WHAT'S THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO TAKE WITH YOU ON YOUR TRIP?

Having traveled quite a bit over the years to a number of countries, it occurs to me that the most important thing you can take with you is your smile.  It is surprising how this one thing can be so versatile.

It can build a bridge of communication between two people although neither can speak the other’s language.  It gets an impatient person who would otherwise likely not give you the time of day to patiently study a map and point out where to go.  It helps to convey, without words, appreciation for the food that is served to you.   It is an antidote for warding off touts when accompanied by a shake of the head or a wave of the hand, and can diffuse any number of awkward situations that arise involuntarily during travels in a strange land.  For those of you old enough to remember Karl Malden’s TV ad for the American Express credit card, “don’t leave home without it’.

So much for philosophical waxing.  Let’s talk about food.

In 2009 the NY Times wrote that its readers had voted Penang the 2^nd best place to go, after Beirut, for ‘foodie experiences’.  Must be a lot of foodies also like to wear Kevlar vests.  After spending 17 days and sixteen nights here, Penang gets my vote too!

In my time here in Penang I think I have consumed about this many ducks:

As far as the amount of pork I have consumed for the total trip, this is all that remains of Mr. Pig.

I will have withdrawal symptoms starting mid-day when I fly the first leg of my trip from Penang to Kuala Lumpur.  From there it is a hop to Bangkok, a skip to Doha, and a jump back to Arlington, VA

Each day I have checked the ‘dashboard’ of my blog.  It tells me the number of times it has been viewed, which countries the viewers are from, etc.   Since its inception, it has been viewed, at one time or another, by folk(s) in the US, Germany, Malaysia, Argentina, South Korea, Laos, Canada, the UK, and ,last but not least, Ecuador and Ukraine.   The total number of blog views as of this morning is 828.

I hope that whoever has looked at this blog has found some enjoyment and perhaps enlightenment about food along the way.  I have certainly enjoyed writing it and sharing my experiences of the past 5 and ½ weeks.

You are all invited to Chez Greenbrier for a meal.  I think my sweetheart can even speak some Ukranian! 

NAME THAT NOODLE

The Thais have Jasmine rice.  The Laos consume a glutinous rice called ‘sticky rice.  And, the Penangians have noodles.  To be fair Thais and Laotians have some noodle dishes as well, and, Penangians have some served with rice.  After all here in Penang Duck Rice wouldn’t be the same if the sliced crispy skin duck came on a pile of noodles instead of a bed of steaming rice.

I wish I had kept track of the noodles I have consumed here.  And, as we in the US make a noodle dish using just one noodle (spaghetti for example) a bowl of prawn mee, a fragrant soup with small shrimp and beansprouts swimming in a spicy broth contains glass noodles along with noodles made of wheat which resemble spaghetti.

Speaking of spaghetti, one of my dishes below, pork with cracklings and noodles looks suspiciously like pasta we would get at the local grocery store.

I think of noodles as being in three general categories: wheat, rice, and mung bean.  I guess my sub categories for wheat noodles would be light color and dark color, tender and chewy.  For rice noodles it would be thin to thicker width, and freshness ranging from fresh ready to cook noodles which are flexible but have quite a bit of texture before cooking to the angel, pillowy soft rice noodle that is pure heaven to eat.  Finally, we know mung bean noodles (made from mung bean flour) as glass or thread noodles.

One my real favorites is chee cheong fun shown below.  These oh so soft rice noodles are traditionally served with three different sauces.

This delicious Cantonese chicken dish came with a noodle favorite from China - a dark wheat chewy noodle.

You see yet another noodle being finished off to go into my Hokkien Mee

You'll see some medium width rice noodles mixed in with the bean sprouts in my Hokkien Chicken

There are even more in the soup that accompanies the chicken.

And the noodles you get in Mee Goreng, when mixed with the Sambal Balacan, really resembles a plate of pasta with spicy tomato sauce in both appearance and taste.

Expect to see different noodles on your plate at Chez Greenbrier and you may also be treated (or subjected to depending how they come out) my version of fresh rice noodles.  

Let’s go back to that bowl of prawn mee that I mentioned early on.  The broth might have a little shrimp kick to it, but it is almost entirely made up of water and a healthy dose of salbal balacan.  Balacan is a shrimp paste that is fermented and dried into a block.

I don’t think I am going to far afield here by saying that sambal basically means a chili based sauce.  Put in the chilies and you have sambal.  Add dried shrimp paste and you have sambal balacan.

