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KAMPAR DELIGHTS @ KAM LING RESTAURANT
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| Deep Fried Green Tea Tofu |
Kampar, Perak, Malaysia - January 2014
Kampar, a town with its roots in the Malaysian tin industry, seems to have a hiccup to it's growth when the North-South Highway by-passed it. With the new UTAR Campus being built there, there has been a rejuvenation in its growth. And with this new growth there is now many new foodie outlets. Still it is the old traditional food that keeps on attracting people to take a detour through the old trunk road and take a taste of those oldies but goodies. Food like the claypot chicken rice was first to be seen in Kampar. They have pretty good curry noodles here too. And I can always recall having very good and smooth ice-cream made from santan (coconut milk) decades ago. Alas, that ice-cream stall is no more.
Oops... I digress, but then it's always good to know a bit of history of the place where we eat. One of the old place for good food is Kam Ling Restaurant right in the middle of the old town centre. This being near Chinese New Year we kicked of with the traditional "lou sang" dish.
Eating of the lou sang dish herald in good luck for the rest of the year. Each ingredient of the dish signifies a certain lucky trait. The served dish is then tossed with chop-sticks, the higher the toss the better one's fortune!
I always like this dish; the crunchy vegetables and tit-bits with the sweet plum syrup serves as a good appetizer with the added bonus of bringing luck.
Next came the house speciality - Curry Chicken Bread. The curry itself is good but not that fantastic. Order this dish for its uniqueness.
The separately cooked curry chicken is wrapped in waxed paper and then baked in the bun. This dish is served with the top centre cut opened and the sides of the bun cut into square pieces. The pieces of bun are nipped and dipped into the curry.
They proudly advertise this speciality with a poster right at their entrance.
The third dish was also an unique one - Deep Fried Green Tea Tofu. The tofu was deep fried in very hot oil to give it a crispy skin but still maintaining the soft inside. A tinge of the greenness of the tofu can be seen through the brownish skin. Deep fried dried prawns, garlic and spring onions were then added and finally a oil-soy sauce gravy poured over.
When cut opened, the tofu really had that green tea colour. Oddly, there was not much taste of the tea, only a hint of the green tea was tasted. The tofu texture itself was slightly firmer than the usual tofu, but it was still softly bitey. The crunchy deep-fried dried prawns was very good with that burnt prawn taste and smell. Overall, it was a wonderful dish - one of a ying-yang opposites of hard and soft.
After the two unique dishes came this stir-fried Kailan. Simple but not that ordinary as it was fried with cut chillies and slices of onion.
The "Kau Yoke" that came next was an enigma. It was done Hokkein style with slices of yam. Kampar is predominantly a Cantonese town, and the Cantonese style is done with salted preserved "moi choy".
Both versions are good in their own ways. AND both versions are not easy to make. The pork belly have to be slightly boiled in chunks first. After boiling the skin is then poked to make it softer. The chunks are then slightly deep fried and later cut into slices. The yam is similarly cut into slices and deep-fried. Both pork and yam are steamed after having been left to be seasoned with nine-spice powder for a while.
This dish was good! The yam they used was well selected as it was soft powderish chewy.
To crown of the meal - steamed Patin (upper river catfish). I like eating this fish in smaller towns as the fish used are normally caught in the wild compared to the bred version served in the cities.
The wild version have more and thicker fish blubber. I just love this - fishy oily and creamy!
Yes! Kampar has grown; so too has Kam Ling. From a modest beginning decades ago in a single colonial shop-house, it is now housed in a large new building (the equivalent of three shop-houses) with a very spacious and comfortable dining hall that can host functions.
The original old restaurant in the colonial shop-house is still there, still loyally serving its regular clientèle.
KAM LING RESTAURANT
105-107, Jalan Idris
31900 Kampar, Perak, Malaysia.
Phone : 05-466 1174 / 05-465 0951
Mobile : 016-533 2226 / 016-546 6747 / 016551 1174
Hours : 11:00 am to 10:30 pm everyday.
Closed in the afternoon 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm
(Note: the old restaurant does not close in the afternoon)
GPS : 4.313573, 101.152184
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Oops... I digress, but then it's always good to know a bit of history of the place where we eat. One of the old place for good food is Kam Ling Restaurant right in the middle of the old town centre. This being near Chinese New Year we kicked of with the traditional "lou sang" dish.
Eating of the lou sang dish herald in good luck for the rest of the year. Each ingredient of the dish signifies a certain lucky trait. The served dish is then tossed with chop-sticks, the higher the toss the better one's fortune!
I always like this dish; the crunchy vegetables and tit-bits with the sweet plum syrup serves as a good appetizer with the added bonus of bringing luck.
Next came the house speciality - Curry Chicken Bread. The curry itself is good but not that fantastic. Order this dish for its uniqueness.
The separately cooked curry chicken is wrapped in waxed paper and then baked in the bun. This dish is served with the top centre cut opened and the sides of the bun cut into square pieces. The pieces of bun are nipped and dipped into the curry.
They proudly advertise this speciality with a poster right at their entrance.
The third dish was also an unique one - Deep Fried Green Tea Tofu. The tofu was deep fried in very hot oil to give it a crispy skin but still maintaining the soft inside. A tinge of the greenness of the tofu can be seen through the brownish skin. Deep fried dried prawns, garlic and spring onions were then added and finally a oil-soy sauce gravy poured over.
When cut opened, the tofu really had that green tea colour. Oddly, there was not much taste of the tea, only a hint of the green tea was tasted. The tofu texture itself was slightly firmer than the usual tofu, but it was still softly bitey. The crunchy deep-fried dried prawns was very good with that burnt prawn taste and smell. Overall, it was a wonderful dish - one of a ying-yang opposites of hard and soft.
After the two unique dishes came this stir-fried Kailan. Simple but not that ordinary as it was fried with cut chillies and slices of onion.
The "Kau Yoke" that came next was an enigma. It was done Hokkein style with slices of yam. Kampar is predominantly a Cantonese town, and the Cantonese style is done with salted preserved "moi choy".
Both versions are good in their own ways. AND both versions are not easy to make. The pork belly have to be slightly boiled in chunks first. After boiling the skin is then poked to make it softer. The chunks are then slightly deep fried and later cut into slices. The yam is similarly cut into slices and deep-fried. Both pork and yam are steamed after having been left to be seasoned with nine-spice powder for a while.
To crown of the meal - steamed Patin (upper river catfish). I like eating this fish in smaller towns as the fish used are normally caught in the wild compared to the bred version served in the cities.
The wild version have more and thicker fish blubber. I just love this - fishy oily and creamy!
Yes! Kampar has grown; so too has Kam Ling. From a modest beginning decades ago in a single colonial shop-house, it is now housed in a large new building (the equivalent of three shop-houses) with a very spacious and comfortable dining hall that can host functions.
The original old restaurant in the colonial shop-house is still there, still loyally serving its regular clientèle.
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