Wrapping up Malaysia

I'm back on the Western side of the world writing this. The last 48 hours in Malaysia combined with the mind numbing 30 hours worth of travel time - during which I swear I saw the wicked witch fly by on her broom outside the plane window - makes it feel like I left some unfinished business for this post. So here are my final culinary moments of what was an amazing experience.

We returned to Sesame for dinner. I opted not to get the braised goose foot this time (been there), but there was one item on the menu that matched my "to eat" list - abalone. Now at the time I ordered this I had no idea what abalone are. So how could it be on my list? Marketing. Pure marketing. It was during the night we spent in Hong Kong when I saw about three ads in a matter of three seconds for abalone. Sure I could have immediately went to the know-it-all (aka Wikipedia) but where's the fun in that? Truth is, I just forgot to look it up.

Turns out abalone are just edible snails, but are considered a delicacy in the Southeast Asia. Preparation of common abalone dishes can take all day, and are considered a real draw (hence all the ads). At Sesame though I had abalone in a cheesy tart that was so familiar that I swore Ms. Marie Calendar was in the kitchen. So while it was tasty, I think I missed out on the true flavor of abalone.


The next coarse was a gorgeous and delicious rack of lamb with veggies in a Szechuan sauce. Probably not so much Malaysian, but fantastic nonetheless. Jasmine tea in the background.

We wrapped up the meal with some complimentary sesame ice cream.



I wrote a LOT about the bacon shop. It would have a tragedy if I had left without at least tasting some of it. Fortunately my co-worker Dan decided that we might all want to try some. So he decided to pick some up ... or should I say he took every piece the store had. Seriously! He ordered what he thought was a "normal" amount - 500 g - only to see all but two pieces exit the case. He couldn't let them those two occupy that large case by themselves (they'd surely feel like rejects), so he asked the vendor to toss them in the bag too, thus completing the clean-up.

We snacked on the bacon at work. Dan got the square kind which was coated in a sweet glaze. Do I even need to say that it was delicious?

And after taking a bite of the bacon, clicking our heels three times, and saying "there's nothing as tasty as airplane food" we found ourselves eating something at 30,000 feet elevation in the middles of a 30 hour travel "day".

Malaysia - Day 6

So this is Durian. A fruit that grows in this region of the world. Ever since arriving, a colleague of mine, Trevor, has been suggesting (or should I say "demanding"?) that we try this. Like myself, Trevor is up for trying new things all the time. While he had already had Durian in the States and once since being here in Malaysia, he wanted to share the experience with us. When pressed for an explanation to the question of why he was so insistent that we try it, his answer was "because it's an experience", which was quickly followed by a smirk.

Facial indicators aside, it doesn't take much arm twisting to get me to try anything new ... especially if it is labeled as an "experience" ... and I'm egged on. So we set out to find some of the fruit. The cab drivers laughed when we approached them about taking us to some. But after one stand was already out, we found a stand with plenty.

We (there were three of us, Trevor, Jake, and I) stepped out of the cab and our nostrils were filled with the stench of dirty gym socks. This is the only other characteristic of Durian that I knew about - its atrocious smell. Keep in mind that the fruit hadn't even been cut open yet! It took only a matter of moments for the fruit stand owner to select our Durian and crack the spiky shell open.


Inside there is this white, coconut looking flesh inside but then there is beige slug-looking thing, which is the part that you eat. It consists of a mucus casing, filled with mushy stuff (more on this in a second), and a seed or pit in the center. The idea is pop the whole thing in your mouth and then suck the "meat" off of the pit.



Not knowing what I was in for, I tried to separate it all and ended up with a big mess on my hands. So with a bit of a panic from the idea of it hitting the ground, I popped some in my mouth.


Before I go on, let me just say that the locals told me that once I got past the smell, the rest was easy. Well that is like saying once you got past the first level of Super Mario Brothers, you beat the game. Not. Even. Close.

The mush has the consistency of baby food and it flows through your mouth without any control. Initially the taste is not too bad, but when it hits the taste buds in the rear of your mouth, your natural instinct is to gag; as if your body is in self-preservation mode saying "oh that can't possibly be good for you". I've been struggling with how to describe the taste and I come up blank every time. It might be it's own standard - something to use as a future reference where I can say "that tastes like Durian". So for the future, I could say "that rotten egg tastes bad, BUT not as bad as Durian." Yeah, something like that. But if I HAD to describe the taste, I would say baby food blended with sour milk.

You can judge the harshness of the fruit from my reaction in this video:

Once the gag reflex is quelled it goes down pretty smooth. The next seed is easier to handle and then the next is easier still. After three seeds, I thought it was done but then the owner of the fruit stand came over and cracked the remaining shell in another quarter to expose 5 or 6 more seeds. At this point, Trevor was nice enough to help me out. And the cab driver was nice enough to shoot video of us using his cell phone. So keep a lookout for a video on youtube labeled "stupid Americans eating Durian - hilarious".


