Friday 22 June 2007

Weekend in Muar

Last weekend we took another trip back to Muar. Our first stop was our usual coffeeshop for breakfast and coffee. With a limited time in Muar only, Char Kueh was high on the list!

Unlike the Penang Char Kueh Kak, the southern version is white (the pieces in the man's wok). He cuts it up as he fries it with oil, adding chilli, eggs, pickled radish and a handful of spring onions and parsley befor serving. And voila! That's the finished product!


We also had some "Ham Chin Peng", Chinese fried doughnuts filled with a sweet red bean paste. This is one of my Mom's favourite and the nice hawker always puts in extra red bean paste for her! There's also a savoury version with 5-spice powder instead of red bean. One of the great benefits of knowing hawkers personally! You always get extra stuff! :) All these food was washed down with Muar's famous 434 coffee, brewed in a sock strainer in an old coffeeshop! Small pleasures!

After all that breakfast, we still managed to find some space in our tummies for yummy asam fish from Parit Jawa (a small fishing village approximately half an hour away from town). There are generally two styles of asam fish (fish cooked in spicy tamarind gravy). We prefer the Malay one which has a thicker gravy with some additional spices like "daun kesom" while the Chinese version is somewhat spicier and clearer. Anyway, we had a wonderful feast with lots of fish, vege and onion ommelette! Somehow, asam gravy goes fantastically with ommelettes or fried eggs!


Clockwise from bottom: Onion ommelette, taugeh, Chinese cabbage, Asam "Kembung" fish and stingray and a large-ish "Jenahak" or red snapper! And right in the middle was the scrapings of sambal kangkung from the seller! It was lip-smacking good! :)

No comments: