The day after dad’s funeral, my in-laws treated Nanzaro and I to a Yong Tau Foo dinner in a restaurant nearby Sri Damansara in Manjalara. The last time I was in Malaysia, I did not get the chance to go for this. So, I was glad when my brother-in-law suggested this.
Yong Tau Foo is a very Chinese Malaysian dish. I don’t think this is served in anywhere outside of Malaysia. Malaysia has a big Hakka community and this is one of their invention. Yong Tau Foo refers to the original stuff bean curd. The stuffing used are mostly fish paste but there are some which used pork as stuffing.
The most common Yong Tau Foo is the one you see below. In this bowl, there are stuffed bean curd, okra and chilli pepper and is served with clear broth. I enjoyed the hot chilli pepper especially. One thing about the okra (known as lady’s fingers in Malaysia) is that the seeds does not digest, if you know what I mean.
Then there is the plain fish paste. The green ones below is stuffed bitter gourd. I don’t like the bitter gourd at all — never did and never will. I can’t understand why anyone likes anything this bitter.
There is also fried ones. You can’t figure this out clearly but the ones with the dark outline is another of my fav. It’s the fried eggplant sandwiched with fish paste. The others are plain fried fish paste and fried wonton.
I am making up the names here. I never knew what of the dishes I had in Malaysia. I know what it looks like and I know what I like. Never took the trouble to learn their names.
This one below is bean curd skin with, again, fish paste. Suanne can correct me here …
We ordered other non-yong tau foo dishes too. Anyone can describe this for me? It’s pork … fatty pork and wood ears. This is great with rice … the gravy is rich and salty-sweet. The pork is sinfully fat.
This one is called jee geok chou — vinegar pork feet. I don’t like the gravy, it is sour. But the fatty pork skin, they are heavenly! This dish will definitely clog up your arteries.
Well, we need to have a balanced meal, huh? So, we also had a lettuce — blanched and flavoured with soya sauce and fried shallot.
Nice meal … I enjoyed this.
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8 users responded in this post
Hi Ben - Wow, looks like alot of “comfort-style” dishes. As I’ve never heard of most of these, it looked and sounded interesting.
Hi Kirk: Many of the dishes in KL, although chinese, are pretty much Malaysian.
Hi Ben, I think the pork dish you are refering to is ‘char yoke’ is a hakka dish.
Very nice meal. I’ve never seen anything quite like Yong Tau Foo before, although certain Vietnamese and Japanese fish cake dishes are vaguely similar. Now I’m really drooling for the chance to visit Malaysia.
- Chubbypanda
That pork looks goooooooooooood!! :-)
Hi Wan: You are right … the pork dish is char yoke. Never thought it was a Hakka dish though.
Yes, Char Yoke… my favourite dish… I’m hakka and I can’t wait to go back and ask my grand aunt how to cook it!
you should visit SABAH, the malaysian borneo…u’ll find more hakka food there…most chinese there is hakka…n the language is still widely used…
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