Soups are delicious accompaniments to meals in many Chinese families. Most are concoctions of several types of herbs stewed with pork or chicken. In the olden days before the proliferation of gas stoves, it was simmered in unglazed clay pots over charcoal stoves. The soup pots are similar to tea pots, only larger in size. They have a funnel for the steam to escape and later to pour the soup out. However these clay pots are fragile and break easily. My soups are usually cooked in stainless steel pots or in the slow cooker.

Such herbal stews will feature prominently in my diet when I begin to cook later. They are easy to make. They usually consist of three or more herbs. Once, it was only available from Chinese medical halls. However prepacked herbs are conveniently available in most supermarkets nowadays. There are different herbal recipes for different conditions. With the varieties available, one can practically have different soups for each day of the week.

The ones that I cook are usually for general health and very easy to make. Sometimes I stew the herbs without meat. The times that I did, they are parboiled to remove the froth that usually forms when cooking with pork. Although I like to drink soups, I am not fond of drinking too much of it. The norm for me is one packet of herbs stewed in three bowls of water and let simmer for an hour on medium fire. If the slow cooker is used, they are usually left to simmer for four hours with the same amount of liquid. Nothing beats a bowl of warm herbal stew after a good meal. Hopefully that will return some of the vigour that I used to enjoy.

Petai (Parkia Speciosa) are abundant during the durian season of June and July here. It is also known as stink beans for its foul smell, much like the stench of burnt rubber. It also has a slightly bitter taste. It is a delicacy to those who appreciate it not only for its unique taste but its supposedly medicinal property of countering diabetes.

There are several ways to eat petai. The simplest is to remove the beans from the pod, remove the white membrane and eat it raw. For a little more flavour, it can be eaten with sambal belacan and mashed dried prawns. The pod can be toasted over embers and the beans removed and eaten the same way. Another is to make dried prawns sambal and add petai to it. One recipe I like is the Sambal Petai and Prawns.

Peter gave me some petai a few days ago. Since I have developed an allergy to prawns, it was substituted with chicken. I would have loved to use tom yam paste for the dish but it is not something I should indulge in. I settled with using onions and soy sauce for taste. No salt was used but I believe it would have tasted better with some. The following was what I cooked up for today�s lunch.

Peter Tan’s Petai Masak Pedas

1/2 tsp corn flour
water

Heat oil in wok. Add garlic and stir till fragrant. Add onions and dried chillies and stir till fragrant. Add chicken and stir for 2 minutes. Mix the thick soy sauce, soy sauce, sugar and water and pour into wok. Stir for another 2 minutes. Add the petai beans and stir for another 2 minutes. Dissolve corn flour in a little water, pour into the wok and stir until the gravy becomes thicker in consistency. Remove from wok and serve with rice. For an extra dose of spiciness, add chilli padi together with the dried chillies.

There was a time when the mutton kurma from Dawood Restaurant at Queen Street never failed to make me salivate. Somewhere along the way, it began to taste different and I have stopped yearning for it. Through the years, I have tried this dish from other Indian Muslim restaurants but it just did not have that X-factor to make me go back for more. I have tried cooking it. Still, it was never the same.

Nowadays, most spice pastes used for cooking are premixed. I remember being a small kid following my mother to the Air Itam wet market where an Indian lady would be selling an array of spice pastes. Those came direct from her batu giling, a flat surfaced granite grinding stone with a granite pin. The aromas of those pastes were heavenly. One only needed to tell her what type of curry and how much meat and she would mix the paste and wrap it in a sheet of banana leaf.

Two days ago, while shopping at the newly renovated Sunshine Square Supermarket, Wuan and I came across this stall selling spice paste. We knew for sure the paste did not come from a batu giling but his kurma paste looked good. We asked the young Malay man how much was needed for half a chicken and he recommended 150g. We also bought RM1 worth of coconut milk. I have to forgo cooking mutton kurma because red meat is no longer something I can indulge in anymore.

