Chicken Stewed in Clam Juice

This is a recipe I adapted from the classic Portuguese dish "Pork and Clam Stew". It is relatively straightforward to make, albeit a bit labour-intensive.  When you taste the dish at the end, it would be worth all  the effort you have put in.

I like to leave the skin on the chicken as it will impart a gelatinous consistency to the sauce at the end of cooking.

You can also substitute an equivalent amount of pork for the chicken.  It is just as delicious.

Ingredients:
2 kg of clams
5 chicken thighs, cut into 3 pieces
5 chicken drumsticks, cut into 2 pieces
10 sprigs of spring onions, with the green part chopped finely and the stalk end cut into 5cm lengths
About a 3-finger-sized piece of ginger, finely julienned
5 large cloves of garlic, finely chopped
2 tablespoons of soy sauce
1 tablespoon of sesame oil

1/2 teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper
5 tablespoons of coarse salt

Preparation:
Marinade the chicken in the soy sauce and sesame oil for at least 2 hours.

Wash the clams. Clean each one individually with coarse salt to remove any soil or mud on the shells. Wash them until the water runs clear then soak them in salty water.  The water should be as salty as the sea.  This would get the clams to clear their bowels.  After about 30 minutes remove the clams.  You will notice some sandy residue at the bottom of the bowl. Rinse the clams under running water.

Cooking:
Put the clams into a large pan and cook over a high heat with half of the julienned ginger and half of the garlic. Cover the pan to start with and only remove the cover when you see steam escaping.

 

Remove any clams as soon as they have opened and leave aside to cool. Discard any clam which have not opened after 5 minutes' cooking.  Save the "juice" left behind, filtering out any sandy residue.

When the clams have cooled enough to touch remove the meat from the shells and discard the shells.  You will get a small bowlful of clam meat.

Now we can get on with the chicken!

Fry the rest of ginger until it has almost withered then add the spring onion stalks and the rest of the garlic and fry until the garlic begins to brown.

Add the marinated chicken pieces and brown all sides of the pieces.

Add the clam juice and bring to the boil, scraping the pan to dissolve any stuck particles.  This is called deglazing and will add flavour to the dish.

Simmer for about 2 hours on a very low heat.

At the end of cooking skim off any fat that has floated to the top and add the chopped spring onions and the clam meat to the dish.

Serve with steamed rice or some dense bread, like baguette or ciabatta.

Bon appétit!!

Prawn Village Seafood Restaurant

A few friends and I decided to go to Prawn Village Seafood Restaurant at Bukit Tambun for a meal, as we have heard good things about it. We arrive at 12:15pm. There were only two other tables which were occupied.

Stir-Fried Noodles was the first dish to arrive. Every seafood restaurant in Bukit Tambun has its own version of stir-fried noodles.  The one at Prawn Village is stir-fried with bean sprouts, garlic chives, fresh and dried prawns, fish cake, egg and a sprinkling of fried shallots. The end result also had darker hue than other restaurants in the area.

The noodles retained a slight bite to them, as good fried noodles should. They are also not overly oily, which would be a sign of bad wok-work.  I thought the taste was quite good but one of my lunch companions complained that it was a bit on the salty side.

Spiky Molluscs were served next.  The only way to get at the flesh is with toothpicks, but I think some sort of bent implement, like a dental pick, might be just the thing to get at some of the molluscs playing hard to get (the cooking time is key; over-cooking shinks the flesh which recede too far into the shell). Once you get the flesh out, dip it in the garlicky chilli sauce provided and enjoy the crunchy texture while the taste of the sea, accompanied by the smell of garlic and chille, wafts onto your olfactory nerves.

Stir-Fried Cabbage Sprouts with salted fish were just quickly tossed in the wok to retain the crunch and the fresh taste of the vegetable.

Stir-Fried Rice Vermicelli had almost the same ingredient as the fried noodle, except that the garlic chives had been replaced with choy sum, or Chinese mustard leaves.  The dish was served slightly moist, which suggests an impatient cook.