All that said, it honestly was one of the most unique experiences regarding food I've had in a while. But Jake hit it on the head when he said "it was an experience I don't regret but never want to have again." Everything from the fruit stand on the side of the road to the fruit itself was something I'm glad I did. However, I won't be rushing out for another one ... unless I can convince somebody else to try it. I could see it being OK in a highly sweetened product, like candy or ice cream. I think we should all write in to the Food Network and demand that it be the secret ingredient on Iron Chef.


Everyone we've talked to doesn't think it tastes especially good, even the locals. So we had to wonder if it is sold purely on the demand from people like us. People who say "oh this stinks! here smell this!" to our friends.

One final note (an important one at that), if you are a fan of "Bizarre Foods" with Andrew Zimmern, then you know Durian is one of the few foods he wasn't able to eat. You can see his reaction in the video below. Eat that Zimmern!

Malaysia - Day 5

On the very first day when I arrived, the breakfast buffet in the hotel had a dish labeled "fish congee" that caught my eye - not because of it's beauty but because it looked like oatmeal and the title had "fish" in it and it was breakfast time. I'll admit it shook me a little bit. Here I was less than a day into my trip, determined to try just everything, and I couldn't face the congee.

I passed that day, thinking it would be on the buffet everyday and I could build up to it. But as I approached the cauldron hosting the stuff every morning it was filled with other kinds of congee, plain or chicken, which both sound much less daunting.

Patience happened and today I tried fish congee. Congee is just overcooked rice that is a little soupy. Toss in fish and fish sauce and you have, you guessed it, fish congee. There were chunks of fish, which wasn't the most pleasant, but in general the congee has little flavorful - after all it is just rice. Sticking with the oatmeal analogy, there are a variety of toppings to dress it up. Most of the toppings I selected (green onion, fried onion, these things that looked like puff pastry, and soy sauce) did the job quite well. I say "most" because that egg was the worst thing I've had since being here. It is a duck egg that is prepared by storing it in salt for 1 to 2 months then hard boiling it. It ends up being super salty and very tough. I wasn't expecting that, and I popped the whole thing in my mouth! Yuck!

I'm no longer afraid of congee but I'll think twice about eating anything that is appears like a hard boiled egg again.

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.

Malaysia - Day 3

Breakfast

Not much different then yesterday. All dishes available at the hotel breakfast buffet were very similar. I was prepared to try the congee but it was only plain congee and I'm waiting for the fish congee.


Lunch

Dim Sum!!! We went to yet another open air restaurant this afternoon that faced the ocean; this time for Dim Sum. It was nice to take a break from the fish/seafood that we had been gorging ourselves on since we arrived; yet it was equally delicious. I'm not entirely sure what everything was so I'll let the pics do most of the talking:


The shell of this dish just melted in your mouth to expose ...

a filling of shredded chicken and beef in a thick, flavorful gravy.


Rice with a tender, fatty, delicious piece of chicken in the center.


A fried potato and radish pancake. Not unlike a less dense, more tasty hash browns.

Doughy buns ...


filled again with shredded meat in gravy.

An assortment of dumplings.

Crunchy outer shell stuffed with a peanut butter based filling.


Custard in a flaky pastry crust.


"Iced tea". I ordered ice tea (accidentally for the whole table) and the waitress didn't hesitate. She quickly returned with with four glasses filled with ice and a pot of tea ... very hot tea. Lost in translation.

The carnage.



Dinner

We opted for a quick meal at one of the many hotel restaurants called Sesame & Soy. It's actually two restaurants (Sesame and Soy) each with its own menu. We went to Soy but no doubt we will return to try Sesame since it had the more exotic menu.

I did however get to try something I had always wanted to, Shark Fin Soup! It seems like a dish that always pops up on the travel log TV programs when the chef/host travels to the Far East. From the moment I stepped into a restaurant and realized it was readily available around here, I've been talking about having it.

This version found the shark fin swimming (sorry couldn't resist) with shredded crab meat in a thicken broth base. The verdict? Not worth the hype. There are two things in this world that I can say with absolute confidence that no taste: water and shark fin. Seriously. Celery has more flavor. In fact, the only really flavor this soup generated was from the crab. Needless to say I was disappointed but not deterred. I'll try it elsewhere to confirm whether this was an anomaly or the norm.

For my main dish, I had a grilled chicken dish served with roasted garlic clove halves and pepper in a Thai basil sauce over rice topped with a fried egg. It was FANTASTIC! The combination of the running egg yolk and the slightly sweet and spicy sauce was perfect.

