‘HOW MANY BONES ARE IN CHICKEN FEET?’

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The answer is, a lot.  In fact once you discount the bones, cartilage and skin the only thing that’s left is the sauce they were cooked in.  In some countries, notably China, they are widely consumed.

After I ordered my pot of jasmine tea and fish in sweet and sour sauce at Prosperous, I ventured to the steam table for some dim sum.  I thought I would treat myself to three of those small dishes.  I chose one dish that contained two small spring roll wrapped items with something colorful on top showing through the translucent wrapper.  They turned out to be filled with pork.  The colorful thing on top was a piece of imitation crab leg.

 

The second item was a traditional steamed bun filled with a mixture that resembled a mild pork barbecue.  The third one was a mystery.  The small dish was full of pieces of meat in a lot of dark rich looking sauce.  I chose it because of the eye appeal of the sauce.  It turned out to be chicken feet.  Being a ‘foodie trouper’ I ate all but one of them.  I spent most of my time using my tongue to separate small bones and bits of cartilage from the skin and pushing them out to my lips so I could deposit them with my fingers on a dish.  It’s not a dainty dish to eat.  At least the sauce was tasty.

The sweet and sour fish was a hit.  A Cantonese mildly flavored sweet and sour sauce with the obligatory pieces of red and green pepper and tomato plus some small slivers of cucumber came with battered deep fried mild pieces of fish.  There was a surprising amount of fish in the dish.   I have been taken in tow since day one by the same waiter.  He now knows to bring me Jasmine tea and today as I was leaving asked me if I were coming tomorrow.  I've made another new restaurant ‘friend’.

On the way back to the hotel I felt like a little fruit for dessert.  My fruit vendor is only at his location at night and my larder is down to a single orange.  I crossed Jalan Macalister to a restaurant that had a fruit cart in front.  This cart instead of selling whole fruits sold them already cut up in small clear cellophane bags.  Each bag comes with a longish thick toothpick for spearing the pieces of fruit.  I chose watermelon and paid.  The vendor pointed to something I didn't know and said ‘very good’.  It turned out to be jackfruit.

I took my watermelon and stood in a shady spot and polished it off.   I still felt a little peckish and thought, hey why not.  If I can try chicken feet.  Why not jackfruit?

After I bought a small cellophane bag of it he pointed off to the side to the jackfruit he was carving to put in the bags.  This is a blimp-sized fruit.  Wait till you see a picture.  Only a small portion is edible.  It is yellow in color similar to a mango and is sheathed in a lot of non edible fiber.  The fruit itself is tough and chewy.  It is almost as chewy as a dried apricot.  The flavor, well I’m having a tough time describing the flavor.  The aroma is slightly peppery.  The taste changes in my mouth as I chew on a piece.  I get slightly 'citrusy', then it changes to a flavor not unlike a piece of citrus flavored hard candy.  There is a hint of melon in there as well as mango. I am thinking complex citrus flavors.  The flavor lingers in my mouth long after I have eaten it.  I guess we’ll just have to sample one when I get back.

After Prosperus then what?  Over the next few days I’m going to concentrate on the tried and true Penang hawker offerings that many websites tout.   Take, for example,  CNN Travel’s article about Asia’s 10 greatest Street Food Cities.  (http://travel.cnn.com/explorations/eat/asia-street-food-cities-612721)

They lead off with Penang and list the 10 most popular street hawker foods in their opinion.  I've eaten four of them.  My goal will be to knock off the other six over the next few days and then continue my forays into hawker food and open air restaurants using other similar lists as my guide.

I did go to Tokyo Seafood for dinner last night, picked out a nice fresh red snapper, and went to my table to await my meal.  It came on a large tray.  The fish had been split and cooked in a liquid which appeared to be mostly soy sauce and water.  A few shreds of ginger topped the fish along with some mushroom slices and pieces of fresh tomato.  The fish had been cooked to the semi mush stage.  In a few words, it was not only uninteresting but also cost what I had paid for a dinner at Mama’s.  However, I've been here for a week and it’s the first lackluster meal I have had. 

Another note of interest, for virtually all of my meals I have been the only ‘foreigner’ in the restaurant or at the hawker stall.  I can think of only two times in my 14 plus meals that I saw faces like mine, and then it was only one couple.

Finally, the jackfruit has piqued my interest in fruits we don’t normally see in the US.  On my way back to the hotel I saw a small street corner restaurant with an awning and several tables and chairs.  His only item for sale was durian.  He was splitting them and taking them to customers seated at his tables.  I could see those luscious custard like lobes nestled in the fruit hull.  It has been over a decade since I have tasted the fruit that is both loved and reviled in the orient, partly because of its pungent aroma.  I vividly recall walking by hotels in China and seeing plaques posted on the outside saying ‘NO DURIAN’.

