I do Asian way.

Posted on 15. Oct, 2009 by Reinar in Breakfast, Lunch, Restaurant

While my dear friends Tim and Jaye were doing it Aussie style {with yeast-extract sandwiches}, I was being true to my heritage and lunching the only way we Asians know how—big. And while they were roughing it at some far-flung Australian terrain I was making my way through deepest-darkest-Singapore, over the perilous causeway and onto the tip of Malaysia where we finally found a spot to park our 1977 Beetle along some roadside in mysterious Johor Baru.

Okay, so my trek wasn’t really a trek as such. It was just a car ride over  a bridge connecting Small-Red-Dot to Malaysia. And Johor Baru isn’t all that mysterious; its really like Singapore except everything is cheaper by about half. I have another clarification: I didn’t go to Malaysia to eat Malaysian food. I went there to have Taiwanese congee. But everything else is as promised. Lunch (or was it brunch) was big.

Now congee and I go way back. In my dad’s hometown, back in the Philippines, there was a famous eatery called Narsing’s Lugawan {lugaw is the Filipino version of congee or jook; to explain further, congee is rice cooked with plenty of water}. My nanny would buy lugaw from Narsing’s for me every morning. Just as she did for my dad and his two sisters. Just as she would do for my sister and my cousins to follow. And yes, same nanny caring for 2 generations. Lugaw–not Gerber or mashed banana, neither boiled pumpkin–became my earliest recollection of solid food.

To this day I have fond memories of eating lugaw in my grandparent’s dining room and I’m sure that my occasional craving for congee is somehow linked to those childhood memories of Narsing’s {I promise to write more about that eatery in another post}. So when my friend Chris, who owns the 1977 Beetle, suggested we go to Malaysia for congee, I was all go.

We were heading to Goh Zha Lang Restoran, along Jalan Sutera in Johor Baru. Chris picked me up from my hotel in Singapore and the drive took all of 40 minutes. It would have actually been quicker had it not been for the unusually long queues at the border. But having passed all that we got to the place and eating began.

The congee itself was kinda bland. I suppose that’s how it is meant to be. I’m just used to the more flavourful Filipino {closer to the Cantonese} style of congee. It was served with a slice of sweet potato which you slowly consumed with porridge. The milder flavour, however, of the congee was a good setting for the rest of side dishes to play on.

Dishes such as this {pictured below} kangkong with furu or sufu. Furu is fermented soy-bean paste. It’s kinda cheese-like with a creamy consistency and has quite a strong flavour. It’s made by further fermenting the fungal, solid-state of tofu. It is then aged in brine containing salt and alcohol. As odd {or off} as that might sound, this was fantastic. Easily my favourite side dish.

Next to that was this chicken fried with thick, dark soy sauce. This is the dish that brought us from Singapore to Johor. Chris wanted me to taste this. And, yes, it is good. Second only to my favourite chicken dish—ayam belachan, more on that next time.

Next to that dish was chai poh {pickled radish} omelette. For some this side-dish is de rigueur for Teowchew porridge. Oh so nice too. Fluffy enough. Brown and crisp enough. The radishes providing a nice salty-sour counter punch to the egg and the congee.

Right next to that plate {Asian-style, remember?} was the Chinese bacon. The taste reminded me of the Chinese ham I grew up with in the Philippines. Sweet and tangy and cured. Except this one was thinly sliced and fried to a crisp. Perfect, really, to have with cold Tiger beer. Not for us this lunchtime.

And again next to that was a dish that no self-respecting Asian foodie really orders. Unless we suddenly have some weird craving {it happens, I swear} or, as in this case, we mis-ordered thinking it was the chicken in dark soy mentioned up top. It was sweet and sour chicken Ask Chris. He did the ordering. It was as expected—sweet and sour at he same time. Credit to the crispiness of the chicken.

We ended lunch with a bowl of sweet red bean soup. The restaurant’s version was lighter and less sweet than others. Not that I was complaining. We certainly had  plenty of flavour with all we had to eat. The soup is made with azuki beans and brown sugar. Some recipes ask that small sago be added for texture.

After all that, I was glad that I skipped breakfast. I certainly will be heading back here on my next visit. There were more items on the menu that read like they should be tried. None of them were as extreme as yeast-extract sandwiches.