Malaysia - Day 4

So today begins the first full day of work, and since I'm on the night shift, it limits my dining opportunities. "Breakfast" is now after work and "dinner" is right before work. Lunch break is about four in the morning (local time) but since nothing is open around the plant, it usually consists of a pastry and orange I bring along with me.

The point of me tell you all this is that the structure I've been following for the past few blog entries just got blown up. Instead I'll just have to improvise with the best of the day's findings in food. Exhibit A:


I knew there was a reason I love this country. Yes folks, that is bacon. And I found it in a store/food stop in the local mall. They grilled it. And in the case on either side of this case is more bacon, piles of equal size. I'm not entirely sure what the square meat-looking product is next to the bacon but I'm guessing it is also a pork product. The whole shop is dedicated to bacon and square bacon (that's what I'm calling it). Why didn't I think of this? We have bacon flavored (or wrapped around) everything, but why not go straight to the source? Furthermore, as a friend pointed out, if those square pieces are indeed bacon, they could revolutionize the BLT industry. Don't worry, I'm inquiring about franchising ...

Surprisingly I didn't stuff my face with bacon and still had room for dinner. We went the Sesame portion of Soy & Sesame I mentioned in my last post.

Now there are some menu items that just jump out at you for being potentially delicious and you know you must have them right then and there because your taste buds might forever go on strike if they don't have it ... my appetizer was not one of them. Instead, my appetizer was one of those where my brain said "cool! let's do this thing!" and my taste buds said "cool? let's do this thing? WTF?".

The dish? Braised goose foot ...

webbing and all ...

It was served in a thick, fairly light-in-flavor sauce with a mushroom (of some variety) cap, asparagus stalk, and another unidentified piece of meat (that curled whitish thing).

Because the bones were still intact, it took a lot of skill to eat with chopsticks. After several initial attempts I had to use my hands. Hands verse foot. Hands win. Under the skin and webbing, which reminded me a lot of chicken skin (e.g. fatty but delicious), there was a little bit of dark meat surrounding tiny finger bones. The meat fell right from the bone and was tender with the flavor of dark chicken meat.

So in this case, my brain won and my taste buds conceded that my brain wasn't completely loco.

For a main dish, I had venison stir-fry which was so tender it just seemed to melt in my mouth. Based on what I've seen of Malaysia (and that is a small small fraction), I don't know if I believe venison is standard in the Malays culture. I grew up in Michigan were friends' fridges were stocked with venison steaks from their latest hunting trip. (The start of hunting season was practically a holiday.) I don't see the same environment here but regardless it was a fantastic dish, topped with fried leeks and in a Szechuan style.