Go back to the basic sambal, add some salt and vinegar to those smashed chilies and you have sambal oelek.  I have a jar of shrimp paste at home in the fridge.  It is a relative of sambal balacan.

In fact if you really get into it you'll find that many countries have their own version: Indonesian Terasi, in Thailand it's Kapi (which is an essential ingredient in nam phrik), Hom Ha in southeastern China, and on and on.  This make me think we should have a shrimp paste tasting one day at Chez Greenbrier.

It has taken several paragraphs for me to get around to what I was thinking up there when I mentioned prawn mee.  You will need a good sambal balacan for your Malaysian dishes.  Be it soup or stir fry, sambal balacan finds its way into many of them.

When I went hunting through my pictures for 'noodle' pictures I was struck by two of the candid shots I have taken here.

The first one I title 'Post Luncheon al Fresco Nap

The title of the other one is "If You Think I'm Getting In There, You're Nuts!

Bon Appetit.

CHEZ GREENBRIER MENUS FOR LAOS AND MALAYSIA

Below you will find Chez Greenbrier menus for Laotian and Malaysia.  In looking over the Malaysian menu it is skimpy compared to the number of dishes I have eaten here.  I’ll flesh it out (I think I just made a pun) when I wake up from my 84 hour nap back in the States.  

Actually it took the better part of five days to acclimate to a time zone 12 hours different when I started my trip.  The one bonus was I didn't have to change my watch.  I’ll go through that reverse process when I get to Arlington, VA.

the tabs just won't work on some of the below.  excuse the ragged appearance)

CHEZ GREENBRIER LAOTIAN MENU

APPETIZERS

            ROASTED EGGPLANT DIP

            ROASTED TOMATO SALSA DIP

            ROASTED GREEN PEPPER DIP

           

SOUPS

            SPICY LAO SOUP

            BAMBOO SHOOT AND VEGETABLE

SALADS

            LUANG PRABANG SALAD

            STEAMED VEGETABLE SALAD WITH SESAME SEEDS

            LAOTIAN STYLE CUCUMBER SALAD

            GREEN PAPAYA SALAD

ENTREES

            LUANG PRABANG STEW

            CHICKEN IN LEMON GRASS

            STEAMED FISH IN BANANA LEAVES

            LAO BARBECUE WITH SPECIAL DIPPING SAUCE

            FRIED RICE NOODLES WITH CHICKEN AND VEGETABLES

           VERMICELLI NOODLES WITH PORK, VEGETABLES, MUSHOOMS

            LAO PORK CASSEROLE

            FRIED EGGPLANT WITH PORK

DESSERT

            PURPLE STICKY RICE WITH COCONUT SAUCE

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

CHEZ GREENBRIER PENANG, MALAYSIA MENU

APPETIZERS

            OTAK-OTAK (NYONYA)

            LOR BAK (DEEP FRIED SPRING ROLL WRAPPED SPICY SAUSAGE

            ANCHOVY AND SLICED SHALLOT (NYONYA)

            SATAY WITH PEANUT DIPPING SAUCER

            POH PIA

SOUPS

            CURRY MEE

            PRAWN MEE

            SPICY DUCK BROTH

ENTRÉES

           CHICKEN CURRY KAPITAN (NYONYA)

CHAR KOAY TEOW (STIR FRIED RICE NOODLES WITH SHRIMP, BEAN SPROUTS, SOY SAUCE AND CHIVES)

PENANG LASKA (SOUR FISH SOUP WITH PINEAPPLE, MINT, CHILIES AND SHALLOTS)

WON TON MEE (EGG NOODLES, WONTONS, SCALLIONS, CHINESE KALE)

  

          BRAISED PORK BELLIES IN SOY SAUCE WITH BOILED EGG

          BEEF RENDANG (FRAGRANT POT ROAST)

GRILLED FISH SAMBAL (SERVED WITH PIQUANT SHALLOT MIXTURE)

DESSERT

           COOKED SAGO WITH SWEET POTATO AND COCONUT CREAM 

            

          APOM BALIK (SMALL PANCAKES WITH DIFFERENT FILLINGS)

            

          APONG TELUR (COCONUT FLAVORED CREPES)            

            

 KUIH KETAYAP (PENANG STYLE DESSERT ROLL WITH                    COCONUT AND PALM SUGAR FILLING)

TEN BIRDSEYE CHILIES IN MY TOM YAM SOUP!!!