Day 2 - Malyasia

Breakfast

Breakfast was the complimentary buffet at the hotel. I haven't gone over this yet, but my hotel is not a hotel ... it's a palace. My bed is wider than it is long, I have a view of the ocean (sunrise from my room below), I have a walk-in shower, complimentary ice cream was served at check-in, beverages are free every night from 6 to 8PM ... and they put these delightful coconut candies in my room everyday. I may just not come home.


The buffet fits the extravagant theme of the hotel. It caters to the international crowd that I see roaming the lobby. There are the standard US favors of waffles, eggs to order, hashbrowns, and cereal. But then there are the more international dishes available, like fried noodles, cheeses of all varieties, sliced meats, chicken sausage, and fish congee. I don't know what fish congee is, but it looks like oatmeal ... which I'm not sure is a good thing since it has the word "fish" associated with it. Regardless of the name and appearance, I'm trying it at some point.

This morning though I started out with some fresh pineapple, watermelon, cantelope, and papaya. All very juicy and flavorful. Since I don't get papaya at home that much, I was drawn to it most. After the fruit, I moved on to a plate of grilled tomatoes, chicken murtabak, and beancurd sambal. The murtabak tasted like mo shu pork wrapped in a deep fried puff pastry. It was definitely a unique dish for breakfast but very good. As was the sambal which was essentially fried tofu in a chili sauce with onions.

Despite my desire to be adventurous, I stuck with coffee as my drink of choice. If I'm not awak, I can't enjoy the food.


Lunch

Although the official work doesn't start until tomorrow, we had to get going to the plant to get set-up. It took most of the morning and early afternoon to get everything where we wanted it. On our way back to the hotel, the taxi driver asked us if we wanted fresh coconut. Hellz yeah. So we stopped in front of what appeared like someone's house and saw this:

Surprisingly the man still had all of his digits ... and we had a coconut with a straw in it.

After sucking up all the liquid, which was refreshing despite its richness, the same man retrieved the coconut from our hand, hacked it in half, and returned it to us so we could eat the meat. But first it had to be scooped out using a makeshift spoon from the outer shell of the coconut.


It tasted nothing like the coconut you see at the store but instead had a mild milk taste with a wet texture. It was fantastic. Enough to hold us over until dinner ...


Dinner

Dinner yesterday was so good that we decided to do a similar style meal but a different restaurant and with different dishes. The place was open air (as are many restaurants in Malaysia on account of the warm weather with a pleasant breeze coming off the ocean) facing the ocean.

Tanks full of future meals greeted us as we entered. The variety is remarkable. Couple that with the numerous ways each can be prepared and the options seem endless - and the menu reflects that.


This gentleman in the picture below runs frantically between the tanks to pick up the kitchen's orders. It doesn't see more than 50 feet out of water. That's as fresh as it gets. Returning to the picture and for those of you keeping score at home, that's one fish in the net that he scooped out of the tank near his knees and one fish he is dragging out bare handed. Impressive.


I mentioned geoduck in my last post. It is essentially is a gigantic clam, which is shown in the pic below. I've never seen them in the States but here, they are everywhere. Since we past on them last night, we decided to start with them tonight.


For service, I expected the geoduck to be cleaned and sliced into tubular pieces and then cooked somehow - perhaps breaded and deep fried like calamari. Instead it was thinly sliced and served raw with some soy sauce and wasabi. The texture and flavor were nearly identical to raw clams; only the pieces were much larger and absent of any sandy grit that sometimes accompanies raw clams.

The next dish was a form of long legged crab. (In many cases the names of the dishes were lost in translation ... or in other words, I missed what the waiter said.) The long legs were cut into small sections for easy handling and then cut open using the provided clippers. The meat was similar to king crab in color and flavor. The sauce was yet another form of a chili sauce.

Almond chicken served over a bed of diced melon similar to a honeydew. Even though it wasn't a completely unique dish, it was still better than most I've had.

Snails the size of your knuckle. With no way to cut through the shell, the snail meat is sucked out. Again it was served in a chili sauce that wasn't enough to mask the extremely fishy taste. Not my favorite dish ...

A steamed whole fish; don't know what kind. It was in a soy and vinegar sauces. I actually ate the cheek meat, which is extremely tender, juicy, and flavorful.

Hello not-so-beautiful-but-oh-so-delicious. These are the mantis prawns I talked about yesterday. Having had these a second time in as many days, I think that these are actually prepared by frying them. The shells are thin, like a shrimp, and extra crisp, something I wouldn't expect from boiling, as I previously speculated. Another new observation on these tasty critters is that the cooked tail meat has a localized spots of purple hue on the surface.

Scallops with broccoli. Done perfectly in a garlic sauce. Nuff said.

The second crab for the evening. This time it the meat was removed for us and mixed into some sort of a soupy dish. For all the colors and texture, the only thing I was able to truly taste in this dish was the crab. It was fine served over rice, but nothing to write home about ... on a food blog though is another situation.

With full stomachs, we returned to the executive lounge in our hotel to let the food digest.

