Freshly fried kway teow from Hawkers Delight at Subiaco Market, Perth, Australia |
![]() |
A 1968 photo taken during the annual Chingay procession along Jalan Ngee Heng with that coffee shop at far left |
I’m familiar with this kway teow hawker because our grandfather
or Ah Kong’s house was at No. 154 Jalan Ngee Heng, just two blocks from this
corner coffee shop. This hawker seemed
to be an extension of the coffee shop as it was absolutely normal for customers
to have a drink in the shop and order noodles from this mobile stall. While I enjoyed the taste of this char kway teow, it was much later that I
learned to differentiate his recipe as the Teochew style of stir-fried flat
rice noodles.
Ingredients for stir-fried kway teow may vary but the
Teochew recipe is distinguished by the distinct flavour of thick sweet dark
sauce, made from a traditional brew of molasses, sugar and caramel. The noodles also feature ingredients like
sliced Chinese sausages or lap cheong,
crunchy bean sprouts and another distinguishing item, cockles or see hum.
I cannot forget the sight of scalded and shelled cockles that looked red
and bloody, ready to be added to the noodles as the final ingredient for a
quick stir-fry before the kway teow is dished out and served.
I’m told that connoisseurs of fried kway teow in
Johor and Singapore have a tradition of ordering a mix of flat rice noodles
with yellow noodles because the blend of two noodles tastes better. And yes, one of the ingredients in this
hawker’s char kway teow is the liberal use of pork fat in crunchy cubes of lard
that added a distinctive flavour to his noodles. But with the worldwide introduction of char
kway teow to food fans, there are now many delicious halal versions that do not use any pork or lard.
Since this noodle stall was just a short walk from Ah Kong’s
house, my cousins and I were often sent out to tah-pau or buy a takeaway. The
hawker was so familiar with us that we could even bring along our own
eggs to stir-fry into our order of char
kway teow and pay a lower price for it.
There was usually a queue to wait for our order but we would be
entertained while the hawker put on a big show by deftly wielding the ladle in
the wok, cracking the eggs and
twirling the sauce bottles with such a flourish not unlike a skilled bartender,
that we dubbed him the Action Man!
Hawkers Delight at Subiaco Market, Perth, is serving up a menu of delicious Malaysian street food |
In Johor and other South East Asian countries where street
food is readily available at almost all hours, we can pick and choose where and
when and what we want to eat. Recently
when I was in Perth, Australia, I observed how Malaysians who live abroad long
for the authentic taste of freshly cooked hawker fare and this Teochew fried
noodles came to mind. When there is
limited local street food, the quest for good Malaysian rice and noodle dishes abroad
is like a perpetual search for a favourite comfort food!
One weekend in Perth, my nephew and his wife took me to
Subiaco Market where there is a collection of food stalls that sell fresh and
cooked food. Among the cooked food are
stalls that serve Spanish paella, French pastries, Indian breads, Italian pasta
and even a halal Malaysia food stall
for satay, rendang and briyani
rice.
Some of the items on their menu |
Our destination, however, was
Hawkers Delight, a stall that serves a menu of Malaysian rice and noodle
favourites like Ipoh hor fun, Penang
prawn noodle, Hainan chicken rice, nasi
lemak with a side of sambal as
well as fried kway teow.
After a glance at the price list, I must admit to spontaneously
trying to convert the sums back to Malaysian Ringgit just for comparison. But when we are so far away from our favourite
hawker stall in Johor, the desire for that familiar taste outweighed the price
and we went ahead to place the order for char kway teow.
On that wintry day it took just a few bites of
this freshly fried kway teow to conclude that its flavour closely matched the fragrant
noodles by our Action Man hawker of Johor Baru, even though we paid A$10 (RM30)
for this plate!
A version of this article was published in The New Straits Times, Streets Johor on 10 October 2013
No comments:
Post a Comment