Tom yam soup is one of my favorites, and, with only three days left to eat here in Penang they will be filled up with a short list of my favorites among the 30 dishes I have eaten here. 

For those of you who have not eaten tom yam soup it is hot (spicy) and slightly sour.  The sour flavor comes from fish sauce and lime juice. This soup knows no international boundaries.  It was born in Thailand; some may claim Laos as well.  You can easily find it in Thailand, Malaysia, Laos, and Indonesia.   It is a popular item on Asian restaurant menus in the US.  Although I can order it there, it just seems to taste better here.

On the second spoonful of my soup I bit into what I thought was a small piece of green bean.  It turned out to be  a birds eye chili.  The birds eye chili on the Scoville Scale, which measures the amount of heat produced from capsaicin, the stuff that makes peppers taste hot, rates them in a category above cayenne pepper and below the habanero.

I don’t know about Mr. Scoville, but if you have ten of them in your soup there seems to be some sort of math you have to apply to get the total heat coming out of that bowl.  By the way, the only reason you see nine in the photo is that the missing one was the one I chomped on.  The bowl of soup was pricey.  At almost ten dollars, they have been charging a dollar a chili.

I actually started my eating countdown last night by returning to my favorite place for crispy duck.  At four dollars for a quarter of a duck, this is one of the most delicious bargains in Penang.

I have eaten 30 hawker dishes all totataled.  I looked over my notes and see that I forgot to tell you about the last two.  Number 29, Chee Cheong Chook needs a little explanation.  Chee Cheong means pork intestines.  Chook means porridge.  The bowl of porridge is just like a congee you would get in China.  Rice is cooked until it turns to a watery mush.  The Chee Cheong tops the porridge in the form of bits of crunchy pork innards, slices of roast pork and chopped chives.  A surprise of boiled pieces of tripe submerged in the porridge awaits the unwary eater .  I pushed mine to the side of the bowl and finished everything else.

   

Here is what the Chee Cheong Chook vendor cart looks like.

Number 30, Satay, hardly needs an introduction.  You see five pork and five chicken skewers in the photo served with that tasty peanut dipping sauce.

And, that rounds out the 30 different foods I have tried here in Penang.  Looking back only two out of the thirty were 'clinkers'.  Even those two were OK.  They just lacked flavor and texture for my taste.

I am creating a menu for each of the countries I have visited.  The one for Thailand is posted below.  Tomorrow I’ll add Laos and Penang.  Penang will include both hawker foods and some Nyonya cuisine,if for no other reason than we all will get to say Otak-Otak.

The purpose of the menus is to encourage our dinner guests to pick out things they would like to eat when they come over.  It will also encourage me to keep preparing recipes I have learned instead of lapsing back into that comfortable stir fry of chicken or pork with vegetables that I seem to make every time when I pull out the wok.

I’ll probably add another entree or two to the menu below after I get home and spend some more time going through my recipes, but it will look something like this:

CHEZ GREENBRIER THAI MENU

APPETIZERS

            PAPAYA SALAD (SOM TAM)

            DEEP FRIED SPRING ROLL (PO PIET)

            FRESH SRING ROLL

SOUP

            SPICY AND SOUR SOUP WITH SHRIMP (TOM YUM)

            CHICKEN I COCONUT MILK (TOM KHA GAI)

            MILD SOUP WITH BEAN CURD

ENTREES

            GREEN CURRY WITH CHICKEN

            MASSAMAN CURRY WITH CHICKIEN

            RED CURRY WITH CHICKEN AND COCONUT MILK

  PENANG CURRY WITH CHICKEN

            FRIED NOODLE THAI STYLE (PAD THAI)

            THICK RICE NOODLES (PAD SEE UW)

            FRIED RICE WITH SHRIMP OR CHICKEN

            CHICKEN WITH CASHEW NUT

            SHRIMP WITH CURRY POWDER

VEGETABLES

            SWEET AND SOUR MIX (PRIEW WAN)

DESSERT

            STICKY RICE WITH MANGO

            FRIED BANANA WITH ICE CREAM

            PUMPKIN COOKED IN SYRUP

I return this coming Friday the 15th.  Reservations at Chez Greenbrier accepted beginning on the 18th.

As we say down home, y'all come.

YOU CAN’T GET THERE FROM HERE

At least that’s the way I felt after having ordered my second lunch at a Nasi Kandar restaurant.  I wanted to finish off my list of the top twenty hawker foods today.  This is the second time I’ve gone to this restaurant to eat a dish called Nasi Kandar. (The first time I was so taken by the eye appeal of the Tandoori Chicken that I ordered it, so that trip doesn't count insofar as going down my list of 20 hawker foods.  But today it will be Nasi Kandar.)