Razor Clams in Spicy Sauce was stir-fried in a sauce which consists of garlic, shallots, lemongrass, chilli, dried prawns and lots of curry leaves, resulting in a fragrant dish which one can smell long before it reaches the table.  As soon as the dish arrives, you should stir the garnishing coriander into the dish to give it another fragrant component.  The taste is wonderfully flavourful without overpowering the taste of the razor clams.  Watch out for surprises if you are not partial to hot chilli.  The green bits you see in the centre of the frame are actually chopped birds' eye chillies, so beware!

The next dish which arrived was called Three Flavours, comprising three kinds of deep-fried dishes: Reformed Tofu, Deep Fried Chinese Crullers with Fish Paste Filling and Deep-Fried Breaded Crab Sticks.  These are served with three kinds of sauces: mayonnaise, tomato ketchup and a sticky sweet chilli sauce.

Now Reformed Tofu is not beancurd which has decided to turn over a new leaf.  This is actually called Signboard Tofu (招牌豆腐) in Chinese, which would usually denote a chef's signature dish.  However this term has been hijacked to describe minced tofu which has been mixed with primarily fish paste, but with an assortment of other ingredients like shitake mushroons, water chestnuts, dried prawns and carrots, all finely chopped.  The mixture is then steamed to set the fish paste, which is then cut into cubes, lightly dusted with flour, and deep-fried.

The execution at Prawn Village was not bad, but there is no crunch at all to the deep-fried coating, so it might not have been freshly made.

Chinese crullers are Chinese fried bread, better known as you tiao (Mandarin) or yew char koay (Hokkien).   The fish paste stuffing was bland and the crullers did not even have a hint of crunch in them. For me the crunchiness of the crullers is a prerequisite for this dish.

The breaded crab sticks is something you would imagine what an amateur chef might throw together before a dinner party to use up a newly discovered pack of crab sticks at the back of the freezer nearing their expiry date. Enough said.

As a side order we ordered Karabu Mango Salad, which did not taste like it should.  There is no tanginess, which is the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of a karabu dish. Fail!

Prawn Village is one of the very few seafood restaurants in the Bukit Tambun area which are open for business at lunchtime, but that is not a reason for the cooks to get sloppy.  If I find better razor clams in spicy sauce elsewhere, so long, Prawn Village...

The meal came to RM60 for four people, which is quite reasonable.

Address:

672, bagan Bukit Tambun, 14100 Simpang Ampat, S.P.S.
Tel: 04-5880541, 04-5872206
Fax: 04-5887887


GPS Coordinates: 5.27079, 100.44336


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Strada

Strada is a western restaurant on Burmah Road in Pulau Tikus.

We arrived on a quiet night, and we were the only patrons there. The restaurant has a nice relaxed atmosphere with subdued lighting and a modern chic decor.

We ordered the Watercress Soup to start.

It was thick and creamy and you could really taste the freshness of the ingredients that went into it.

The mains courses arrived next.

The Slow Roasted Pork Ribs With Herbs was done to perfection. This was served with roasted potato wedges and some salad. The meat was so tender that it was practically falling off the bones. With each mouthful you could taste the infused flavour of the marinade.

The Homemade Beef Sausages were also served with roasted potato wedges and some salad. The gravy is rich and flavourful that I could have used some bread to mop it all up afterwards. The skin of the sausages had a slight crisp to it and the filling had just the right texture.

I will definitely come back to sample the other dishes. Highly recommended!

Click here for a discount voucher you can print out.

Address: 238 Burma Road 10350 Georgetown Penang Malaysia
Tel    : 604 229 0882
Email  : strada@strada.com.my
Website: www.strada.com.my

GPS Coordinates: 5.430071, 100.313152


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Harvest In Cafe

This little restaurant at the corner of Irrawadi Road and Chow Thye Road is really popular at lunch time; it was already half-filled when I arrived at 11:45.

I ordered some garlic bread to start while I waited for my friends to arrive.  To my disappointment the slices of baguette they served were cold and stale, and not "golden brown and crunchy" as described in the menu.

I saw Papper Salt Squids on the menu and ask a waitress if they were freshly made.  Unfortunately I was told they were not.  Seems to me they would have a hard time keeping them "crispy and crunchy" so I decided to give them a miss.

