10 most favorite food (my 10 that is)

Do you have favorite food?

why am i asking question? as if there is anyone reading this blog.

hik

Anyway, favorite food is just food that you consciously ordered regularly. Or, your favorite dish can also be most popular dish that you subconsciously ordered or eaten regularly 3-4 months, recall and list them and the most ordered is your favorite. ( i somehow are overusing the word conscious, and unconscious, consciously too much didnt i?)

Or... a favorite food can also be something that you like so much and you know you like it. And when you ate it you feel nice and happy. When you have it somewhere else and if it does not taste right you get all uptight and frustrated. It it fits all these description, than that is your favorite food. You always know how it should taste like, look like and feel like without realizing it you become the expert on that particular dish.

Favorite food should not be expensive. It should be simple comfort food that within reach every time you long for it. You might have favorite restaurant, but the restaurant might not even serve your favorite dish. We love a restaurant for a very different reason.

We will talk about that later.

So what is your favorite food? I sat thinking about it yesterday, as if I have no other things to think about and as if I have too much time to do something else and guess what.

I have come out with my list of ….

Jeng jeng jeng

10 MOST FAVORITE FOODS

How ingenious! Bravo.

So here goes: this is the 10 most favorite dishes listed from the less to the most favorite.


At no 10 is, Yong Tau foo

I love both versions of the yong tau foo, fried dry one with red bean chilly sauce and also the soupy version soaked in fish or chicken broth. A secret of a good young tau foo is from the red bean sauce, the soup and the fish they used to make the filling. Meaning to say, we can have all good wantan, tauhu and fishball but if you don’t have a good broth or good sauce it will be wasted. The broth must be very thin and not oily with strong smell chicken stock. The sauce must be consistently not too thick and goey or to thin and runny, and must have the right combination of sweet, salty and sour taste to it.

The most popular restaurant in KL serving yong tau foo is of course the Ampang Yong Tau Foo. There is also a few shop in Uptown Damansara which serve good yong taufoo, but most importantly you can get good yong taufoo from pasar malam too.

But a good yong tau foo must have a perfect wantan, fresh smell fish, and all those colourful vegetables.

At no 9 is,

MEE HAILAM

Mee Hailam should not be complicated. It should be kept as simple as possible with black soy sauce, garlic and chicken stock thicken with whatever powder. I hate it when the cook tries to be creative and mix in everything under the sun with all those unwanted spices to the broth and end up tasting funny. I hate funny taste hailam mee. The condiment also should be minimal. I remember eating mee hailam when I was very little and the mee hailam was the best ever and it only have noodles and soy sauce and some meet, without all those vegetables funky condiment.

I really hate ordering mee Hailam from gerai kelantan/gerai siam, it is just plain lousy and it is not mee hailam, it just noodles with lots of oil and soy sauce and it taste yucky.

At no 8 is, AYAM MASAK KICAP

Yup, of all thing, why ayam masak kicap! Hik, provided the chicken are perfectly cook not to dry so that when it is mix with the very simple soy sauce it will absorb all the richness of the say sauce and caramelised perfectly. And it will be more perfect if it is served with potatoes and chunky onion.

Oh heaven.

The sos kicap sould be as simple as possible and can be spiced up with black ground peppers only. I really hate it when they put in the cinnomin stick, and other strong spices such as star anise or cordamon. It just makes the dish blend


At no 7 is, SUSHI



I love sushi, everyone love sushi. Its tasteless but its just plain and simply beautiful. And when eating it we don't feel the sushi or the rice or the uncooked fish or the salty tasteless seaweed, but we taste the initiative and hardwork of the chef. Thus we appreciate it even more.

Sushi is just not a food, its a work of art.


At no 6 is, SOUP

I love warm comforting soup. Nothing beats the warm soup especially when it is raining and when you feel lonely and when you are alone and feel lonely i suggest you heat up the pan and cook any soup, and then eat it. You will feel really good afterword.

I love soup so much i don't know which one i like. In fact if it is soup, i will like it no matter what.

Sup kepala ikan merah

Sup Ekor

Soup should be eaten while it is hot or warm It cannot be consumed cold. I love any type of soup, as long as its soupy, of course. Be it clear chicken soup, spicy beef soup or stew, cream soup, sweet corn soup, sweet sour and hot sezchuan soup and everything seangkatan dengannya, i love.

