The Last Appetite » Kota-Bharu http://www.lastappetite.com Great eating from the white trash of Asia Fri, 10 Feb 2012 05:04:49 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Kota Bharu Street Life http://www.lastappetite.com/kota-bharu-street-life/ http://www.lastappetite.com/kota-bharu-street-life/#comments Tue, 29 Jan 2008 23:29:56 +0000 Phil Lees http://www.lastappetite.com/kota-bharu-street-life/ Selling dried squid, downtown Kota Bharu
Setting up the dried squid stand in downtown Kota Bharu, Malaysia

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]]> http://www.lastappetite.com/kota-bharu-street-life/feed/ 0 6.1333332 102.2500000 Cendol and pearls http://www.lastappetite.com/cendol-and-pearls/ http://www.lastappetite.com/cendol-and-pearls/#comments Sun, 27 Jan 2008 21:30:10 +0000 Phil Lees http://www.lastappetite.com/cendol-and-pearls/ Cendol

These green worms are cendol (pronounced chen-dul), made from green pea flour flavoured with pandan leaves. They’re essential for making the dish that is their eponym: a combination of the worms, shaved ice, santan (the first extraction of coconut milk), gula (palm sugar) and often red beans. With a dish so simple, the only key is finding a vendor who uses top quality ingredients.

Tapioca Pearls

The same vendor selling the cendol had (what I’m guessing are) tapioca pearls, dyed red. From a distance I thought that they were pomegranate arils, but on closer inspection, they clearly were not.

Any suggestions?

See Also: The Star Online provides a recipe for cendol.

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]]> http://www.lastappetite.com/cendol-and-pearls/feed/ 4 6.1300001 102.2391968 Kota Bharu’s Central Market http://www.lastappetite.com/kota-bharu-market/ http://www.lastappetite.com/kota-bharu-market/#comments Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:14:53 +0000 Phil Lees http://www.lastappetite.com/kota-bharu-market/ Kota Bharu Central Market
The central octagonal hall of Kota Bharu’s central market (Pasar Siti Khadijah) opens up like a cathedral devoted to the veneration of fresh Malaysian produce. A skylight illuminates the scene in a dull sepia glow throughout the day; upper levels providing a birds-eye view of the myriad proceedings below. By the crowded standard of Malaysia’s wet markets, Kota Bharu market has an overwhelming sense of austerity in comparison.

A while ago EatingAsia rhetorically asked whether you’d consider moving for a wet market, and for this one, I probably would. I ended up lingering for a few extra days in Kota Bharu just for the food, dropping by the market’s outstanding food hall for my curry fix. I had expected that Penang would be the sort of place that I could settle in, but not this northeastern corner of peninsular Malaysia. Maybe I could overlook the Kelantan state’s dominant but declining political party toying with the idea of hudud law. Maybe I could dismiss the concomitant lack of a brewery.

Kota Bharu Central Market

The ground floor plays host to primarily vegetable sellers on raised platforms with meats confined to the darker outer rim.

Keropok on sale at Kota Bahru Central Market

Keropok lekor, grey tubes of fish paste and starch, are probably one of the world’s least attractive foods in their pre-fried form. These snakes of sticky paste are sliced diagonally and then deep fried; giving a little crispness on the outer edges and chewiness to the centre. The flavour (in this case) is unrelenting fish.

Cleaning fish with a cleaver at Kota Bharu Central Market

I am always impressed by the effortlessness and economy by which people can clean a fish with a meat cleaver without destroying it. Any time I’ve tried it myself, I end up reverting back to a more flexible knife to peel out the chunks of fillet that I’ve missed entirely. The above method involved cutting the fish along the fillet on each side, then cleaving the head cleanly in two, so that the buyer received exactly half a fish, sans-innards.

See also:To Market, to market event at A Scientist in the Kitchen

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