SMC - Spicy and Marketey

WASN'T THE WEATHER terrible last night! Still, a group of our friends got together to celebrate a rather special occasion, so where does one head for such an occasion but the Rasa Sayang's Spice Market Cafe of course - otherwise known as SMC. I like the place for many reasons: one doesn't have to traipse all the way into town; it IS somewhere you can take people if you want to go somewhere special ie a bit more upmarket but still be comfortable, and, equally importantly, serves good quality food. It's not cheap, but then you couldn't get the spread without paying for it.

As it was Saturday evening it was their Seafood Buffet - the place was packed. I will say this for the SMC - it really does have some excellent stuff: the Japanese counter is full of fresh sashimic, octopus and other raw delights; the seafood is amazing: slipper lobsters, huge prawns, oysters, crabs, fish etc. The list goes on. I think the only thing you couldn't find there was caviar!

Unfortunately one can only eat so much, so I chose to go for the things I wouldn't normally partake of - all the above of course, plus a rather delectable roast beef. However just HAD to try the Hokkien Mee - not bad, considering it's pork free! I also liked the Sharksfin Soup - it was chokka with crab meat.

Their desserts of course are just out of this world, although I would have liked a little bit more cakey stuff instead of all mousses and creams. It was funny to see the chocolate fountains (yes, they have two - one white and one brown!) spewing the melted chocolate everywhere every time the door opened to the outside, because the wind was so strong it kept blowing the chocolate all over the place!

The SMC has come a long way since it started all those years ago when the Rasa reopened. Then, I'm sorry to say, it left a lot to be desired. Service was substandard and the food was not brilliant. I know, cos I have done many reviews there for both Star and The Expat magazine, and I was forever complaining bitterly to the powers that be about it. However, I was truly delighted to see that not only have they got their act together, but the overall quality of the food served is way above standard. The crowds were a testament to their success.

Having said that, I really was stuffed, so it's not a place I can go to regularly. Not sure what my cholesterol level is today either ... !

OCEAN FOOD

My good old (rich) cuz was in Penang once again and kindly invited her country cousin to dinner, so off we trot to Ocean Green in Jalan Sultan Ahmad Shah, one of her favourites, for some seafood. This must be one of the most well-known places in town – despite the fact that it was a Thursday night it was quite packed. Many people go there because it’s become a Penang institution.

After she ordered I piped up with a, “Oh yes I interviewed Dato’ Kee (Phaik Cheen) recently, and she told me that the Fish Assam Pedas with Bee Hoon from here is one of her favourites.” At that my cousin promptly changed her order of steamed fish to that.

First to come were some plain steamed large prawns. They were very fresh, and went well with their home-made chilli sauce. I would have liked it even more if they had marinated it with a bit of salt (or soya sauce) and a pinch of sugar because it would have given the meat a bit more taste. As it was, even with the chilli sauce it was just slightly insipid.

Next came a soft and tasty taufu kerabu, and then the piece de resistance – Fish Assam Pedas with Bee Hoon. One served oneself with a bit of blanched bee hoon and bean sprouts, then poured the curry sauce over. Honest verdict? It wasn’t brilliant. A good Assam Pedas has got kick: sour, spicy, sweet and salty. It was bland, and there really wasn’t enough sauce to go with the amount of bee hoon they served. "So much for Dato Kee's recommendation," she mumbled. Still, at least the fish was fresh.

The baked crabs were also disappointing: mushy and tasteless, unless you doused it with the choon peah sauce (Worcester Sauce and chopped chilli), at which it tasted, surprise surprise, just like Worcester Sauce and chopped chilli!

Having said that, I like the old-fashioned feel to the place - esp the hotel opposite which seems to have been there since time immemorial. The seaside atmosphere brings back memories of childhood when things weren’t all air-conditioned, and you could sit down to a slap-up meal and tuck in with just the sea breeze to cool you down.

POUND FOR POUND

Isn’t it amazing – apparently in the UK, the beleaguered NHS (National Health Service) are about to run a pilot whereby if you are grossly overweight, they will PAY you to slim down. Yes, for every pound that you lose over a 3-month period, you will get one £ sterling in the form of supermarket vouchers, which can only used in exchange for “healthy” food. It will be based on their BMI (Body Mass Index, which if over 30 means you are obese. Volunteers set their own target.

Never mind that it’s for their own good, and if they are obese they stand to shorten their life; they are actually being rewarded for losing weight. I say, what about the others who have always looked after themselves and don’t cost the British public money?

(It’s a bit like when they reward non-payers of fines and car parking violations here by giving them a “discount” if they finally, after years and years of mounting amounts, pay up. Again, the ones who pay on time get no real reward.)