At no 5 is, NASI KERABU


Nasi Kerabu is a popular Kelantanese delight consisting of rice and a selection of finely chop herbs and fresh and raw vegetables, top with two particular sauce which is the Budu and the spicy sauce, then served with dessicated coconut with fish meat or serunding daging. It is a very simple meal but very fulfilling. One can choose to have fried fish, bbq chicken or daging bakar to go with the nasi kerabu, but those does not constitute a nasik kerabu. Nasik kerabu is just plain rice, which can sometime be blue in colour top with shredded veges, serunding and very pungent sauce.


The best way to eat nasik kerabu is to have little of everything and mix everything with your hands. This is to ensure that with every bite you can taste the veges, the serunding and also the sauce.

No two nasik kerabu taste alike. Different cook have different specialties and the way they prepare the serunding, the concoction of veges and the amount of sauce differs, thus giving it personality. Yes, the rice have personality.

But, the rule of thumb that must be abide is the serunding cannot be too dried, and the vegetables must be very fresh and not mushy.


At no 4 is, LAMB CHOP





Oh i just love lamb chop because i like lamb so much. The smell and acquired taste of the lamb grilled over open fire with the fat around the rib meat of the lamb melted and turn translucent is just excellent. Especially when it is properly done, and when you suck the meat it fall of the bone easily into your mouth, down your larynx and into your esofugus without any effort, complete with a perfect black pepper sauce and mint is just fantastic. Its better than having sex.

A good lamb chop must be succulent and not dry, so it has to be cooked perfectly where the meat is very tender and at the same time its still moist. So you don't want to overcooked or undercooked the meat.


At no 3 is, MEE KARI



Not everyone can cook mee kari. It cannot be too spicy, or not spicy enough. In preparing the gravy, the coconut milk cannot be too thick or too thin, and when cooking it we must always ensure that the milk is not curdled or separated. Nothing is more yucky than and oily mee kari.

The combination of the curry paste and the coconut must invoke the sweet taste of the gravy, and it must not hurt your lung. Both cannot over powered each other.

Again, preparing mee kari is not like preparing any other curry, so a good mee curry should not be overpowered by those powerful and pungent spices. Those spices are there just to help to give it a beautiful aroma and not for taste.


At no 2 is, Nasik Ayam


Nasik ayam is a chinese food, and only the chinese can prepare the best nasik ayam. So if you want to eat or cook nasi ayam, have it like what the chinese are having it. There are so many version of nasik ayam nowadays and they are so hideaous.

I hate nasik ayam with :
Butter - some people they mix in butter to the hot rice to make it moist (hate it so much)
Serai - i don't where does anyone come with the idea of puting in lemongrass in a nasik ayam
Raisin - Might as well you put in the fruit cocktail and call it chicken cocktail rice.
Cardoman and Cinnomon - For heaven sake, its chicken rice not, nasik minyak.

I love nasik ayam with :
- Very moist but not lumpy rice with very mild taste of the chicken broth.
- Succulent, tender and juicy chicken, be it fried, roast or steam showered with nice soy sauce for taste.
- Lemony chilly sause for that extra zing.
- Nice warm soup to complement the rice.

I love nasik ayam served in

- Hainanese Chicken Rice, Jalan Bukit Bintang

- Hailam Chicken Rice - Damansara Utama Uptown

- The chicken rice shop

- My sisters chicken rice (no it is not a restaurant, she is my sister!)

and last but not least.....

jeng jeng jeng


At no 1 is, Non other than


SAMBAL TEMPOYAK

Hik, very der kampung one kan.

Sambal tempoyak is particularly Negeri's specialities. You can never find it in any other state or not cooked by a negeri's. Sambal tempoyak is infact not a sambal at all. When we think of sambal what crossed our mind is sambal as food cooked with chilly boh or grounded red chilly and very oily and red.

Sambal tempoyak is just bunch of selected aromatic vegetables such as pucuk ubi, pucuk labu, pucuk di cita ulam mendatang, and so on so forth. This aromatic veges are then chop very finely and cooked with a very thick coconut milk couple with a handful of bird eyes chilly or chilly api. It is cooked slowly and left to simmer in the wok for quite sometimes until all the sliced vegetables is unrecognisable and the coconut is reduced.

And the best part is, we put in tempoyak or smelly durian paste in it, a lot of it. The tempoyak is the one giving it the unusual taste. Usually we will put in prawn or anchovies (ikan bilis) to give is some taste.

Sambal tempoyak is supposed to be very very hot. It is not for the faint hearted. It can be eaten with rice or bread and, its get better when it is reheated.

And Sambal tempoyak ladies and gentleman, especially made by my mother is my most favorite food of all food, and mind you i like food so much.

Yes, i am kampung, but i am very proud of it.