Wha-a-a-a-tt? Got to eat a-ga-a-ai-inn (said in sing-song fashion. Use your imagination)😲🤔? Oh, the chore of it. 😋😂!
Yeah, right! For Malaysians, this is a welcome “chore”. Generally, there are 3 main meals a day. Some people include an afternoon coffee (I prefer to call it this using “coffee” instead of tea for obvious reasons) and supper.
When you attend a convention in Malaysia, you will notice that there is a tea break in the morning and afternoon. This means 5 meals a day : breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, then dinner. O.K. We’ve got to admit that there are six meals (the sixth being supper) a day for the avaricious. Is “Avaricious” (1) the right word to describe the extra-hungry or over-hungry? Just having fun with the English language.🤔😁
We, meaning the Batik Influencer, who also happens to be my wife, Jeannie, as well; and I, decided to visit our nearby cafe restaurant, New Apollos for a bite. (2) If you think this coffee shop is chic… in a sort of way : everyone comes here in whatever style they which to impress on others: the very casual, just out of bed straight to the coffee shop (in pjs galore at times); shorts (here, shorts are taken to a new level of “shorts”), tees and slippers. On the other end of the spectrum are people coming in near full suit (dressed for business meetings and work. Something peculiar though. there are those full suiters who wear slippers instead of shoes. Is that a “photo-bomb” or what (possibly hear this from a young-er person)? We could have walked from our house to New Apollos. However, we decided to reserve our energy for the eating. We drove.😉
We got a table directly under the air-conditioning (3 – blade fan). I choped (3) the table first while Jeannie went to the stalls to order the food. The drinks guy came around. I ordered a kopi peng (pronounced koh peeh peh eng [as in egg]) (4) for myself and a kopi kecil (small in Bahasa Malaysia) for Jeannie. When you order just coffee or tea, it is understood that you want it hot, unless you state otherwise. When you add an instruction of “sikit / kurang manis (little or less sweet in Bahasa Malaysia) or sikit / kurang gula” (little or less sugar in Bahasa Malaysia); ain’t gonna happen. Haha.
Jeannie ordered a roast chicken rice set for herself and for me, char kway teow. Jeannie’s roast chicken rice set had a generous serving of rice, roast chicken and slices of cucumber on a separate dish, a soup that looked like a vegetable soup and not forgetting, a little container of chili, specially made to go with chicken rice. Chicken rice without the chili is chicken rice incomplete.
The roast chicken and cucumbers came with a sort of brown sauce on them. It tasted as good as it looked – delicious. Jeannie, at times, likes to pour spoons full of soup into her rice to make it “wet”. Dipping the sliced pieces of roast chicken and cucumbers into the chili sauce, then adding rice and eating it – simple food. Satisfying to the tastebuds, satisfying to the senses. Sipping hot coffee with it, Jeannie was happy with her meal.
My char kway teow order came in a banana leaf dark green colour plate to give that “char kway teow served on banana leaf” feeling. It looked good…not too oily…well, maybe a tad bit more than I would have preferred. It had tougey (you don’t say, “bean sprouts”. You will see a questionable look on the char kway teow-er’s [cook / frier] face) and a few strands of what looked like egg, vegetables, fishcake, prawns (5)….have I missed out on anything? Oh ya, kway teow, too. Stir fried in a black sauce, charred lightly and accompanied by the staple food of Malaysia – chili sauce.
You may think Malaysia is a mixed bunch – we are. We are inter-wined in our language and culture and are loving it. That extends to our food to where the names of the dishes can be mixed: Indian, Malay, Chinese, English, etc. Take for example: “char kway teow” is Chinese. Char means stir-fried. “Char” is also an English word. (6)
The char kway teow on a dark green plate. It tasted so good. This guy has been operating his stall at New Apollos Restaurant for many years. He has a technique of balancing and bringing out the flavours of all the condiments with the kway teow. He does not add chili paste into his stir fry process (unless you request for it). The chili sauce that comes with this meal is for those who want to tease their tastebuds with spiciness.
I enjoyed my meal. Not too filling; just nice to get by. I sipped at my kopi peng, while savouring the taste of the meal just eaten. We soaked in the atmosphere of the surroundings, peoples’ usual morning hangout, those in for a quick meal before or during work. It had its fair share of business.
Jeannie and I had the next chapter of our day to attend to – looking forward to the future which was the next moment and beyond, ahead of us.
NOTES:
1. Avaricious: showing an extremely strong wish to get or keep money or possessions:
The idea is to shift the bad debts of the avaricious and the greedy onto the shoulders of middle-class people.
She turned out to be a crafty and avaricious politician.
Cambridge dictionary
2. “A bite” means to get something to eat. It refers to food. Grab A Bite’ is an American expression – and it means to get something to eat but to do quickly, because you don’t have a lot of time.
When do you want to go grab a bite?” “I don’t have much time, so let’s grab a quick bite.”
3. Char kway teow (sometimes also spelled as char kuey teow, is a stir-fried rice noodle dish from Maritime Southeast Asia of southern Chinese origin. In Hokkien and Teochew, char means ‘stir-fried’ and kway teow refers to flat rice noodles. It is made from flat rice noodles or kway teow of approximately 1 cm or about 0.5 cm in width, stir-fried over very high heat with garlic, light and dark soy sauce, chili paste, whole prawns, shelled blood cockles, chopped Chinese chives, slices of Chinese sausage, and bean sprouts. Other common ingredients include fishcake and belachan.
Originally developed and catered to overseas-born Chinese labourers in the Southeast Asia region, the dish has achieved widespread popularity within the region from the late 20th century onwards, particularly in Malaysia and Singapore. The dish has also acquired a reputation of being unhealthy due to its high saturated fat content, as it is traditionally stir-fried in pork fat with crisp croutons of pork lard.
3. chop – (From English) Used to tell someone to do something fast. chope – Slang for reserving a seat. Derived from chop; to leave a mark. Malaysians have a habit of leaving objects on seats or tables to reserve places (usually tissue packets). Sometimes also pronounced as simply “chop”.
4. “Kopi” means coffee in Bahasa Malaysia. “Peng” is in Hokkien, a Chinese dialect word for “ice”.
5. In North America, the term “shrimp” is used much more frequently, while the word “prawn” is most often used to describe larger species or those fished from fresh water.
6. partially burn so as to blacken the surface.
late 17th century: apparently a back-formation from charcoal. (English)
late 16th century (as cha ; rare before the early 20th century): from Chinese (Mandarin) chá .
Oxford dictionary
It looks like the Chinese were using this word first.
