My First Meal: Market Stylee Assome Laksa

Here it is.

The first meal of my first day of my life overseas.

And it was spectacular.

After ten hours of flight to Kuala Lumpur via Singapore, an hour of mucking about in the airport, another getting out to the hotel and a lot of gee it’s humid talk, a walk through KL’s Chinatown into some chicken/quail/littlier bird killing alleys to this.

Local market styleee Assam Laksa.

Fishy, sour, minty, sweet marvellousness at 4.5 ringgit (A$1.47) a bowl.

First the bloke plops a pile of freshly made by nice ladies, thick noodles into a bowl.

He adds a little bit of pineapple, mint, onion, greens, cucumber, chili and tomato sauce mackerel from these bowls and then fills up with hotter than wahooey, sourer than your grandmother on a bad day, soup base.

The sauce in the spoon was some sort of sour hoisin chili concoction.

Here's the incredible chicken laksa soup base from the same stall.

Now, this all sounds unbearably hot and sour for a Melbourne boy but I do like Assam Laksa. When I have it at the few places they serve it in Melbourne (Penang Coffee House, Hawthorn is good), I've asked the bemused waiters to serve it up No Holds Barred Style.

But there was no need for the pre-holiday preparation.

This Assam Laksa was amazing. It wasn't over the top sweet nor sour. It was minty. So minty. And fresh. The cucumber snapped and the red onions played all the right moves. The mackerel, well, the mackerel came out of a can. I'll give them that. You don't go eatin' Assam Laksa to appreciate the delicate flavors of mackerel fished off the coast of Spain. The fish in Assam may as well be Ass Fish because it's an afterthought and roughed up too much by the rest of the battling ingredients.

There was a bowl of chili/anchovy/mystery sambal oil north by five centimetres from my bowl.

I probably overdid it.

Here's me having a moment.

See the lady in the background? She's rich. Dripping in gold. Gold glasses, shoes, watches, all sorts of stuff all gold. By the way they pampered her, I reckon she runs the joint.

 

And here's a bonus dish. Chopped by hand by a nice lady in front of you, flat noodles with chili sauce, hoisin, green chili and sesame seeds. Cool and slippery. Hey, kids! You can do this one at home!