So, I go in and ask the waiter for Nasi Kandir.  Simple, right?  He led me to a counter that had about fifteen different food items and pointed to one.  He said ‘special of the day’.  Somewhat bewildered and for the lack of a better reply I said OK. 

The plate that arrived at my table contained a large portion of fragrant fried rice, a hard boiled egg, a chicken leg and a small bowl of yellow curry with a piece of boiled potato in it.  On the side of my plate were thin slices of cucumber and pineapple.  It was all very tasty, made more so by a glass of watermelon juice. 

I left confused about what Nasi Kandar really is.  A little knowledge is, if not a dangerous thing, certainly a misleading one.   A check on the web back in my hotel room showed that it can be a lot of things and that Nasi Kandar is not really one dish with specific foods.  It is generally a plate of rice over which a curry is poured, or, served on the side.  Chicken, beef, vegetables, etc. are added to the customer’s specifications.

So I ate Nasi Kandar and didn't realize it.

This evening I went to finish off my list.  The first dish was Mee Goreng which is a close relative of a pasta dish in the US.  Noodles just like spaghetti is topped with a spicy sauce.  Pieces of tofu, bean sprouts and potatoes round out the dish.  If I closed my eyes for a moment it’s like tasting spaghetti with a spicy sauce.  I would definitely order this again

 Here, the 'Mee Goreng chef" is starting the dish which you see finished above.

Next was Hokkien Chicken.  The chicken comes either roasted or steamed.  I got my steamed.  It was accompanied by a soup of soft noodles in a lightly flavored broth.  The only zing to the dish were two sauces that accompanied it.  Both were hot and spicy.  Frankly, this dish won’t be on my repeat list.

.

Off it was to complete my 20^th item by having the most commonly known food to us all on the list – Satay, those tasty tidbits of meat on skewers marinated and cooked over charcoal.   You get it here with pork, chicken, or a couple other things I won’t mention.  Unfortunately the stall where I went to sells them only by ten pieces and it was too late and too much food for me.  So, satay will wait till tomorrow night.  

So, I settled on dessert.  You see Apom Balik below being cooked on a special griddle that has indentations in it.

An order constitutes four of these.  You have your choice of four fillings.  I chose banana in two two of them, and a mixture of palm sugar and coconut for the other two.

Below, you can see that delicious coconut-palm sugar mixture on the pancake.

These little rascals are barely three inches across.  They will be one of the staple desserts at Chez Greenbrier.  I got the five ingredients from the chef but he deigned not give me the proportions.  I think it will be easy to figure out.

On it was to my other dessert for the evening - Kuih Ketayap.

Take a look below at the yummy same filling of palm sugar and coconut inside the Kuih.

But, what am I going to do for lunch today?  Gee my 20 (frankly a few more than that because I've added four or five more dishes along the way) are done with the exception satay.

It was off to a new food destination since New Lane Hawkers area is only a night thing other than Sunday.  New Lane is where I have eaten many of those 20 dishes.

New World Food Court started out as a small amusement park that went bust.  What better thing to help it rise from the ashes than turn part of it into a food court under cover of a large high metal pavilion surrounded by restaurants and shops, all under the original amusement park roofing.

New World Food Court is an L shaped affair.  

A brief stroll around the L shaped area took me past 29 permanent stalls to choose food from. 

My first selection was Prawn Mee which was a bowl of spaghetti like noodles swimming in a fragrant spicy broth with small shrimps and a piece of boiled egg.  A dollop of spicy hot sauce had been put on top along with a few thin slices of pork.

My next stop at New World was for Koay Teow Th’ng.  You can get it in the form of a soup or stir fried.  I was on a soup roll having started with Prawn Mee.  Koay Teow in the ‘dry version’ has a stir fried noodle similar to those that we see in those little packages of instant ‘oriental soup’ in the US.  In the soup form it has a lot of long delightfully soft rice noodles which are a joy to eat once you get the hang of lifting a few high above the bowl with your chopsticks and letting them pool in your spoon as you lower them. 

Several fish balls, ground pork which has been formed into small pieces and cooked in the broth, and a topping of fried shallots round it out.  You dip the pork into a side dish of spicy chilies and soy sauce to give it a zing.  Here is a fish ball, which frankly doesn't have a fishy flavor.   