Well, today jackfruit, tomorrow durian, and who only knows what for the day after that.

‘WEATHER UNDERGROUND:  TODAY IN PENANG - 91 DEGREES, FEELS LIKE 105’

I left the hotel about 11 this this morning intent on going for an hour and a half stroll before lunch at Prosperous Dim Sum Restaurant.  In three days I have seen very little of the city of Georgetown other than the businesses and restaurants between my hotel and Mama’s, a fifteen – twenty minute walk.  Plus, a little exercise would be a good thing, given my eating regimen.

I was headed toward the ‘Little India’ section of Georgetown.  I thought I could get there and back to ‘Prosperous ‘ by about 12:30.  I didn't want to go to the restaurant any earlier because the 80+ seats would all be taken.  It is a very popular place.

A couple minutes after I left the hotel it felt like I was walking through a continuous veil of water vapor ladened air.  I slowed my stride even more and put on my cap and sun glasses.  Over the next hour and a half I alternated taking my cap and sun glasses off when I walked through each short shaded stretch and then donned them when I walked back into the sunlight.  If someone were watching me, they would have thought I was performing some sort of ritual. 

Only when I returned to the hotel after lunch did I look up the temperature.  This taught me to check the temperature in the future before I go out.  If it is like this I’ll stay in the hotel shortly before lunch, head out to eat and then return to my air conditioned cocoon until 4 or 5 pm when the day's heat starts to dissipate.  I can always use the time in the room to work on my new novel (5^th in the Richard Slaughter series).

I failed to reach ‘Little India’ and after a while decided to retrace my steps to arrive at Prosperous at 12:30.  That part I succeeded at. 

I wandered around inside the food area and quickly determined I didn't have a clue how to order.  I went outside to a vacant table and stood around trying to figure out the system.  Fortunately, I was taken in tow by a waiter who gestured for me to sit, fetched a menu and handed it to me.  That was nice, sort of.  There were fully 40 items on the menu and I had no idea what they were.  Finally, I did my ‘restaurant in China’ thing.  I stood up, went to the next table where two young women were eating, pointed to the two dishes of food on their table and said ‘I’ll have that’.

‘That’ turned out to be steamed buns filled with shrimp and a large plate of wheat noodles swimming in some sort of sauce.  The sauce, interestingly enough, turned out to be exactly that of Moo Goo Gai Pan.  It is a lightly flavored sauce thickened with egg and cornstarch.  The resemblance to Moo Goo ended there other than a couple thin slices of chicken (a couple of shrimp were thrown in also).  The main part of the dish was the mound of noodles in the center of the plate.   .

I ate it all, fumbling with the noodles at times with my chop sticks.  The sauce on the plate was at least a quarter inch deep after I'd finished the noodles.  It served as a 'soup' to finish the meal.  Later at the hotel I found the dish on the web.  It is called Yee Foo Mee with egg.  The noodles are a Cantonese style made of dark wheat flour.  Interesting.  Moo Goo Gai Pan is a Cantonese dish.

The meal came with a pot of scalding hot Chinese tea.  Two tea cups also appeared in a bowl of scalding water.  I fished out a cup, almost burning my fingers.  I poured the tea and even after a couple of minutes the cup was too hot to pick up with my fingers.  I nudged it over to the edge of the table where I could bend down and take a small slurp.  Delicious tea.  Needless to say, I finished the pot.

The price of lunch just went from $16-$17 at Mama’s down to shade under $3.  I’ll be back at Prosperous tomorrow and the next day for lunch, and, a little better prepared to select my food.

Speaking of Mama’s, for the last two meals I have not been able to pick out what I was going to order from the menu.  The daughters have become 'benevolent dictators'.  Last night I was ‘ordered to order Assam Pedas Fish, another Nonya classic.  The daughter suggested that prawn fritters would be a nice side dish to go with it.

I would really like to make the fish dish.  Out came a bowl with a large piece of what I think was grouper, swimming (no pun intended) in a fragrant broth.   Who would ever think about making a fish dish with pineapple for sweetness, tamarind pulp for sour flavor and then top it off with mint leaves and ginger flowers?  The kaleidoscope of flavors seemed to change with every spoonful.   

Dinner was topped off with black stick rice with plums embedded in it.  Again, fresh coconut milk was served with it.  You may recall the difference in flavor of my previous dessert of yam and sago that went from ho hum to outstanding when I poured the fresh coconut milk over it.  Same thing here, although I preferred the yam and sago mixture.

One of the high points of my meals at Mama’s was yesterday evening.  One of the daughters insisted that I have my photo taken with them.  I had walked in there a stranger three days ago, and last night, I left with fond memories of four 'friends' along with memories of sampling of excellent Nyonya cuisine.