Teow Chew porridge is always one of the de facto comfort food to me, whenever I have a case of bad stomach or running under the weather, this would be my food of choice. Not overpowering, light yet can be flavorful, and best of all, pretty economical.

The teow chew porridge at Sun Fat Kee kopitiam is one of the more traditional establishments, with quite a variety of choices and steaming hot watery porridge every afternoon.

Teow Chew porridge, the ultimate comfort food

For a single person, I usually take a cincaru fish (leather jacket, like at Mum’s place) kembong, luncheon meat (spam), and a piece of tofu. At this stall, everything is done right, the kembong is fried/seared with plenty of chili padi and just enough amount of salt. The texture of the fish and it’s saltiness goes very well with the porridge.

Of course, luncheon is always one of my favorite dishes to go with porridge. They deep fried it with a thin layer of egg batter to add to the meat’s flavor as well. Then there’s the tofu to provide another type of texture from the other two dishes. Nice.

cincaru fish, spam, tofu, slurps

The meal costs less than RM5, healthy (to a certain extend) and guarantee to not upset the stomach. If you’re looking for comfort food, this is the one.

Sun Fat Kee kopitiam is located at Seapark

The same kopitiam has one of the better nasi lemak at night, and opposite it there’s the Soo Kee Ipoh kueh teow soup during the day time.

Address:
Jalan 21/11b,
46300 Petaling Jaya, Selangor
GPS: 3.109920, 101.622301

Tags:  comfort food,  kopitiam,  porridge,  seapark,  teow chew

Posted by KY | 23 Comments »

In an attempt to eat healthy for once, we decided to head to this Korean Porridge place, Bonjuk at Desa Sri Hartamas. I had thought that the parking situation would be pretty shitty on a weekend, it was. After a round of unfruitful hunt, I decided to just pay for it at the commercial car park just a block away for RM 3.00 that was totally worth it.

some seriously healthy food

Like most franchise, Bonjuk does not offer a very wide variety of dishes in their menu. There are, however, over a dozen types of porridge, and an equal amount of Bibimbobs (mixed meal), as well as some Korean pancakes to choose from. The pancakes aside, all the dishes were not fried nor BBQ, so far so healthy.

After scanning the offerings, I decided to go for the mid size seafood combination porridge. Since the porridge is cook to order, it did take a while before I get to start satisfying the stomach, luckily, the wait was worth it.

now you see it, now you don’t

The porridge was cooked with squid, shrimp, mussels, dried oyster, and octopus. It was actually very good, the taste of the seafood mixture blends into the porridge very well, if only some dried scallop were used as well, it would have been perfect. Then again, that ingredient would drive the price up by quite a bit.

Free flow kimchi and a plate of marinated beef came with the dish, a salty and slightly spicy chili paste accompanied the porridge too. The kimchi and beef were pretty good, I had like 4 plates of kimchi as it was just at the right level of rottenness for me. However, I gave a pass to the cold soup, that thing tasted like a mixture of vitagen and vegetable soup served cold, not exactly to my taste.

Bonjuk is just opposite Breakers and Soda

The porridge was an economical RM 14.95, and if I remember correctly, no government nor service charge added. I’ll definitely go there again, and I think you should give it a try too. The young and friendly Korean guy who run the place scored an A+ for customer PR skills as well.

Address:
No. 18, Ground Floor, Jalan 25/70A
Desa Sri Hartamas 50480 Kuala Lumpur
GPS: 3.162584, 101.650164
Tel: 03-2300 2302

Tags:  banchan,  beef,  hartamas,  kimchi,  KL,  Korean,  porridge,  seafood

Posted by KY | 12 Comments »

Got a request from the special one for chicken porridge. I have never cooked porridge before, but since I know the basics and happened to have bought some decent quality dried scallops from Vietnam, I did not hesitate to take on this project.

the finished product looks pretty good isn’t it?

After a short 15 minute trip to Giant and RM 7+ later, I got the necessary ingredients and started to get busy.

Ingredients:

• 2.5 cups of rice
• 2 pieces of chicken ribs, remove meat from the rib bones
• sliced ginger
• 2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• some dried mushroom, sliced
• spring onion, chopped
• some dried scallop, sliced or whole

Steps:

• boil about 8-10 cups of water, and add in ginger, chicken, and scallop to make chicken soup
• after 10-20 minutes, use everything from the chicken soup as the “water” to cook porridge
• you need around 3 times more water compared to cooking rice, for 2.5 cups of rice, have enough water in the pot for 7-8 cups of rice.
• add sliced mushroom in the pot and start cooking the porridge
• add salt to taste (2-3 tea spoon should suffice)
• fry the chopped garlic with vegetable oil till golden brown
• serve porridge with fried garlic and chopped spring onion

ingredients and the preparation method

The end product actually tasted pretty good. The dried scallop certainly contributed a dash of luxury to the taste of the chicken porridge. I actually had to add some soya sauce due to the conservative manner in salt usage, but it’s always better than having the whole pot goes to waste if too much salt is used.

