|
Life
& Times |
SATURDAY,
APRIL 3, 2004 |
Bon Apetit: In true-blue Nyonya
cooking style
By Eu Hooi Khaw
EU HOOI KHAW savours classic Nyonya dishes at the Red
Door Nyonya restaurant, notes the painstaking cooking methods that have gone
into their preparation and tells of their tasty differences. TRUE Nyonya
cooking at home demands a personal, detailed touch. The traditional way of
doing things is always better - pounding your sambal belacan in a
stone pounder or scraping coconut by hand. You wouldn't expect food to be
prepared in this way in a restaurant.
But you can at Red Door, a nyonya restaurant located within the new Jusco in
Kepong, Kuala Lumpur. The dishes, says Mee Mee Ngan, the owner, are all
cooked according to her grandma's or mother's recipes. A thread of fineness
runs through the food, whether it's Inche Kabin, Chicken Pongteh, Fishhead
Curry, Nyonya Prawns, Nyonya Curry Chicken, Otak-otak or Kuih Pie Tee or top
hats. Or in the kuih that is made by Mee Mee. Now how many nyonya
restaurants you know don't take their kuih, mass-produced, from
suppliers?
Even the nasi kerabu - you can have a choice of this or the
unusually-flavoured chicken rice - is tinged blue from bunga telang.
Red doors with gold metal studs give a distinctive look to the restaurant,
which has rustic-looking teak furniture from Chiengmai, Thailand. There are
Chinese musical instruments hanging on the wall. A red bamboo centrepiece
inside and baskets as part of the decor add up to a warm ambience. At the
front is a big earthen jar of bubbling water, and on a small table there,
platters of actual food which the restaurant serves.
First the Inche Kabin. In some nyonya restaurants this masquerades as merely
fried chicken, but not here. The chicken, well marinated with spices, was
served hot from the fryer, with crispy skin, almost melting in the mouth.
This came with a piquant dip of Worcestershire sauce, to which fresh
coriander stems had been ground into it, soya sauce, lemon and lime juice,
some chopped shallots and some ABC sauce for a bit of zing.
Pie Tee makes a marvellous appetiser as well at Red Door. The thin Pie Tee
cases somehow stayed firm and crisp even after 15 minutes. They were filled
to the brim with very finely cut bangkuang braised with chicken, shallots
and lots of cuttlefish strips and topped with crabmeat. A tangy home-made
chilli dip was served with these.
The Chicken Pongteh was very finely done. Loads of onions had been ground
for this together with bean paste, which gave a natural sweetness to the
thick, creamy gravy clinging to the chunks of tender chicken, sliced black
mushrooms and potatoes. Eat this with the hot chicken rice scented with
lemongrass, and some sambal belacan, and you're in pongteh heaven. The
Chicken Pongteh (no pork is served in this restaurant) is cooked to Mee
Mee's grandma's recipe, who's a Malaccan nyonya.
Even the sambal belacan stands out - it has been pounded by hand and stirred
with juices from small limes.
The Fishhead Curry here was excellent - it released fine aromas of spices
and karupillai leaves that lingered in the air as you dug into it. A very
meaty fishhead had been cut up and cooked in the curry, together with long
beans, ladies fingers, cabbage and eggplant. There was not a lot of coconut
in it, and the curry was so good you could drink it like a soup. There was a
sweetness about it that came from roasted flat sole (chor hau yee), a
"secret" ingredient from her mum that Mee Mee happily revealed. It had been
put in a bag and simmered in the soup for curry, to which ikan bilis had
been added too.
We had some Otak-otak, Malaccan nyonya style, only this was soft to the
bite, hot enough with chilli and lovely with aromas of lemongrass, daun
kadok and daun limau purut.
Red Door does a delicious version of Beef Rendang too, with the meat
breaking up at the bite, every fibre in the tight embrace of a
coconut-creamy chilli, roots and herbs mix.
Our vegetable dishes were the Kangkong Belacan which scored for its strong
belacan and chilli aroma and taste, and the lotus root, celery, carrot and
black fungus fried with fermented beancurd or lam yee.
You must have a taste of the Siamese Laksa here. It's the best I've eaten
for a long time. The curry for this entailed hours of cooking I was told,
with kembong fish blended into the gravy, and more kembong filleted for
topping. It had tempting aromas from the rempah mixture, enough asam to give
it a kick, and besides fish, had sotong, beancurd puffs, mint and pineapple
on it.
The only dish that I had some reservations about was the Nyonya Prawns which
were done Penang style, with a thick asam sauce. A little less sugar would
have made them perfect.
Here you must save room for the kuih which is all homemade. We had a well
turned-out Serimuka, the soft pandan topping almost melting into the pulut
layer, Onde-onde where liquid gula melaka bursts into your mouth and the
Pulut Inti. The last was spilling over with "inti" from the banana leaf the
blue pulut was wrapped up in. The grated coconut filling was rich and
luscious with gula melaka, pairing deliciously with the pulut.
Life & Times food columnist Betty Saw and I found ourselves actually picking
on hand-grated coconut that was served with the ubi kayu and relishing its
texture and sweet natural juices, which you wouldn't get with grated coconut
you buy from the market.
"My girl (Indonesian helper at home) brought two parut (coconut scrapers)
from Indonesia when she came back after her holiday," said Mee Mee.
For the high standard of food here, the dishes are very reasonably priced.
The Chicken Pongteh, Beef Rendang, Nyonya Chicken Curry and Inche Kabin are
all RM8.80 per regular serving, Fishhead Curry RM19.80, Otak-otak RM7.80,
Pie Tee RM6.80 (for six), vegetable dishes RM7.80. The Siamese Laksa is
RM9.80.
You could also eat a Nyonya meal set, with the curry chicken, beef rendang,
Inche Kabin or Chicken, with chicken rice or nasi kerabu and two top hats
for RM9.80 only.
If you want to hold a special function in the restaurant, you could inform
them and they would lay out the tables beautifully, with banana leaves as a
table runner, flowers and cloth napkins held with napkin rings.
Red Door is located at Lot F27, 1st floor, Jusco, Metro Prima Shopping
Centre in Kepong. Tel: 03-6252-6186
© Copyright 2004 The New
Straits Times Press (M) Berhad. All rights reserved.