Food and I - we go hand in hand. I go nuts when the buffet table is covered with an assortment of food. Trust me, I'll be one of those who makes at least 5 trips to the buffet table. And each trip features me with a HUGE pile of food on my plate and an equally HUGE grin on my face.
But strangely, I'm not all that fussy about food. Sure, if the food looks and tastes great, it's a plus. Still, if it's not, I don't hang myself over it. Which is fine because where I am now, I'm also the chef of the household and I'm not known for my culinary skills. So no gourmet stuff, just ordinary meals that get the family going.
And I didn't seem to miss any of the Malaysian hawker stuff like nasi lemak, mee goreng, char koay teow, asam laksa, roti canai, rojak buah, pasembor, etc, until 2 friends brought them up in separate ocassions.
During one of our recent chats, Nani, my partner in crime since our reporter days back at The Sun, talked about the nasi campur with the spicy crab and prawns that we used to gobble down during our lunch break. I hadn't thought about that for nearly 2 years until she brought the subject up. And that night, I had the strangest dream - me and Nani on a weird mission to find our favourite rice stall and no matter what we did, we just couldn't find it. Gosh, what a sick dream.
Then Sangeeta, another ex-colleague who has also migrated to Melbourne, tempted me with talks of how she got some nice nasi lemak bungkus not far from her house. I begged her to give me the address. Alas, I haven't checked the place out yet.
Well, Malaysian food isn't all that hard to find here. But more often than not, it tastes a bit weird, even though the chef is really Malaysian. You can even find nasi lemak in some of the Asian grocery shops but I have yet to be tempted to give it a try. The look of it is enough to make me cringe. Maybe I should learn to make my own nasi lemak. The roti canai sold in the grocery shops, however, isn't too bad.
All this talk about food is making me hungry. Thank goodness I still have lots of potato chips in the house ...
1 comment:
You'll get used to the fake Malaysian food here eventually, not to mention the horribly expensive prices! I did... and now even the nasi lemak in the Asian grocery stores tastes ok to me. My poor taste buds - their standards have now dipped so low.
By the way, another good nasi lemak place is Nasi Lemak House, near the city. It's off Lygon St, can't remember the exact address offhand. Lots of Msian students frequent it. It's the closest to really good nasi lemak I've had since I've been here (but the chilli taste varies, sometimes too spicy). Huge piece of fried chicken with it. Don't like the fried egg though, too oily.
What's weird is they serve it with pappadam!
They have lots of variations of nasi lemak - kelantan, seafood, etc.
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