Malaysia Kitchen

The start of a very Sauce(y) week was to promote the launch of the Malaysia Kitchen Dining Card at Kiasu on Queensway.

We had been invited by Sauce Communications for a mamouth feast of mainly Chinese influenced Malaysian food in the unasuming (and rather blue) surroundings of this cute restaurant and I was looking forward to eating some of my favourite cuisine.

I fell in love with Malaysian food 5 or 6 years ago when I travelled over there and was introduced to the culture and food by friends and through my own travels. I was lucky enough to be there for the Hari Raya (end of Ramadan) celebrations where Open House parties across the country are the norm and I spent a good week being shepherded from house to house being fed Beef Rendang and other treats until I was fit to burst. I even met the king of Malaysia as part of that experience but then, that’s another story..

So as I settled in with Meemalee, the London Foodie, One Million Gold Stars, the Wine Sleuth and Cooking the Books it didn’t take long before an overwhelming selection of food was brought for our delectation.

The starters began with Chye tow kway, a stir fried Radish Cake which was new to me but tasty

We had Beef and Chicken Satay, which is difficult to do badly I always think, although I never really appreciated it in Malaysia due to my distaste for peanuts at the time (I got over that though…)

Along with this extremely familiar dish the Kueh Pai Tee was quite the opposite. A Nyonya dish (from the Chinese influenced Melacca straits area) the little “Top Hats” topped with a prawn and made by hand were crunchy and delicious, if a touch awkward to eat. *note I am a clumsy oaf so this may be more down to my lack of grace than anything else.

As if that wasn’t enough we had Special Fried Calamari and a Ngoh hiang sausage roll type dish. Luckily there were a couple of latecomers which meant we had a pause before the next onslaught of main courses arrived!

Chilli Crab was tasty and messy as anything and the accompanying buns were incredible doughnutty balls of delight.

Meanwhile the Honey Glazed Ribs were extremely more-ish…

The Hainanese Chicken Rice, another Malaysian dish with Chinese origins, was great as well. Very authentic to the stuff available seemingly on every street in parts of Penang, I remember surviving for days eating little else because what more could you want than chicken with three sauces and a deliciously flavoured rice. I think I gobbled this one up before I had chance to take a photo…

We had a whole bowl of Laksa each and it was good, spicy without being overwhelming and again nice and authentic. I was getting full by this stage but several of the others managed to polish the whole thing off…!

Finally, we had the less than light fried noodle dish of Char kway teow, a very common dish with prawns and topped with pork fat. I was too full to try more than a mouthful but it was pretty good.

Here’s the gorgeous PR Jenny just about to stuff her face again, she certainly has an appetite.

That wasn’t it though, we had an interesting iced dessert, Chendol consisting of coconut milk, red beans, palm sugar and green tapioca jelly. It was authentic, but I was never particularly taken with these and I wouldn’t drink a whole one.

Finally, to totally fill us to bursting a small scoop of strongly flavoured Durian Ice cream. Durian is a stinky South East Asian fruit with a peculiar cheese like flavour and chewy texture that often gets banned from hotels and taxis due to it causing them to smell like sewers. This was much more pleasant, however, and left me travelling home with Durian burps as my body attempted to digest such a monumental meal.

NB. This was a comp meal but I would certainly go back and pay (although I would probably not order quite as much..)