Food adventures in Perak

How lucky we are to have landed in this part of the world. KL might be more modern, more sophisticated, and better equipped, but we find the rural charm of Kampar appealing. Both Kampar and Ipoh are known for their wonderful array of excellent food, each having its own signature dishes. We are still working our way through the restaurants, famous and not-so-famous, and are loving the experience of discovering new places and new foods. Unfortunately I don't have as many photos to share as I would like, as I tend to get carried away with the experience and forget the photos. Harry also teased me yesterday, that you are supposed to take the photos before you start eating the dish! Yes, I know, but I get excited and before I know it, half the dish is gone and no photograph has been executed. Oh, well, the food looks more appreciated this way!

Last night Harry took a group of the managers from the plant to dinner to celebrate successfully attaining the ISO standard, and we were invited along. The Inventor unfortunately decided he would prefer to be in the proximity of a toilet, but I went along with Lorena, the new lab manager from the Philippines who arrived in Kampar yesterday. She is living near us and will be relying on us for transport for now. We ate at a place which even Lorena knew, one of a chain of restaurants called Secret Kitchen, the 12 of us sitting around a long table as I marvelled at the web of Malay and English conversations, smiles and anecdotes, brown skins and pink, Chinese, Malay, Philippino and Australian. The food on the menu was mostly Western- I enjoyed a Crispy Chicken salad liberally seasoned with chilli sauce, a coffee ice blended (in Australia we'd call it a frappe), a piece of chocolate cheesecake and a real cappuccino. 

Cappuccino ice blended. Mmmm.

My very spicy Crispy Chicken Salad

Eating at Secret Kitchen last night. Lorena is sitting on the end on the left and Harry to my right.

Harry wasn't impressed with the size of his meal, and for a main course, it was particularly small. Mains in Malaysia are more often very generously proportioned.

A sweet tooth didn't stand a chance with the chocolate cheesecake.

Secret Recipe is a modern, clean store, and has the prices to match (though I'm in no position to complain on this occasion, as Harry was shouting. My meal with the two drinks would have cost over 30 Ringgits- around $10 Australian. For the Australian reader, I will take the opportunity in today's blog to make some other price comparisons as I continue to gloat about the glorious food in Kampar and Ipoh.

The previous night, the Inventor and I dined at the Thai restaurant not far from our place, Restaurant 1 Kampar. This is the second time we have eaten there, and we remain impressed at the quality and value. The only problem on Monday night was that the owner thought we wanted a pineapple rice each. Oh, my gracious! This meal was 27 Ringgits ($8) for both of us.

Another restaurant near to us is Mr Fat. It took us some weeks to get up the courage to go there, finding the name somewhat off-putting. The food was good, however, and I was intrigued by the jar-shaped mug that held the inventor's drink.

The ice blended drinks come in many different varieties, the basis of which is generally lots of finely blended ice and a flavoured syrup. Other things can then be added, such as pearls, jellies, beans, etc. I am particularly fond of them, as I am the Malaysian ice desserts which are a similar thing in a bowl with fruit. Chinese tea and lemon tea are nearly always available, and often restaurants will have a range of delicious freshly-sqeezed juices.

The resaurant we went to in our first week here for Daniel's 4th birthday was also a Fatt one. Fatt seems to be quite a common name around here, and we found this restaurant's name, Soon Fatt, somewhat amusing for a restaurant. All the people at the party were people from the Lutheran Church we have been attending, and they were all such lovely people. You can see Daniel and his Mum Swee Yee cutting the cake, and Daniel's father Desmond is beside her. Both Swee Yee and Desmond studied in Melbourne, and they have been amazingly friendly and welcoming.

Eating at proper restaurants is probably a lot safer, as the food is generally piping hot, and in most cases is prepared at the time for you. Maybe we wouldn't have had diarrhea for the last week if we were more careful, however I tend to be a little philosophical and figure we'll develop resistance to the most common bacterial infections soon enough. There are a lot of cheaper stalls and more ad-hoc restaurants where the food can be very nice but is usually cooked beforehand, and often not very warm. The meal here- 1.80 for the drink, and 4 Ringgits for the soup and plate of food. Total, less than $2. The other price I paid was being stared at by a number of the other patrons and workers, tiring of their fascination only as I neared the end of my meal. I doubt they mean to be rude, and assume it's that some people wonder why a Western woman would be in a little country town like Kampar on her own. I'm certaily not accustomed to the inordinate amount of attention that I seem to warrant!
 
We have been wanting to experience Yum Cha in Ipoh. It is known to have a number of excellent Dim Sum restaurants, and we were not disappointed when we tried this one last Sunday morning before church. We have been given the name of another "must try" by Harry, who says, "be prepared to wait for a table". We will probably make this a fairly regular before-church event, though it was a challenge to then go out for lunch as well, with Desmond, Swee Yee and the Khongs. The Dim Sum is served much earlier than in Australia, for breakfast, and is, of course, much cheaper- around 40 Ringgits- though next time we plan, at least at this stage, to not eat quite as much.