If the pilot is successful, the rest of the UK will follow suit. Of course the NHS are doing this because it already costs them a heck of a lot (millions of pounds) to treat obesity and its related problems: weak hearts, high cholesterol, cancers, bad knees, diabetes etc etc etc.

But will it really work? Experts in the UK have already warned that this might mean people will put on weight then lose it rapidly just to get money, which will mean even more problems. Yo-yo dieting can weaken hearts. And once they get the vouchers, will they maintain the weight?

Still, who can blame the NHS? This must be a last-ditch attempt to get people healthy. Despite people like celebrity chef Jamie Oliver trying to “ejukait” the masses from young, nearly ¼ of the population is overweight. On the one hand you get size zero models who starve themselves to death, and on the other stars like Dawn French (The Vicar of Dibley) who is Size 20 and proud of it (“I’m not bothered,” she said), and are held as bad role models. New statistics apparently show that if the current trend carries on, the majority of the British population will be obese before the turn of the century. That’s scary! Still, the way I'M carrying on, all this eating ... it may be I will need an incentive like that to lose weight!!

MOANA LISA

NO I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT the famous Leonardo da Vinci painting. I'm just having a moan and a rant. In fact, the title should be MOANA HELEN but nobody would understand the joke then would they!!

Today I'm moaning about Penang road markings. It's incredible how badly done and, dare I say it, STUPID they are. In fact, it's got to the stage where every time I see a road being tarmacked, I think to myself, "I wonder how they're going to cock it up!" and inevitably, they do. WHAT IS THE POINT, I ask you, if they're going to spend a fortune repairing, widening and tarring a road surface beautifully, only to bugger up the markings?

I've seen it happen umpteen times - they put down the white markings only to realise they've got it wrong. Then they paint those out with black paint, and repaint more white lines - which are still wrong. A few years down the line when the weather has deteriorated the black paint and the white lines beneath show through, you are left with so many lines you don't know which one is which.

WHEN OH WHEN are the authorities going to learn that, although obviously courtesy and good driving are prerequisites of road safety, equally so are PROPER and SENSIBLE road markings. Some of our markings are so bad that they are positively dangerous.

WHOEVER has heard of a 2-3 lane MAIN ROAD (and I'm talking in particular about the town to Batu Ferringhi Road here because that's the one I travel most often, although there are many more around which are equally stupid) which has one of the heaviest traffic loads around, changing into a secondary road whenever there is a right or left turn? There you are, driving along quite serenely - or as serenely as you can with Penang drivers - and suddenly your road becomes a right turning lane, and you have to desperately try to swerve to the middle lane, which becomes the ONLY lane going FORWARD because the LEFT lane is blocked by cars parked along the side. Sometimes I wonder if they hired monkeys to paint the road marks on, because I cannot conceive of any sane person making such a hash of it.

Another example is at Shamrock Beach, where the road (again we are talking about a PRIMARY road here) going into town suddenly becomes a right turn into the new housing development, forcing drivers who are going on to pull to the left, then rejoin the main road again AFTER the turn. EXCUSE ME but I do believe the main road users have right of way and NOT the ones turning right.

It's a miracle that we have had no major accidents so far - as it is we have our fair share already - but that may be pure luck, and it's only a matter of time. PLEASE whoever is in charge - do review and correct all wherever necessary before something does happen.

IT TAKES A DUTCHMAN ...

... TO COME UP WITH a book about something that the rest of us take for granted because we speak it naturally anyway ... well, after a fashion - an English-Hokkien dictionary!

Yes, Luc de Gijzel from The Hague in Holland, 5-year expat in Penang, proudly showed me his very first effort after years of research. And he did do quite a lot, unearthing along the way some interesting predecessors from China and Singapore.

"When we first arrived (to take up his new posting in Prai) my wife took Hokkien lessons at the YMCA. I joined her," the good-looking Dutchman explained. He needed a dictionary, but trawling through the bookshops here and even in Singapore didn't really help.

"When I asked at a local book shop, I was told that "Hokkien is just a dialect". I thought to myself, "How can you dismiss your own mother tongue like that?" According to Luc, Hokkien is NOT just a dialect but a proper language in its own right. Actually I need to find out more about this myself so I reserve judgement on this.

He then started compiling his own list, which just grew and grew, and then he came across an old dictionary from Singapore, printed in the 1940s. Together with help from his teacher Lee Siew Har, they embarked on this intriguing and, personally, quite daunting, project, and the result, after 1 1/2 years of work, is the "Eng Kok ua Pinang-su Hokkien ua chhiu ji tien" ... or at least that's what it says on the front cover!

Printed by Areca Press, the compact book is available in bookshops for RM22.

Although it's got no intonation per se, the intro does attempt to differentiate between the different pronunciations, but that's not easy: e.g. I can think of is "car" and "eat" - both start with 'ch' but in the latter he's put "chhia" and the former "chiah". Hmmm ... if I weren't a native speaker it would be even more confusing.

