Tag / curry-mee
February 5, 2013
Hunting for food is one of the things I do very often, be it breakfast, lunch, dinner, supper. And if you haven’t notice already, I tend to share them across various platforms whenever I find a dish worthy of your taste buds.
Armed with a Samsung GALAXY Camera as my weapon of choice these days, I want to show you aspect of food photography which coincide with my favorite category in Samsung’s This is My Moment, Live campaign – the top down view of some of Malaysia’s Best foods.
I always love this angle of view when it comes to food photography, it represents the diner’s point of view when food is presented on the table. You get to see everything, the glistering fats, the contrasting colors, and sometimes even a hint of steam rising from the hot dish.
Here are five food photography tips using photos taken with Samsung GALAXY Camera, resized for this space.
1. Go Close
Sometimes you want to get close while still incorporating everything. The sambal, cockles, cuttle fish, prawns, tofu, noodle, and those coagulated pork blood all within the frame. It spells a delicious bowl of Penang curry mee (SS2 Restauran Okay)
2. Divide and Conquer
It’s often effective to snap photos of the dish after it’s separated to serving size. This makes the photo less busy and further enhances the main ingredient(s), in this example, the massive river prawns. (Pan Heong, Batu Caves)
3. The Little Things
Don’t forget the little things in your photo. The example above includes the chop sticks and sambal condiment, and sometimes you can crop away the dishes a little bit to avoid the photo looking dull. However, you should also try not to have anything irrelevant creeping into the photos, such as the glove at the top left corner of this photo.
4. Contrast
Contrasting colors make for visually striking photos. Red bowl, black table top, yellow noodle, and green chili featured in this wantan mee dish. (Jalan Brunei off Jalan Pudu, next to Caltex) The only missing major color is blue, which isn’t a color associated with food anyway.
5. Everything In It!
Lastly, the simplest way is to include everything on the table in one shot. This is especially useful when you want to convey the size of the dish, like this big breakfast set with two extra side dishes and a piece of pie at Antipodean (Bangsar). Try to arrange your dishes so it fits into the frame properly, and do make sure that there aren’t too many distractions (tip #3).
So if you’re like me who takes a lot of food photos to share, consider submitting them to This is My Moment, Live. Two person who’s 5 pictures submissions have been selected by Samsung will get a RM 100 cash prize!
Good luck and happy clicking!
February 4, 2013
Last week we found ourselves at Cheras looking for a place to fill the stomach in the morning. Searched the web a bit and decided to head to Taman Midah for something which I can’t even remember. Didn’t manage to find the place, and ended up at this road side shack by the name of 陈记缅档 (Chan Kei Noodle Stall).
Chan Kei noodle stall at Taman Midah
I basically followed the conventional wisdom that if a place is packed, it can’t be bad. So we parked the bike and waited for a minute to get a vacant table.
Business at this noodle stall was brisk, and they seemed to offer quite a variety of noodle dishes. Haze ordered asam laksa (only available on Sundays), and I asked for a bowl of curry mee.
asam laksa and KL style curry mee
The KL style curry mee came with plenty of fat, juicy cockles, slabs of fried pork skin, tofu, bean sprouts, and rather fragrant sambal. While I still prefer Penang style curry mee, this one did not disappoint. It was as good as any central style curry mee I tried.
Asam laksa from here got the seal of approval from Haze as well, having all the necessary ingredients working well together.
This place is another old school stalls that kept dishing out good food over the years, I think we gotta go back there to try other dishes next time.
Address:
陈记缅档
Jalan Midah Besar,
Taman Midah, Cheras,
Kuala Lumpur
GPS: 3.10188, 101.732857
October 8, 2012
This is another one of my go-to curry mee places whenever I’m back to Penang visiting mom. If you love unadulterated Penang curry mee, you would enjoy this one.
kedai kopi new cathay has a pretty good curry mee stall
The kopitiam is located by the intersection of Jalan Burma and Lorong Kucing, offering many of your usual suspects when it comes to hawker foods from Penang – laksa, curry mee, char kuih teow, chicken rice and so forth. Parking isn’t usually a huge hassle thanks to the commercial centers right next door, but the shop can be quite a bit busy during breakfast/brunch hours.
yum yum, coagulated blood, loved by my niece too 
For only RM 3.50 per bowl, the curry mee comes with cockles, one prawn, tofu pok, coagulated blood (my favorite, of course), a fish ball, and cuttle fish. You get to choose your favorite mee/meehun combination, and have as much of those fragrant and spicy sambal as you want.
I enjoy their almost mee-goreng style cuttle fish as well, brings a slightly different taste to the normal cuttle fish preparation. The prawn’s a bit smallish but hey, it’s RM 3.50.
Overall taste is superb and I’d have it any day. The only thing missing is a couple mint leaves, but I guess you can’t have it all every time.
good old fashion apom, get them fresh and warm here
And since hawker dishes in Penang are usually only 70% of what you get in KL in terms of portions, it make perfect sense to add some apom to the meal while you’re at it. The stall claims to be offering the best apom manis in town and will happily trade 6 steamy hot apom for RM 3.00. These too are yummy especially when consumed piping hot, slightly crispy on the outer layer, and sweet, creamy inside. Try it!
