Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Chow Fest with Friends

Friends came to town for the weekend. These are my old chums from secondary school days. With good friends ready, all needed were some good food to make some good times. So last weekend would be best documented with the food, the copious amount of food we shoved down our throat. We basically went rampant stuffing ourselves silly.

After my Sign language class on Saturday, I rushed over to meet them at Chinatown, just to find them started the chow fest already. Spread on the table was a remnant of a salty roasted duck while everyone else was slurping their porky parts (liver, intestines, kidney etc) porridge. I opted for a bowl of fish porridge instead, as the porky stuff wasn’t my thing. Oh the duck, juicy succulent meat with a layer of crispy skin. Oh the duck!

As the sky turned gray and threatening, we dashed off to our car. Considering the cars were parked a couple of street away and the sky wasn’t that threatening, we made a pit stop at a bao (Chinese steam buns) stall to get some dou sha baos (sweet red bean paste filling) and char siu baos (savory roasted pork filling). According to a friend, the dough was hand knead to the perfect consistency for a light soft and fluffy bun. It was indeed. Yummy! Not forgetting, I also picked up some sweet jackfruits for the lot, as gifts for me being late. Everything was gone while we dashed to the cars.

We were on our way to Klang to visit another friend and spend the night there. It was hot when we got there and meet up the friend. The afternoon heat was suffocating and rendered us sweating ridiculously. The debate was to head out for some special beers (more on that later) or cendol. Cendol won, since the beers place did not open during the day. I had two bowls of those icy cooling sweat tasty dessert, first with a good dollop of ice cream topping, another one with jelly and cream corn topping. We also ordered two plates of rojak mamak to share.

We were all sleepy and lazy like a snake with a full belly in the afternoon heat. Finally we checked into the hotel, snoozing away enjoying the AC.

After a quick wash, we were joined by another friend. The eight of us headed out for a pre-dinner meal. The star of the pre-dinner meal was clay pot chicken rice, which was a dinner meal by itself. It was pretty standard affair, nothing to write home about, except that the ingredients were abundant, big chunks of chicken, slices of Chinese sausage, and diced salted fish. I was not sure about the rest, I was pretty full after that.

To allow our body to make more room for the real dinner, we went to visit a nature’s wonder, the fireflies at Kuala Selangor. We were rowed off into the darkness of the night along the river. Then we came to see hundreds, used to be thousands, of fireflies blinking on the trees along the banks. It was very pretty, like the starry night high above was now within reach, and the twinkling stars could be plucked from the sky. By the way no one should pluck these stars and take them home. The number of the fireflies has been dwindling tremendously over the years due to lousily planned development and mangroves deforestation and some idiot bastardy tourists who think it’s fun to catch a few of the fireflies home.

After the fireflies show, we felt the urge to eat again, the real dinner. This time around it was seafood dinner. We had on the table scallops, fishes, crabs, prawns, lala clams, squids, and some vegetable to dial it down a tiny notch on the high cholesterol level of the whole meal. We ordered tea for drinks, to wash off the oiliness of the food, but later added 4 big bottles of beer.

Friends meet up to shoot shit and talk crap, over beers of course. So beers were on next. But hold the horses, it was not any ordinary beer. We were going for snow beers! Well basically, it was just some nicely chilled ordinary beer poured into well chilled glasses with a thin layer of ice. The beer melted the ice droplets and they floated in the head. It was like drinking ice blended beer. Super chilled. Brain freeze! By the end of the night, we talked a lot of shit and shot a lot of crap. Happy times!

It was close to 1 am when we done with the shitting and crapping. True to the Malaysians-out-for-a-night-party tradition, our last stop was at a mamak shop. Nasi lemak, fried Maggi (instant noodles) and roti canai were all on the table, along with the tarik, the perfect night cap.

The breakfast, more like brunch by the time we got out, for Sunday morning was of course the staple diet for the Klang Chinese community, bak kut teh. It’s a pot of different cuts of pork (bak, the meat part), along with all the bones (kut the bones) and porky parts, boiled and simmered in a dark stock with whole garlic and a variety of Chinese herbs. It’s eaten along with rice and Chinese tea (teh). Klang is really famous for this and apparently there are more than 400 BKT restaurants in Klang. The one we tried was quite strong in the fragrance and slightly thick on the soup. Nonetheless, the two pots we ordered were well cleaned up when we left the table.

It was time to go. We headed back to Chinatown again, for friends to do some last minute shopping. We ended up in a tea shop doing some tea tasting and getting crash course on Tea Drinking 101.

I really had to rush. I left them at the tea shop. Later that Sunday night I realized I had skipped lunch that day. But I was pretty sure they did not. They were in Chinatown, they probably found some hidden food spots tugged away in some obscure corner, eating and yakking away.

It was a fun and full weekend. Good friends + good food = good times. Happy days!

P/s.: Apparently I missed two meals. The Friday (when the out-of-towners arrived) night supper of Hokkien style fried noodles, thick noodles fried in black soy sauce and top with pork fat bits and the Saturday breakfast of roasted pork and noodle soup. Damn!


P/P/s.: Sorry no pix, too busy eating.

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