Food... Glorious Food!

Penangites and Penang Food Lovers, here's a shoutout and a big thanks to y'all for inspiring this post. Have you ever wonder why Hokkien Mee is called Hokkien Mee? Or why some Penang food can't be found anywhere else in the world? (Don't worry, nowadays every 1 out of 15 streets in US has Char Koay Teow.) In this post, I will be talking how some Penang food got its name.

Hokkien Mee and Hokkien Char

These are one of my favourite Penang food and apparently how it got its name have to be reflected into our Malaysian history. Hokkien mee actually is almost similar to Prawn mee (Mee Udang) except for the smaller shrimp and spicier soup. Why? This is rather sad, long time ago Hokkien people comes from Fukien, China, and they were poor, usually the Prawn mee seller would buy prawns in bulk and out of many prawns there were also shrimps. Prawn mee seller would usually throw away the shrimps as putting it in the plate would spoil his reputation (Chinese ma, ai bin chui). And yes, you guessed it, Hokkien people would take that shrimps and mix it with chillies and you get... HOKKIEN MEE. Same goes to Hokkien Char, except we mix it the leftovers of everyone's stall and Voila!

Satay

You may think this is a Malay food but its not. If you look at Satay properly, you will notice on the stick there are 3 pieces of meat the stick is poking through. That's exactly how Satay got its name, in Hokkien word 3 pieces is called Sa Tay. Satay actually comes from this but because the revenue and return for this is low, hence less and less people are doing Satay already.

Poh Piah

The word speaks for itself, Poh Piah is actually veggies and prawns wrapped in a thin sheet of flour(I think). It actually comes from Pau Piah (Wrapped Biscuit), which eventually if you speak fast enough it will become Poh Piah.

Laksa

The Laksa I'll be talking here isn't the same as Laksa anywhere else, Penang has another term for that food, its called Curry Mee(pic above). But the Laksa I'll be talking about comes from Baba Nyonya origins

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Who is Nyonya? Baba Nyonya (Peranakan) is acutally refering to Chinese people somewhat their culture were partially assimilated into the Malay culture. The soup are actually from Mackeral fish and the smell mix with "hae ko" (蝦羔) is an excellent mix of sour and spicy. How does it got its name? Lak actually means spicy and Sa means noodles. Need any more explanation? Simple as that....

Pasembor

This is not a Chinese delicacy, in fact it comes from the word Indian Rojak. However, rojak can also refer to a mixture of things.

Penang food not only taste AWESOME but the name itself somehow different from the world. Now you know why Penang is Pearl of the Orient. Thats all I can think of for now, I've been cursing Streamyx for about more than 4 hours now thats why I can't think much as I'm planning to unsubscribe tomorrow. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to comment.

PS: I'm proud to be a Penangite!