The lack of any soft furnishing on the walls make the place reverberate like a school canteen when the place filled up at around 12:30. I measured an average of 93 decibels from the centre of the restaurant.

The first dish to arrive was the Black Pepper Lamb Chop (RM12.90).

The portion was quite large for the price.  You get two large lamb chops, along with some mashed potato, some lettuce and some tomato. The lamb was well-marinated and the sauce was flavourful without the black pepper being over-powering.



Next up was the Honey Oat Chicken (RM10.90).

The deep-fried oat coating has a nice crunch to it, but I found that the honey drizzled over it had made it a little too sweet for my taste.


The Barbeque Chicken (RM7.90) came next.

This is a well-grilled piece of chicken with a generous amount of barbeque sauce poured over it.  The flavour of the sauce compliments the flavour of the chicken very well indeed.

The popularity of this place during lunchtime means that if you arrive around 12:30pm you may have to wait for a table.  Service is surprisingly quick, as our meals were served within 15 minutes, even with a full house.  Coupled with the modest prices, this place definitely deserves its popularity.  Worth going back.

10 Irrawaddy Road
10050 Penang

04-2261718

GPS Coordinates: 5.425676, 100.321520

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The Cape @ Gurney Plaza

This restaurant is located on the 7th floor of Gurney Plaza.  It is in the old building, across the atrium from the Golden Screen Cinema multiplex. Their specialty is steamed rice in wooden tubs with a wide selection of toppings.

The first to arrive was the Steamed Rice in Wooden Barrel with Mixed Roasted Meats.  The toppings comprised roast pork, barbeque pork, roast chicken and roast duck, with a sprig of pak choy and a shitake mushroom, in a light soy-based sauce.  They also added some wolfberries (aka goji berries or boxthorn berries, or kee chee in Hokkien).  They are those red things you can see on top.  It turned out that they add wolfberries to almost every dish they serve, and a few of the drinks as well.  These guys must get a good deal buying the stuff in bulk, like, by the ton...

This dish was a little bland to my palate.  The roast chicken we were served was breast meat which was a little on the tough side.  The duck breast was only slightly better, but since it's not my favourite cut of meat on poultry, I may be a bit biased.

Next came the Steamed Rice in Wooden Barrel with Spare Ribs in Black Pepper Sauce.  These were deep-fried pieces of well-marinated spare ribs drenched in a generous amount of black pepper sauce.

This went down a treat!  The marinade has penetrated deep into the meat which gives it a spicy, smoky flavour.  This may be a little spicy for younger children, mind.  I'll definitely order this dish on my next visit!

I must admit the next dish looked much better in the photo on the menu, but it is understandable since the menu photo has all the ingredients piled on top, whereas in the real-life item the ingredients are cut into smaller pieces and well-distributed within the noodles.

The noodles had just the right texture and from the aroma you can tell the noodles were furiously toss-fried over one of those insanely powerful burners you find in professional Chinese kitchens.  Note the lack of wolfberries; this turned out to be the only dish where they don't make an appearance.

We ordered a set of 4 Xiao Long Bao since they were on the menu. And yes the wolfberries are back!

I regret to say that these were disappointing.  The skin on these dumplings were too thick and tough.  The filling was also nowhere near the flavoursome morsels you can find at Dragon-i. In my opinion they should stop selling this dish and get some lessons in how to make proper Xiao Long Bao. It's just not on to get people's hopes up with these abominations.

Next up is the Steamed Rice in Bamboo with Assorted Seafood.

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The assorted seafood include crabsticks, prawns, faux abalone and a wafer-thin slice of grouper (I think).  The rice is soaked in a fish broth and the dish on the whole is passable, but nothing to write home about.

Stir-fried Hong Kong Choi Sum is next.

The vegetable, which wasn't very fresh to begin with, was overcooked to death. Nuff sed.

After 3 disappointing dishes, along came the Deep Fried Calamari Rings with Salt and Pepper.

This dish is surprisingly good.  If you do order this dish, eat it quickly before it loses its crunch.

All in all I would go back to this restaurant, of only to order the Black Pepper Spare Ribs and Seafood Noodles, and maybe to try some of the other dishes on the menu.

Bon appetit!


GPS Coordinates: 5.437382, 100.309686

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