YummY!
Jotaro's Food Review
Seafood Crab Porridge @ Cheang Kee Nibong Tebal
Nibong Tebal, Penang, Malaysia - June 2015
The two of us were on our regular trips up north and dinner time was a time I look forward to. It was a time that we go food hunting at whichever nearby towns that we so happen to pass by at that time. We would check the web for blogs of that locality and zoom there.
This time we actually wanted to try the well known "Fried Porridge of Serdang (Kedah)". The lady who answered our call said that they were closed. They are normally closed on Teusdays; it was a Monday but yet they were closed. In fact the lady advised us to call first the next time as they have a habit of closing on and off. Elusive aren't they?
So no fried porridge till next time then (hopefully!). In the meantime, we just turned into Nibong Tebal and headed for Restoran NT Cheang Kee. Still thinking of the fried porridge, we settled for th seafood porridge on their menu; will it be as good as the fried porridge, we shall see.
The porridge will take a while to prepare, and a bit concerned that porridge will not fill our stomachs for long, we decided to order this "Tua Pan Hor Fan". I always like this Northern style done with the flat rice noodles cut into wider and shorter strips. Also the noodles here were thinner but still retained a bouncy bite.
The noodles had been pre-fried with lard in a hot wok so that parts of them were slightly burnt which gives it a better aroma. The burnt aroma had also seeped into the starchy gravy that was poured over. Nice!
To complement the staple dishes, we ordered a couple of dishes. One was this Lala clams stir-fried with a chilli gravy. The clams were super fresh and had imparted their flavour into the spicy gravy. Nice too!
Stir-fried Tofu with Leek.
A simple yet nice dish, done it "Mom's" way. The tofu balance the slight cutting bite of the leek. It was a good dish and would have been better if the tofu had a tinge of musky bitterness. Nice number three!
And..... here comes the porridge.
Although termed as a seafood porridge it was actually a crab porridge, coming with four small crabs cut in halves.
The broth was made from pre-cooked rice with further cooking in the crab broth. The flavour of the soup stock was good, with a good crabby taste. It was a lightly flavoured soup, not overly strong, just nice to go with the rice.
The crabs though small ones had very fresh and stripy tender meat. Their shells were surprisingly soft and easy to peel with just our hands, and we could get to those succulent meat easily.
Nice number four.... the nicest of them all!
So how does this crab porridge compare with the fried porridge...
Sorry, I can't tell until I have tried the elusive fried porridge; so stay tuned!
RESTROAN NT CHEANG KEE
60 & 62 Jalan Besar, Air Lintas, Taman Merbah, 14300 Nibong Tebal, Seberang Prai Selatan, Penang.
Tel: +604-5943728
Hours: 12:00pm to 3:00pm & 6:00pm to 10:00pm (Closed on Teusdays)
GPS: 5.178537, 100.483160
(Click here for Google Street View)
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Nibong Tebal has many interesting and good food to try out. First there is the famous "Too Boo Swee", which is boiled baby octopus dipped into nice chilli sauce with crunched ground-nuts. Just days earlier I had tried the crab-broth at Restoran NT Cheang Kee.
I let you in on a secret though, not that many know about this prawn curry served at Lim Aik Chew coffee-shop. It's because it's tucked discretely in a row of old single-storey timber shop-houses over on the other side of the Kerian River. One can drive over based on the GPS coordinates given below; or be a little more adventurous, park at the end of Jalan Teluk Ipil right at the edge of the old town and walk over the pedestrian bridge. The shop is just over at the other end of the bridge, do be careful though when you walk over as motor-cyclists uses this bridge too.
Across the bridge, you will be rewarded with a plate of appetizing curry prawn. Not only do they look good; they tasted good too. The curry is not overly spicy and cooked with some santan that gives it a slightly creamy flavour. The prawny flavour had seeped into the curry as well.
The prawns we had were fairly large sized white-shell sea prawns, cooked together with their shells. A slit had been made at their backs for the curry to infuse in.
To complete the meal, a plate of fluffy bread to dip into the savoury curry!
This place does serve other food than the prawns; we had this deep-fried fish with sweet and sour sauce. It was good too but was over-shadowed by the curry prawns... but then perhaps I am prawn biased!
