Ready when you are!!

 "Hey travel, I’m ready when you are." I came across this while reading and yes, I’m ready and have been for the last couple of months. What about you?

Everyday I see many planes flying in the sky from my balcony and the travel bug began to bite!! My tickets which had been cancelled by the airline because of the Covid-19 virus pandemic were re-activated and together with my daughter, we flew off to the Pearl of the Orient, or Penang as the locals know it. It’s also known as a food paradise!

We partook of the signature dishes in different establishments and I’d like to share some of the dishes we had.

From clockwise: row 1 - Spring rolls with vegetable filling (poh-piah); steamed rice rolls (chee cheong fun) in sweet sauce topped with fried onions; oyster omelette (oh-chien);

Row 2- Deep fried savory snacks (loh bak) with sweet and spicy dippings;
cendul (a local dessert with palm sugar and coconut milk);

Row 3 – local black coffee and noodles fried with cockles, prawns and duck egg (char kway teow); Ice kachang topped with ice-cream (local dessert with cream corn, cendul, kidney beans, black herbal jelly sweetened with palm sugar and some thick coconut milk).

The top favorites are the Char Kway Teow and Cendul. People actually come to Penang for these two dishes which originated from here. The queues to get these two dishes are usually long as people don’t mind waiting. They are very yummy and the cockles are big and fresh! It’s the cockles that make the dish so tasty!

Penang is also home to the Peranakans who descended from mixed marriages between the Mainland Chinese immigrants and local Malay women. The off-spring are known as Baba (male) and Nonya (female).

The Nonyas are excellent cooks and skilled in embroidery. In the olden times, these are mandatory skills for marriage. More on the nonyas in my next post! Stay tuned!