The Koay Teow chef was kind enough to pose for a picture

For me, I also think the more foods you consume that have been prepared in a broth means that they have been well cooked and the liquid also helps wash stray bacteria down the gullet and gets rid of them.  But just chalk that up to my superstitions and perhaps a mind-set that lets me eat at semi-sanitary hawker stalls and think I won’t get ‘Bali Belly’.  I’ll have to ask Bev if there is anything to that.

A FEW MORE MEALS

A lunch of Tandoori Chicken from a restaurant that never closes.  That's right it's there waiting to serve you 24 hours a day.

The Tandoori was made tastier by a glass of cold watermelon juice to wash it down on a hot day.

Dinner was Claypot Chicken.  You have to try this at least once just to watch it being made.  Chef John Elson is putting the final touches on mine.  He can prepare 10 of these simultaneously on that stove!

A close up of my claypot chicken.

For lunch the next day, what's better than some roast duck?  What about roast duck, roast pork bellies and chicken?

And, don't forget about dessert.  That are US types of desserts like the banana split above which I enjoyed the other evening from a hawker's cart.  And, then there are more unusual Penangian desserts.

This afternoon I asked the hotel concierge to help me find the two most elusive dishes on my top 20 list.  He sent me to a small restaurant which featured both.  One is Fruit Rojak and the other is Ice Kacang.  These two items became my dinner.

Fruit Rojak is a fruit and vegetable salad of sorts.  Pineapple, cucumber, papaya, small fried ‘puffs’ of tofu, apple are common ingredients, although other things may find their way in.  It is actually difficult to tell all the things in it because everything is covered with a heavy sludge-like mixture.  The mix is made out of a little water, palm sugar, tamarind, ground sautéed  peanuts, shrimp paste and birds eye chili and red pepper to give it a kick.

Ice Kacang starts off as a large strawberry snow cone (in a dish).  Then it gets a little complicated.  The one I ate had traditional toppings which included creamed corn, crushed peanuts, kidney beans and ribbons of a black bean-like substance.  Oh yes, let's not forget green maraschino cherries.  

I am glad I included them in my top 20.  Let's just say that I'd eat the other 18 again.

STEAMBOAT !!

It’s the Penang version of the all you eat buffet.  You select your food, take it to your table and prepare it in on a pan which sits over a gas burner ring.  The outside rim is flat and covered with tin foil.  You smear butter on it and put whatever foods you want to cook there.  In the center is a divided container with water which comes to a boil.  You put your delicacies in there to cook as well.  One way to do it is to put cut up veggies in one side and you meats and fish in the other.

The choices of foods are endless.  There is one section about 30 feet each which contain a variety of meats, fish and vegetables. 

Another section just as long contains many things which I don’t have a clue about.  I’ll have to go back and at eat another time to see what they are.

Not only do you have a choice of foods to cook, there is a pork station where you take your meat of choice which is already on a skewer and immerse it in a container of boiling water at the end of the table to cook it.

If that weren't enough there is a dim sum table with a large selection.

And you are even met at the entrance by a someone who will make you one of Penang’s signature dishes – seafood and noodle dish called koay teow.

If you’d rather have tea instead of a fruit drink you have a choice of two different teas to put in your pot and make your own.

I made a meal similar to this in Siem Reap, Cambodia, except I used a piece of pork fat to grease a pierced dome which sat over a charcoal brazier.  All the good juices from the bits of meat and fish you cooked on the dome ran down into a trough filled with a little water.  You tossed some cut up veggies in the water to start.  The more you cooked pieces on the dome the more juices ran down into the trough and the richer the broth became.

That experience led me to concoct a piece de resistance seafood ‘soup’.  I first charred a few shrimp on the flat ring to enhance their flavor before I tossed them in the water.  In went some glass noodles and a few pieces of napa cabbage.  That was followed by more shrimp, large pieces of two different kinds of fish, cockles, and tiny clams.   

The water simmers with your goodies in it and soon you get a delicious seafood  'soup'.

Here are some of the fruits of my labors.

I took my time eating this and some of the glass noodles began to dissolve toward the end which made the broth even thicker.  I think I’ll use this technique in making some soups at Chez Greenbrier.

And, finally, there is dessert.  You can choose from three flavors of ice cream, frozen pops and a tray of fruit and cakes.

I chose a scoop of strawberry and the lavender one which is coconut and a few slices of watermelon.

A nice steaming pot of green tea rounded out the meal.  Come to think of it the meal rounded me out a bit more too.