Wuan could not get chicken at the market yesterday. We decided to cook it today. When we took out the frozen coconut milk out from the fridge, I discovered that it had gone bad. Since Makro is just next to my apartment, Wuan went to get a packet of vacuum packed santan from there. Most kurma recipes call for plain yoghurt and ghee to be used. I have substituted those with coconut milk and cooking oil. Additionally, red or green chillies can also be used to add more colour to the dish.

The kurma tasted nice but as this is the first time I am cooking with this paste, it does not taste as good as it should. My food now has to contain very little salt. I have taken the liberty to adjust the recipe and the amount of ingredients used to suit those who do not need to cut down on their salt intake and prefer more flavour in their kurma. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did.

Chicken Kurma

Ingredients:
200g kurma paste

3 tbsp cooking oil

Heat oil in wok. Fry garlic and onions until fragrant. Add kurma paste and fry until fragrant. Add chicken and stir until they are coated in the paste. Add water, salt, potatoes and carrots. Cover the wok and let simmer until chicken is cooked and the potatoes are soft. Make sure there is enough gravy to prevent the ingredients from sticking to the bottom of the wok. If gravy dries up, add some coconut milk. When almost ready, add coconut milk, stir and let it simmer for another 3 minutes. Serve with rice.

Come Chinese New Year, there is one kuih that I always looked forward to eating. Without fail, Peter�s mother will make several types of popular goodies such as kuih kapit, kuih bahulu and kiuh bangkit and present them as festive gifts. The one that I like most is kuih loyang. Loyang is the Malay word for brass.

This kuih is made by coating the brass mould with a batter of rice flour, plain flour, sugar and eggs, and deep fried in cooking oil. Peter�s mother makes the spicy version which is also salty. Those that are sold commercially are mostly sweet tasting. I like both types for its crispiness and the aroma when chewing it inside my mouth.

This kuih has been given glamourous names, most which describes it shape. It is also known as kuih ros because it resembles a rose, kuih goyang because it needs to be shaken off the mould when almost done, and sarang tebuan, Malay for hornet�s nest, because it resembles a honeycomb. Making this kuih takes a lot of skill. Removing it from the mould requires a delicate and deft shake to maintain its shape. I am looking forward to the next new year for a bite of this kuih again.

Kim Laksa, Balik Pulau.
Photo by Wuan.

Peter took Wuan and me on a quick trip to Balik Pulau. Wuan is partial to the Siamese laksa there sold by the stall known as Kim Laksa. She had missed it on her past few trips here. Her trips to Penang will not be complete without a bowl or two of that. The stall is located in a kopitiam just beside the Balik Pulau market.

Kim Laksa, Balik Pulau.
Photo by Wuan.

On the other hand, I am not fond of the coconut based gravy. The asam laksa is still one of my favourites although I have stopped taking it. The gravy of the asam laksa consists of tamarind, sardine or mackerel flakes, belacan (shrimp cake), among others, and topped with shrimp paste (heh ko). Mackerel, sardines, belacan and shrimp paste are food I should avoid to reduce the amount of uric acid in my blood.

Balik Pulau native product - preserved fruits.
Photo by Wuan.

We did not stop to eat-in because the sky looked like it would rain again any minute. After she had bought enough laksa to feed a small family, she went into the market to buy some of Balik Pulau’s famous native product to take back to Kuala Lumpur. Nutmegs and mangoes from the nearby hills are preserved in syrup and make nice titbits to nibble on.

Stall selling cheh hoo, Balik Pulau.
Photo by Wuan.

When she came out from the market, Peter and I pointed to the cheh hoo stall and indicated we wanted one packet. Cheh hoo is a platter of shredded cucumber, yam bean (sengkuang), crispy prawn fritters, tau kua (hard bean curd), potatoes, eggs, prawn cake and topped with a gravy made from sweet potato, chilli sauce and crushed peanuts.

Balik Pulau durians.
Photo by Wuan.

Since we were at Balik Pulau and Wuan absolutely loves durians from there too, we got three durians from Peter’s cousin for RM30. One of them is the famed hor lor (gourd), an award winning fruit that is quite popular among durian aficionados. The King of Fruits is rather expensive now as it is just the beginning of the durian season and fruits are rather limited at the moment.

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