Try it, if you don’t have a rice cooker with the porridge setting, a normal pot would work too, just have to watch out and not leave the porridge too dry.

Tags:  chicken-soup,  chinese-food,  conge,  dining,  dried-scallop,  Eats,  food,  porridge

Posted by KY | 7 Comments »

I did not know the existence of this place until my house mate Huey Fang the SS2 dining specialist (been to almost all restaurants in SS2 since she will usually get lost at other places) pointed it out to me last night. We then decided to have a light dinner there instead of visiting our frequent mamak square since the sky doesn’t look to be staying dry for long.

The name of the place is 中国华佗馆, pronounced “zhong kwok wah thor kwoon” in Cantonese. I didn’t spot any English or Malay names other than the HERBAL TEA printed under one of the traditional herbal tea containers (see picture below).

smallish place with nice ambiance, excellent porridge

The restaurant, only occupying half a shop lot, is pretty small but not overly crammed. The menu is pretty simple, offering several types of Herbal tea, “thong sui” (ç³–æ°´), “guai leng gou” (龟零膏), and a few light dishes that can pass for a meal.

I ordered a five flower herbal (五华茶) tea and fish ball with glass noodle, while the other noobs went for porridge (神仙粥), chee cheong fun, and snow fungus with longan thong sui.

“thong sui”, fish ball soup, “chee cheong fun”, and a satisfied customer

The porridge was probably the best dishes. while the chee cheong fun and fish ball soup were pretty good as well. At less than RM 4.00 per dish, there’s pretty good value for money too. My traditional herbal tea and the thong sui were RM 2.00 per bowl (yes, old school bowl, not glass) were excellent too. I have also heard good things about the fried rice, but don’t bother to order the carrot cakes or curry chicken rice.

situated just the row behind McDonald’s at PJ SS2

This is a pretty nice little hide-out at the frenzy that is SS2. I’ll definitely go there again.

Address:
Jalan SS 2/55,
Petaling Jaya, Selangor
GPS: 3.116959, 101.621400

Tags:  ah chan,  chinese-food,  fish-ball,  herbal,  huey fang,  PJ,  porridge,  SS2 SS3 SS4,  tea

Posted by KY | 4 Comments »

We’ve been hearing about this porridge based steamboat (粥底火锅) for a while now. We decided to give it a try after having always had the more traditional type of steamboat or shabu shabu, usually either with clear or tomyam soup, just to see what the craze is about. The place we ransacked was Restaurant Farmland Steamboat at Jalan Pudu.

a pretty busy place

It was a weekend and the restaurant was very busy. After securing our table, we ordered the 3 “set dinner”, some sliced beef, spam, and an extra order of vege. The set came with a prawn, an egg, various types of fishball look-alike and taste-alike stuff, and some veges.

The porridge that made the base can hardly be categorised as porridge. The viscosity is very very low for obvious reason, you wouldn’t want it to stick on the pot. Besides, it wouldn’t be a very good medium to cook anything if the porridge was too thick.

sliced beef, yummm

The major difference in porridge based steamboat and the other types was the distinct lack of taste in the plain porridge base. This, however, is excellent if you have very good raw ingredients, like pomphret fish, crabs, or fresh prawns; the plain base would not obscure the natural taste and sweetness of the ingredients like how a tomyam soup would. However, since we were ordered cheapskate food, the porridge steamboat wasn’t something to shout about, though it wasn’t bad at all.

add some sesame oil and soya sauce, best.

The meal costs us about RM 15-20 a per person. Give it a try if you want to have something different. I suggest you stay away from the “set dinner” if you are not really into eating half a dozen types of fishball taste-alike items.

loving the map?

The restaurant is situated by the busy Jalan Pudu. If you drive on Jalan Pudu towards Cheras area from the Jalan Imbi junction, the restaurant is just before the first gas station on your left. Beware that the parking situation isn’t very great..

Address:
362 – 366, Jalan Pudu
55100 Kuala Lumpur
GPS: 3.138293, 101.710079
Tel: 03-2141 9297

Tags:  conge,  hotpot,  porridge,  Steamboat

Posted by KY | 17 Comments »