Penang Street Food

Last night (Tuesday night,10.11.09), there were four customers who sat at Table 7 wrote on the comment card that two of them used to live in Penang for 3 years. I went to their table to introduce myself and asked the couple who lived in Penang about their experience. They were there working at the International School and totally enjoyed living there. They travel and live overseas a lot but they said none other places can be compared to Penang. They love the atmosphere, friendliness of people and the streetfood. My hometown Penang is famously known for its street food. Having been recognised by Unesco as World Heritage Site this year makes me so proud of my hometown and always recommend my customers/cookery class students to visit Penang if they ever go to Malaysia.

One thing I never missed eveytime I go back to Penang is the Prawn Fritters stall just off Penang Road, next to Chowratsa Market. The stall is now run by the 3rd generation of the family. I remember thirty years ago my parents took me to this stall and it became a must for our family to visit this stall everytime we go to the Penang Island (we live in Butterworth so going to Penang is like a treat for me, my brother and sister when we were kids, so we could go on the ferry). Now it becomes my routine to take my mum to this stall everytime I go back home for a holiday. Prawn fritters is like an afternoon snack and very easy to do. The recipe is given below which I also included in my cookbook.

Ingredients:

250g plain flour
50g self rising flour
600ml water
1teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon salt
10 fresh king prawns
250g beans sprout
25g garlic/chinese chives
10 pieces fried tofu
750ml cooking oil to deep fry

Using big bowl, add plain and self rising flours, water, turmeric powder and salt. Mix it well. Heat up cooking oil in wok or deep frying pan if you don’t have a wok. Fry tofu for two minutes and set aside. Add a handful of beans sprout and chives with couple of king prawns into the batter. Mix it well and using hand, drop a handful mixture of the ingredients into hot oil. If you’re not confident about using hand doing Malaysian style, you can use ladle to drop the mixture. Only mix the beans sprout and chives when you are ready to fry it. If they were left in batter for a while, it will get soggy. Fry until the beans sprout and chives turned brown and batter look crispy. Repeat the same until all batter used up. Serve it with cucumber slices, fried tofu and peanut sauce dip (or sweet chilli sauce dip).