Oh, the steamed otak otak here is not too shabby either. If you’re in Penang, this kopitiam sure is a pretty decent place to visit for breakfast or lunch.
Address:
Kedai Kopi New Cathay
Lorong Kucing off Jalan Burma
10350, Pulau Tikus, Penang
GPS: 5.432376, 100.309504
August 1, 2012
Char kuih kak (fried radish cake) might not be in many people’s radar when it comes to Penang hawker food. It is somewhat a less glamorous dish compared to the likes of char kuih teow, laksa, curry mee, and hokkien mee (prawn mee).
The reason is probably due to the relative rarity of this dish, there aren’t many places that offers them in Penang, and generally only available at pasar malam in Klang Valley as a bit of a novelty dish. It’s a shame really, cos I absolutely love char kuih kak, and none of them at pasar malam around Klang Valley manage to impress me thus far.
batu lanchang food court, just right next to the wet market
So last weekend while traveling back to attend Tim & Audrey‘s wedding, Haze and I stopped by Batu Lanchang wet market’s food court for some char kuih kak love.
I have a bit of history with this char kuih kak stall, it used to operate at the (now defunct) Fettes Park market in the morning nearby where I grew up, and at current location in the afternoon. I had it pretty much on a weekly basis as a kid. It’s good to see that the same stall is still doing well after all these years.
char kuih kak is what I came for
By default, char kuih kak is a pretty bare dish with radish cake, bean sprout, egg, and preserved vegetable. However, over here you have the option of adding seafood and spice it up a bit, which we did.
The result is a plate of char kuih kak worth RM 4 but laden with a couple good size prawns, cockles, squid, and crab stick. It was the same old taste that I remember, savory, strong, and absolutely delicious. A bit like char kuih teow but with more texture, try it!
You can opt for either chicken or duck egg, ours was RM 4 per plate with chicken egg (ran out of duck egg that day).
curry mee and laksa were our second dishes
Of course, one does not simply consume only one dish per meal in Penang. I ordered a follow up dish in the form of curry mee from the stall located behind the #42 kuih kak. This was only RM 2.80 and came with prawns (small size lah), coagulated blood, cockles, tofupok, cuttle fish, and even mint leaves. It was fairly decent and absolutely worth what I paid for, would not hesitate to have it again.
it was hot and we were sweating, but it was worth it (blue case – invisalign)
Haze ordered a bowl of asam laksa (RM 3) instead, and yep, it’s laden with fish meat, vegetable, and managed to satisfy her Penang laksa craving, even just for a while.
We had a couple glasses of fresh sugar cane juice to go with these as well at RM 1.20 a pop.
That brought our total for this late lunch to RM 16.20, which is almost RM 12 cheaper than our breakfast at this Hometown Hainan Coffee in Taman Megah where we had 4 half boil eggs, 2 sets of toast bread with kaya + butter, 1 carrot juice, and a large coffee. I vow never to go back that chain again.
Address:
Stall 42
Batu Lanchang market
Lorong Batu Lanchang
Jelutong, 11600 Penang
GPS: 5.38945, 100.30633
July 6, 2012
A month or two back I was a man possessed looking for curry mee, and a friend on twitter mentioned New Grand View kopitiam at Taman Megah. Despite only about 5 minutes from this place, I’ve never even really noticed the existence of this neighborhood eatery, so naturally we went to check it out after one of my weekend wet market shopping spree of pork, chicken, and vegetable.
New Grand View kopitiam at Taman Megah
As this is a quieter side of Taman Megah with only one kopitiam at the whole shop lot island, parking is a relatively breezy affair if you don’t mind walking more than 10 meters.
The kopitiam itself though, is fairly busy, and you might have to wait a few minutes or share table with others during peak hours.
dry and normal soup version of curry mee, KL style
As it turned out, the curry mee was decent, but not quite what I normally would crave for (no pork blood or prawns). It is of the KL variety with cockles, chicken, tofupok, and long beans. If you love this style, you will probably enjoy it more than I do.
The unexpected food find here turned out to be the wantan mee stall that offers quiet a different varieties of wantan mee derivatives.
the “char yok” option with dry wantan noodle
I’ve had the normal version with wantan and chasiu, chicken feet and mushroom, and char yok (fried pork with namyu) with fungus so far. Though the chasiu is decent and wantan is pretty good, I love the other two versions quite a lot more. The phoenix’s claws were fat, juicy, and full of flavor, char yok with fungus absolutely tantalizing and definitely “original”. Reminds me of the nasi lemak with char yok at Segambut (non halal).
If you haven’t stopped by this kopitiam, perhaps it is time to do so.
map to New Grand View, Taman Megah
Address:
New Grand View restaurant
Jalan SS 23/11
Taman Megah,
47400 Petaling Jaya, Selangor
GPS: 3.118003, 101.612908
