Prawn Omelette (蝦仁煎)

One popular Chinese dish is oyster omelette (蚵仔煎), which is easily available at any Chinese eateries.

In my household, we often eat prawn omelette (蝦仁煎) instead of oyster omelette. In Teochew, we call it hay luak (蝦煎). My late maternal grandmother used to babysit me when I was a child, and I vaguely remember her making prawn omelette for me. Now, mom cooks it for us. Both my brother and I love it.

For the batter, Mom mixes tapioca flour with water. Then she cooks the batter in a non-stick pan with prawns, spring onions, and beaten eggs. The ingredients give off a fragrant aroma as they cook.

Prawns, eggs and spring onions in the pan

Once one side of the omelette is cooked, Mom flips it over to cook the other side. Mom dishes out the omelette when it turns golden brown in colour.

Prawn omelette

The omelette is fragrant, starchy and gooey, but the edges are crispy, and the prawns are sweet.

A close-up shot

Prawn omelette is dipped in fish sauce with a dash of pepper before eating.

Fish sauce and a dash of pepper

I don't think prawn omelette is sold anywhere here in Kuching, or even in Miri. At least I haven't come across before.

Prawn Omelette

I love eating this ...

Prawn Omelette

Whenever Mom buys fresh small prawns, she will be inclined to make this Prawn Omelette. It's her favourite since she grew up eating it.

There is just something about prawn and egg and spring onion. The flavours complement each other so well. The fragrance of the beaten egg, the sweetness of the prawns and the pungence of the spring onions,  combined with the browned and slightly burnt edges of the starch, and dipped in peppered fish sauce is very addictive.

Repost. Read more here.

Rice Bowls

I suppose this is a variety of the Japanese donburi or rice bowl dish. It is typically steamed rice served in a bowl, with a meat or eggs or bean curd or vegetable poured over it.

L*** and I had lunch at Double Star Cafe today, and we each had a rice bowl. I had the beef & egg rice bowl, while L*** had the prawn omelette rice bowl, both RM7.90.

Beef & egg

Prawn omelette

Besides the meats & egg, there were also some long beans that garnished the rice. I do like the beef a lot as they were tender and quite flavourful, slightly sweet and savoury. The vegetables added were crunchy and complemented the rice and meats wonderfully.

I think it's not that difficult to make the rice bowls dishes, and I'm thinking of replicating it one day ;) .

Sarawak Laksa @ Yakin Food Court

Occasionally, I have my breakfast at Yakin Food Court. A perennial problem for me is that I never know what to eat here. ;) True, there are many stalls, but none of them like quite stand out.

This morning, I strolled past each stall, trying to decide what to eat, when I caught a whiff of that distinct aroma of laksa. Dare I try the laksa here? Would I be disappointed? Well, I decided to go for it.

I marched to the stall and ordered a Laksa Special.

Sarawak Laksa Special

Hmn. I do not know whether my standards for a good bowl of laksa has dropped, or that the laksa here is in fact, alright. Lol.

Anyway, the gravy was sufficiently lemak, and they had all the ingredients right - prawn, shredded omelette, chicken strips and blanched bean sprouts . It even came with home made fish balls. That's an extra!

Squeeze lots of lime into it, and it was downright edible. The regular Laksa is RM4.50 while Laksa Special is RM6.00.

Kuching Festival Fair 2013 Part 2

We parked at the City South Council ....

The Council .... 

We were early .... so we lingered about ...

4 cats at play ..... these cat statuettes were in front of the Council building. Kuching City is littered with these cat statuettes .... these ones .... hmn ...  in my opinion.... needed a facelift .... or rather ...a fur-lift. Maybe a new coat of paint would do them wonders! 

Then we made our way to the Food Fair nearby. In this post, I would be focusing on the food. There were over 200 booths selling both local and international delights. Some of the vendors are popular eateries or restaurants in and around Kuching.

There were so much food! From Chicken rice to Japanese mochi to Oyster omelette to Dim sum to Chee Cheung Fun to Satay to Kolo Mee .... endless list!

Here are some pictures of the food ....

Rico's burgers, pizza, pocket pizza, chicken wings

Trays containing skewers of shao mai ... or sio bee as they are known in Kuching

Naked fish

These fishes were grilled over charcoal .... the skewers rotated consistently till the fish cooked. I presume they were "naked" because they were devoid of msg. 

There's popsicle inside this contraption!! Not sure how they do it ... but it is this thing that churns out the posicles. 

Chee Cheung Fun or rice rolls with char siew, prawn or a mixture of both. This rice roll auntie usually sells lui cha ... but she's taking a break now to sell these instead! 

Coffin bread ... a Taiwanese specialty

This was the stall with the longest queue. Much as I would like to try the product, I could not bring myself to queue. I hated waiting.

Fried Fresh Milk, see the queue .... tsk tsk tsk .... scary  ...

I stood in front to see what the fuss was about .... and chatted with an uncle who was waiting for his order. He had waited for half an hour, he said. And when he got his Fried Fresh Milk in a bag, he kindly let us snap a picture of it. Aunt took a shot but I did not. I peeked into the bag ... and saw golden squares resembling tofu cubes .... It's essentially frozen milk ... cut into cubes, battered and deep-fried. I suppose the novelty of the item itself was an attraction. 

At the Pandan Thai Delights stall ... I was drawn by this large wooden mortar bowl and its pestle. I thought it looked so exotic.

A traditional wooden mortar bowl

The stall sold Thai dishes, one of them being this famous dessert. 

Mango Sticky Rice

The crowd started pouring in from 5.30 p.m. onwards .... and queues started to form in front of popular stalls. The plastic tables and chairs were slowly filled up by the hungry diners. It was fun, soaking in the festive like atmosphere .... and feasting my eyes on the food not commonly seen .... and of course .... overloading my nose with the delicious smells of food! Yums. Next post, what I ate.