I thoroughly enjoyed this informative and hilarious guest post on Johor Kaki blog by my friend and makan kaki, Kumes. I am sure you will too. My thanks to Kumes for being Johor Kaki's first guest blogger!
Johore Bahru - Nov 21st,
2012: It was a rainy Wednesday night, and I had promised my family a
warming dinner of delicious Yong Tau Foo from my favourite stall in
Pelangi.
“What did I do to anger the Yong
Tau Foo gods so much?......Was it my brief flirtation with wantan
soup?” I wearily wondered to myself. “But that happened
when I was a much younger and more foolish boy,” subconsciously
gripping the steering wheel harder in protest. “….it was two
weeks ago….I repent, I swear!” slumping back into the
drivers’ seat. After 45 minutes of driving around, not only was my
favourite stall closed, but so were two others that came highly
recommended by my friend, Joe.
Yong Tau Foo-less, I headed home in
disappointment. Speeding down the road that led to my house, a
glimmer of hope appeared. I noticed a shack out the left corner of my
windscreen off Jalan Stulang Darat. I vaguely recalled the sagely
Johor Kaki mentioning it contained good eats. Desperate and out of
options, I pulled over to investigate.
Bingo! The offerings laid out in
colourful baskets looked decidedly average, but hey, average Yong Tau
Foo is definitely better than no Yong Tau Foo when you’re craving
it on a cold rainy night.
Based on looks alone - the aubergine was
very thinly stuffed, the bitter gourd looked generic, and the tofu
looked bland…. I was truly expecting a forgettable meal. I truly
expected to think “Well, it’s not horrible; maybe if
everywhere else is closed, or my mum steals the car I stole from her,
I might buy this again since it’s so close to the house.”
Boy was I Wrong. Wrong with a capital
W. This then, is a culinary version of the shabbily dressed geeky
girl in the corner no one notices - except at night, she just happens
to turn into Catwoman.
The camera shy Madam Lua has been a Yong Tau Foo hawker for over 20 years, since her son who now mans the furiously boiling
soup pot was just knee high. Before this she was located in the car
park of the nearby old 3 storey flats, where her husband used to man
their stall. Her personal favourites are their very own handmade
fishballs, which come in both the boiled and fried varieties. Some of
the other items such as the fish roe balls and Foochow fishballs are
supplied by a friend of hers.
This is where all those hidden gems are
tucked away - I strongly recommend the items shown in this general
picture.
This is really the most deceiving piece
of the lot. Biting into what appears to be a mild mannered tofu skin
wrapped fried fishball reveals a jewel like filling of flavourful
caviar. Biting into this is like pressing the call button for a lift,
but instead of a lift, the Space Shuttle appears. Unexpected,
Interesting, Surprising. Joyful even.
The flavourful roe and associated
flavours that just spurt into your mouth when you take a bite is
utterly delightful, almost like how a perfectly steamed onde-onde
releases its payload of gula Melaka like a sensory nuclear bomb when
you bite in. The firm microbubbles of caviar pop against your tongue
as you chew, the texture and flavours released are just lovely. I
have a strong feeling even those who don’t usually like fish roe
will love this as the flavours are well balanced. No strong fishy
taste to be found here.
This delightful morsel is a minced pork
dumpling with salted egg yolk wrapped in wantan skin. Delicious. The
salty richness of the egg goes so well with the pork mixture that has
hints of dried cuttlefish and the silky slurpy wantan skin wraps up
the whole package.
This Foochow fishball was also
delightful. The flavour of quality sesame oil and what I suspect is
prawn or fish paste made it taste almost like a siew mai stuffed
fishball. Bouncy with a succulent filling. The juice spurting out
from this when you bite in is very addictive.
This stall is just full of surprises.
Nothing is as it seems. The rich sambal looks like your average home
made dried prawn sambal, but she adds ground curry spices to it. This
may be an acquired taste as I personally felt normal sambal would
have gone better with some of the pieces I chose. I have a faint
suspicion if I were to boil a dollop of that sambal with coconut milk
I’d end up with a bowl of curry laksa. It has all the elements of a
curry laksa base, the lemongrass and galangal flavour, along with the
dried prawns and curry spices. My mum loved it so much she mixed a
whole packet of that sambal into her soup before dunking more bee
hoon in. As I also discovered after trying her soup, this was a
rather good way of enjoying the sambal, almost like getting two
different soup bases in one meal. It tasted like the curry mee you
get in some places up north, where the soup is clear, with either
none or very little coconut milk, but all the flavour of curry. The
umami laden soup helped give it that "full" mouthfeel, without
coconut milk as a thickener.
Speaking of the soup, notice how Ah Hui
was proudly showing me the generous amounts of pig skin he added to the
soup? I happen to know from my own soup making efforts that boiling
pig skin takes a lot of time and patience, having to skim off loads
of oil from the melting subcutaneous fat that is impossible to remove
completely before cooking. At this point in time, some readers might
have noticed food writers sometimes use the word “umami” rather a
lot in their scribbles, but what is it exactly, and what does it have
to do with pig skin?
Let’s start with the basics - Umami is
a term coined up by some Japanese dude called Kikunae Ikeda, a
Professor at Tokyo Imperial University to describe the taste when
L-glutamate receptors on your tongue are activated by foods that
well….contain L-glutamate and members of its happy family known as
5’ribonucleotides such as inosine monophosphate and guanosine
monophosphate.
In plain English, this means our good
friend MSG and foods such as seaweed, tomato, mushrooms, dried
oysters, and shrimp among other natural ingredients contain chemicals
similar to MSG that will have a similar effect on your taste as MSG.
But another thing that can give you
that umami mouthfeel, albeit without triggering these specific
tastebuds are skin, bones, and tendon. Boil them long enough and the
complex three dimensional protein strains within called collagen that
women love to see on the ingredient list of their cosmetics, unwind
into a less tight form known as gelatin. Yes gelatin, the same thing
you use to make gummy bears and mentos. Why does this make soup taste
more umami? It’s because it tricks your tongue into thinking you’re
eating fat, and back when we were cavemen who had to hunt for our
food, fat was good. Now you know. Also, just in case you were
wondering, boiling your girlfriend’s makeup will not result in
better soup. Rather it would probably result in her unwinding into an
entity known as ‘the ex-girlfriend’.
I honestly think some of these items
might have come from a dim sum menu. They are just so delectable you
could eat them on their own, or with a dab of Kampung Koh style
chili sauce - but when matched with that umami laden soup it just
takes things to a whole new level. I have never come across another
Yong Tau Foo stall which made me go “Wow” at every bite. Not just
because it was delicious, but because it’s so different and
unexpected. Every first bite was a process of discovery. I thank the
Yong Tau Foo gods for this blessing in disguise. To borrow some words
from Optimus Prime; there is certainly more than meets the eye at
this humble stall.
Restaurant name: No name makeshift stall in a shack
Address: Along Jalan Stulang Darat (near Hotel Zon)
Hours: 6:00pm to sold out
Non Halal
Date visited: 21 Nov 2012
About the Guest Blogger
Kumes is an ardent foodie born a
Johorian, but spent most of his teenage and young adult life as a
Londoner. He is currently located in Singapore, however, the
whereabouts of his mind are unknown and probably couldn’t be found
on any map.