Hong Kong / Malaysia

So here we are in the new year (I'll catch up on the holidays later ... first some more "at the moment" business) and I'm in Malaysia. It's only a temporary thing for work, but I'm excited about the work opportunity ... and also about trying some exotic (at least for me) cuisine.

A few years ago I traveled through China (Beijing, Xi'an, Guillen, and Shanghai). The experience transformed how I viewed Chinese food. I found it nothing like the American versions we so often find ourselves shoveling out of cardboard containers. Love those containers. Don't get me wrong, that stuff is great and has it's place in my diet, but it's not the same as the real thing. And the real thing is hard to come by in the States.

When I had that last adventure, I didn't do a thorough job documenting all the greatness that I ate. So for the next week or so, I want to use this blog as a sort of "food journal" for my Malaysia trip; a meal-by-meal account of the food I've eaten. In the process I hope I can share it with you as well. Since the absolute purpose of this trip is work, some of the meals might be repetitive (e.g. the complimentary breakfast buffet at the hotel), but I will do my best to try as much variety as possible. With that, let's get to it ...

Day 1 - Hong Kong / Malaysia

Breakfast

Because of our travel arrangement we had the fortune of a 24 hour layover in Hong Kong. Most people would say that "fortune" should not describe "layover" more than "intelligent" describes Paris Hilton, but in this case, it gave myself and a couple of coworkers a chance to explore the city. So off we went early in the morning, taking the express train from the airport, and arriving in time for sunrise:



I would characterize Hong Kong as similar in openness and geography to San Fran, many parks sandwiched between tall, beautiful buildings, and the city nestled between hills and the harbor. That said, it is about 10 times the size of NYC. It is very clean and is clearly built for the walking pedestrian. We explored the city quite a bit, walking in and out of gardens that seamlessly transitioned between buildings, before our hunger tracked us down.



After some searching, we found a local bakery that served all kinds of buns. I selected two: a sesame bun filled with red bean paste (pictured below) and a Japanese style chicken bun. The bean paste being slightly sweet (not nearly as sweet as a jelly donut, which are usually too sweet for me) was a nice compliment to the savory chicken bun, which was similar to a The pastry portion of the buns were very moist - perfect really. Both buns were washed down with hot English tea with lots of milk.



Lunch

Lunch was at the airport waiting for our flight to Malaysia. We shared a cool and crisp Japanese cucumber salad that was lightly dressed with oil and freshly minced garlic. The consistency was similar to cucumbers I'm used to but the flavor was much denser, a welcomed surprise. I then had fried noodles with shredded pork and black mushrooms. I'd probably go with a different adjective then "black" if I were running the place ... but het, I can't argue cause the taste was good. A little soy sauce (which is sour and salty here) was needed to spice it up a bit but they were good enough.


Dinner

There are six employees here, ready to spend the next one to four weeks completing an intensive job ... but that doesn't start until Monday. So we decided to commemorate the start of the project with a fine local meal at an open air seafood restaurant that overlooked the ocean ... excuse me, I mean sat over the ocean. When we walked "into" the restaurant - I say "into" because it was more like walking onto the deck - we were greeted by several live aquatic animals in tanks. It seemed like an endless array of different species of fish and shellfish I had never seen. Oh and then there was geoduck ...

Dinner was family style and we had two whole fish (one steamed and the other BBQ ... I think they were Grouper ... served with a flavorful spicy chili sauce), a whole chicken (and I mean WHOLE), baby bok choy (again in a light garlic sauce ... I'm sensing a simple theme ... and I love it), and hollow root (also in a chili sauce, albeit a bit meatier than that for the fish).

But the star of the show (and a delight I have never had before) was the mantis prawn. Think of an animal with the face of a shrimp, torso of a praying mantis ("hands" to match), and the tail of a lobster. There you go. Not the most beautiful animal on the planet, but hell with that, it tastes heavenly. They are boiled whole in water and served coated in a salty, spicy rub. If you have ever been to Maryland and smashed crabs coated in Old Bay, then you are familiar with this presentation. The meat from the tail of the mantis prawn had the consistency of crab but was sweeter than lobster. Oh was it sweet. I couldn't get enough of 'em. I think I'll be going back soon so I can have some more ...

For drink, the Carlsberg flowed freely. Now, they tried to convince me it was a local brew but I know my geography and I'm pretty confident that it was founded here. Instead it most likely has a connection to the days of European empirical rule. So the question is, does the fact that it is brewed down the street make it "local"? hmmmm ... I will say that when you say "beer" in English here they don't understand you, but as soon as you say "Carlsberg" one shows up at your table. Brilliant marketing move Carlsberg, setting the language like that. Regardless of its origin though, the horrible skunk taste is inexcusable. From now on I will be sticking to the other common beer that sounds more likely to be local by name, Tiger beer.