star

Pan Mee, Jalan Railway, Old Town, Selangor

Springy noodles in a tasty broth at only RM4 a bowl

FOOD TRAIL
By SAM CHEONG, The Star

THERE is some good food to be had in Petaling Jaya’s Old Town, and one of my recent discoveries is a pan mee stall near Jalan Railway.

To the regulars who know this part of the neighbourhood very well, it is a secret worth guarding.

Thanks to my fishing buddy Y.P. Chan, or Ah Pan, as he is fondly called, I found a coffee shop called He Pin housed in an old bungalow located in a corner lot.

This is a well-known landmark among both the factory workers and white-collar folk in the area.

The first thing I noticed was the muhibbah spirit in the makan places here.

Unpretentious: He Pin coffee shop is housed in an old bungalow.

You can find a Malay nasi campur stall in a Chinese coffee shop and the workers who take orders for your drinks are Indian.

“Eh Sam ah! This place ah, very famous for its pan mee,” Ah Pan said.

By the time we got to the shop, it was already packed with the lunch crowd.

We ordered two bowls of pan mee from Chun Kee pan mee stall.

While waiting for my lunch, I watched the lady owner of this stall at work from a distance.

I noticed a large basin filled with flour balls and to fill her orders, she picked up the balls of dough and started kneading them one by one.

The handmade pan mee here was unlike any I had ever tasted.

And, at RM4 a bowl, I thought I had struck gold because the noodles were springy and tasty.

What I liked most was the clear broth that came with it.

With its bare minimal presentation, I must say that its simplicity did the job of yielding a good taste.

Well-guarded secret: Chun Kee’s pan mee is a dish worth trying in PJ Old Town.

The pan mee was garnished with minced pork, deep-fried anchovies and some spinach.

If you love meat, you can ask the lady to add more yuk suei (minced meat), but this will jack up its price to RM6 a pop.

The sambal dip that came with the pan mee gave it the extra “kick”.

I ended up sweating buckets and satisfied with the meal.

Later, I asked the lady owner if her stall was open at night.

Her response was: “Aiyaaa! Chou sei ngor meh? Lei thing yat lei lah...”(Aiyaaa! You want to work me to death? Come back tomorrow lah...)

She told me that her stall opened daily from 7.30am till 3pm.

He Pin coffee shop is located near Jalan 51/200. To find it, take Jalan Penchala in Petaling Jaya and travel right to the end of the road.

To you gearheads out there, the lat-long coordinates for this coffee shop are: 03 05 071 N, 101 38 535 E.

LaksaPenang not Listed in the National Heritage Website

Laksa joins in food fight

By K. KASTURI DEWI

GEORGE TOWN: Another dish has joined the food fight. This time it’s laksa — especially assam laksa which is otherwise known as Penang laksa — which is close to the hearts and palates of Penangites.

Although over time, many stalls have added a ‘lemak’ version to the laksa dish, to many, Penang laksa is still the best.

This is why Penangites were curious why Penang Laksa was not included in the list of 100 types of heritage food and drinks on the National Heritage website (www.warisan.gov.my).

Assam laksa seller Ang Kar Seong, 60, whose stall at the Air Itam market is a hit with locals and foreigners alike, said the dish should definitely be given due recognition as a “truly Malaysian” food.

All-time favourite: Ang scooping some assam laksa soup at his stall at the Air Itam market. He is being helped by his grand-daughter Choong Boom Lee (second from right).

“The speciality of Penang laksa is its distinctive thick and sour minced fish-brewed soup cooked with chilli in assam (tamarind) water and flavoured with serai (lemon grass).

“The minced fish that is added in to make the soup has to be just right so the soup does not end up having the fishy smell.

“I have been selling this dish for the past 50 years. I used to help my late mother around the stall when I was in primary school,” he said when met at his stall yesterday.

Laksa is believed to have originated from the Peranakan culture, also known as Baba and Nyonya, which is a merger of Chinese and Malay elements found in Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Meanwhile, third-generation Penang curry mee seller Moey Kok Keong, 45, was also disappointed that the curry mee dish did not make its way to the list.

Penang curry mee is made of yellow egg noodles and rice vermicelli with coconut milk-based soup and a choice of tauhu pok (dried beancurd), prawns, cuttlefish, egg, coagulated pig’s blood and topped with mint leaves.

Moey said: “Curry mee is a special dish in Malaysia and although there are many different versions of curry mee, the Penang one, which is also known as white curry mee, stands out because of its coconut-milk-based soup,” he said at his stall in a coffee-shop at Lorong Seratus Tahun.

Coffee-shop owner Alex Goh, 35, who runs a family business specialising in Penang Hokkien mee or prawn mee in Chai Leng Park on the mainland, was also disappointed that the dish failed to make the list.

He said the dish was likely to have originated from Penang because of the large number of Hokkiens here.

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Will try them out soon!.