You might get the impression from this blog that the only thing we have eaten since we arrive in Kampar is Chinese food. While Chinese food is the most readily available, we have also partaken of some Indian food, some Malay and I am ashamed to admit, once also we stopped at a McDonalds drive-through. Although both Dominoes and Pizza Hut deliver, we have not yet availed ourselves of the service, nor have we eaten KFC, although it is close to our home, in the Tesco complex. Most of the Chinese restaurants are not Halal, but most of the others are, so the pizzas are made with beef pepperoni and other beef-based meats instead of bacon. I am interested to see how the taste compares. Chicken and beef are the most common substitutes for pork. While on the subject of Halal, everything on the shelves in Tesco is Halal, and there is one small deli/ butcher area to the side where a small range of pork products can be bought. I would like to cook some sweet things to send to the lab for everyone to share, but am unsure if they will be eaten by the lab assistants who are all Moslem. Some of the stricter Moslems apparently will not eat food if they suspect it might have come in contact with implements that have been used for non-Halal food, or even prepared in a house where non-Halal food is consumed.

 One afternoon, I felt like a snack, and sometimes it's the old favourites that go down comfortably with  a gin and tonic. Jacobs' crackers, cheeze, brazil nuts and kiwi fruit was just perfect. Talking of alcohol, we are just slowly working on the one litre each of duty free that we brought in (the maximum allowed). Alcoholic drinks are quite expensive, especially the wines, which of course are all imported. The cheapest wines are 45 Ringgits ($14), so I'm hoping this just means they only import the better quality wines.

 

The staff seem to find time to do these nice things and get all their testing and analysing done as well. This is Mimi offering me a cake.

Lemang is a rice dish traditionally eaten during Hari Raya, the end of Ramadan. It is cooked inside a bamboo piece. We also bought a sticky coconut rice dish (in the takeaway container) which was sweet enough to even satisfy my palate.

To welcome Lorena to the lab, the staff had cooked up a storm. Rosli's wife made these little cakes, and each one was decorated differently. They were so pretty and imaginative, I felt a pang of jealousy!

Some of our most interesting meals, I have failed to record anything but sweet memories. One of the other lab staff, Ismael, invited us to his niece's engagement party, and we enjoyed a vast spread of Malay food which we ate with our hands. On our first night in Kampar, we enjoyed a traditional Kampar meal, a chicken curry served inside a bread shell made from a sweet croissant-like pastry. It was glazed with sugar, and the Inventor amusedly related the story of a repeat visit for lunch with the accountant and Harry. Poor Harry, who speaks numerous dialects of Chinese, had no difficulty explaining that he'd like it without the sweet, sticky glaze, only to have it served exactly the same way. I suspect they are already prepared that way. Another enjoyable Kampar eating event is "Clay Pot Chicken", a rice dish with chicken cooked in a clay pot over open coals. It is served in the pot, and it was on this occasion, eating again with Harry, that we realised most restaurants serve vegetables although they might not advertise it or have it on a menu. This has been a very helpful lesson and we have since enjoyed many delicious green vegetable and mixed vegetable dishes. Grand Kampar Hotel is not known for amazing restaurants, but we really enjoyed the steam boat we had there, and I regret not taking a photo of the amazing array of assorted goodies we were served to put in it. Another particularly notable meal was eaten in Ipoh last Friday night. Harry had asked if we had anything planned for dinner, which of course we hadn't, so we hopped in his car and drove. The Inventor and I had no idea he was taking us to Ipoh, until one of us enquired after some time. Harry doesn't believe in GPS units, perhaps because there are no useful maps of Malaysia (we wasted space in our luggage for our impotent Navman), but he claims to prefer using his sense of direction. His sense of direction and memory did indeed get us to the restaurant eventually, though when he later referred me to the same neighbourhood, I had to admit that the circuitous route we had taken hadn't done much to cement the path in my memory. The meal, however, was memorable. We ate at a table on the edge of the road, and this time it was our shout, so I know the food component was around $13 Australian for the three of us. Ipoh is famous for its bean sprouts (Mung Bean Sprouts, though they are not known as that here), and while the Inventor and I fail to really see how the Ipoh water might make them taste better, we did admit that they tasted particularly good. We were inclined to credit the success of the dish to the sesame-flavoured sauce. They were served with rice and another signature Ipoh dish, which was described to us by our faithful translator Harry as "steamed chicken", but it was so much more than steamed chicken! Tender, lean and delicious, we would return for this dish often if it didn't take at least 30 minutes to get to Ipoh.

We continue to experiment, try different restaurants and find the food we enjoy, and sometime soon we might also use our gas burners to prepare a main meal at our place. The food is a big part of the adventure, and hopefully we will find a happy routine that might even allow us to lose some weight, as we get more settled.