However, overall I think he's done a swell job, considering he himself isn't a fluent speaker (difficult for locals to get the 7 intonations right, let alone foreigners - remember that funny "kong kong kong kong kong kong kong kong" - grandpa said the tin can hit me?). He tells me he never knowingly says "cannot" - ie "bay sai" cos it could come out like he's "selling sh_t". Or horse sh_t! It will be a useful present for locals and expats alike.

Sadly, Luc is leaving us to return home, but Penangites should be proud (and slightly ashamed) that he's left us a USEFUL legacy to remember him by.

A BIT OF FRESH AIR in AIR ITAM

WELL, NOT REALLY FRESH AIR as such ... especially with the exhaust fumes. More like a trip back to childhood when life was much simpler and there were no such things as supermarkets and designer coffees. And where better to experience what it was like than at our very own Air Itam, which doesn't seem to have changed in the past fifty years. Just everyone seems to have grown a bit older, is all (as they say in America).

So yesterday morning, for a change, I got up early and drove to Air Itam Market just for the hell of it. It was, as it appears to be every morning, packed, especially the bit where the stalls line both sides of the road leading to Balik Pulau.

I love the hustle and bustle of street life everywhere, but in Malaysia particularly. It's just so "us" isn't it, so colourful and eclectic. The live animals for sale; the fresh fruit and vegetables, the knick-knacks that we should do without but cannot resist buying; the haggling and clamouring for the best bargain. Things have changed a little bit: instead of shouting out his stuff the more canny vendor uses a battery-powered microphone during his demonstration, and that really does draw in curious onlookers. Real kay po chee, we are.

There are a few stalwarts of the market who have been there for decades: for example the two sisters who declined to give their name who sell their Curry Mee from one of the side streets. They have no stall per se, just a few baskets set down on the floor around them.

To be honest the novelty value is there, but I didn't think much of it. I had real issues about the hygiene, especially as there was really nothing to separate their food from the dirt on the ground except a thin basket. They used their hands for practically EVERYTHING, but had no boiling water to blanch the noodles in initially; it was just heated through the soup (albeit twice). On top of that the chopsticks really weren't clean. Usually I can persuade myself to shut one eye to one or two dirty things, but the whole experience wasn't brilliant. It was lukewarm, curdled and tasted pretty bland. You had to serve yourself too. I paid up, had one mouthful and left. They've been there over 30 years apparently. Not sure why.

In my eternal search for the perfect Hokkien Mee I tried out a couple of kopitiams, thinking that such old places MUST surely still have good ones, from generations of hokkien mee makers ... to my disappointment neither was any good really. It's back to Ah Choo's (Sin Seng Lee Kopitiam opposite Tg Bungah Bus Depot) for me.

MASTER CHEF RETURNS

EVEN THO I'm a food writer, I'm not one of those like Anthony Bourdain who will, it seems, eat ANYTHING, whether it used to move or not. Nope, I have to admit to being pretty conservative, although probably better than many as I have been exposed to quite a few different cuisines, and got to enjoy.

Japanese is one that I one such: I learnt to eat sashimi late in life, but having done so, with a vengeance: I love the kick that wasabi gives you - and I freely admit to being one of those who, unlike the Japanese who just dip one little corner of the raw flesh in; I actually dunk the whole thing in and coat it in that delicious green gunpowder! - with raw salmon. Having said that there are certains things that I probably won't dare pop into my mouth.

Last night I was invited to the Equatorial's KAMPACHI Restaurant, where guest Chef Master Koei Ebisawa from the Shizuoka Prefecture (location of the world famous Mount Fuji) showcased his new culinary creations. Master Ebisawa demonstrated how he fillets the specially-imported eel - it took literally less than 30 seconds, so fast that one could barely see it. In Japan he would have been doing it to live creatures. Apparently they have filleting competitions amongst chefs in Japan. One hesitates to think what the loser might do with his sharp knife ...

The food from this part of Japan very much reflects the local produce: green tea, wasabi, shrimp etc. I took No2 son along, and although he was a bit reluctant (raw fish?) after that he told me the Beef Teppanyaki was gorgeous.

I had one of the sets comprising a starter of mixed sashimi, unagi (eel) with rice, the poor eel that he had filleted coated in a batter and lightly fried, and a gelatine dessert which had been coated with green tea powder. There was also a very tasty, crispy pink (cherry-coloured) shrimp (only available from a certain part of Japan at a certain time of the year - apparently the whole ocean turns pink then) tempura.

UNFORTUNATELY Master Ebisawa is only visiting for two nights, so if you are reading this on Saturday the special two nights will be over (but he will be back; this is not his first time in Penang). However the good news is it's still on tonight. And pretty popular too if the number of guests last night was anything to go by - by the time we left people were still coming in.