It’s the Merdeka (Independance) Weekend as Malaysia celebrates its 50th Year of Independance. This post is queued to publishing on the 31st August, 2007 to coincide with National Day and it is a food review of Encik Rosli’s Mee Rebus which is one of the better Mee Rebus I have eaten.

Rosli Mee Rebus is located behind Wisma Haniffa, off Jalan Masjid India in downtown Kuala Lumpur. Set somewhere in the middle of a row of street hawkers is Rosli Mee Rebus, with its distinguishing green coloured signboard. Encik Rosli has been cooking and selling Mee Rebus for more than 30 years. A Malaccan by birth, his growing up years was in Singapore when his father was then posted there in the military. As he started work, he became an apprentice to a Javanese hawker who sold Mee Rebus in Singapore. However, he did not manage to learn the recipe despite working with the Javanese for 8 years until the Javanese’s retirement at the age of 78.

He moved to Kuala Lumpur in the late 60s and was operating behind Selangor Emporium (which has since closed down) until 1998 when he was asked by the authorities to locate to this present spot together with other hawkers.

Business starts at about 9.00am in the morning till 5.00pm in the afternoon from Mondays to Sundays and I was the first customer today. In fact, I had to wait for about 10 minutes whilst he was cooking and heating up the Mee Rebus gravy. That gave me a chance to chit chat with the friendly Encik Rosli and hence, you got the historical fact above.

Rosli Mee Rebus is truly delicious. The yellow noodles are blanched just nice and come without the alkaline taste associated with yellow noodles. It is also soft enough to be slurped into the mouth, if you are into that kind of food eating experience. Freshly blanched bean sprouts are also included. The gravy is well worth a try. Made of secret ingredients (of course) which includes peanuts and spices, the gravy tasted sweetish with an ever slight spicy hot hint to it. The Mee Rebus is topped with freshly cut chillis, fried shallots and half a hardboiled egg. Half a fresh lime is included for you to squeeze out the juice to make the Mee Rebus extra delicious. If you want to, you can ask for fried tofu for at an additional cost. According to Encik Rosli, the original recipe he inherited from the Javanese cook has beef as part of the ingredients. However, to suit his customer, he has omitted it from the recipe.

Encik Rosli informed me that he also caters to functions on Sundays and has quite a regular clientele. I won’t be surprised considering that he’s been selling this longer than I’ve been born. I am now one of his regulars and it is no wonder why when he keeps delivering good Mee Rebus all these years.

Vegetarian Mixed Vegetables with Wheat Gluten! What a title! What I meant to say is that this dish is suitable for vegetarians and that it consists of mixed vegetables like carrots, broccoli, shiitake mushrooms and with the star attraction - wheat gluten or meen kan. You would have read about the ridiculously simple recipe on how to make wheat gluten in the previous post and this recipe is one where you can put your fried wheat gluten to the ultimate test of deliciousness.

You can add or substitute the choice of vegetables above with other vegetables like baby corn, straw mushrooms, button mushrooms, cauliflower and the like. The creativity is up to you really. A note for non-vegetarians - most, if not all vegetarians do not include garlic in their cooking. Shallots are used instead. So, where shallots are mentioned, you can substitute it with garlic. And yes, where oyster-flavoured vegetarian sauce is mentioned, you can use the real oyster sauce instead if you are non-vegetarian. In the picture above, the dish was cooked with garlic.

This is the recipe for Vegetarian Mixed Vegetables with Wheat Gluten Read the rest of this entry »

Wheat Gluten or called mià n jÄ«n in Chinese (traditional : 麵筋, simplified : 面筋, literally “noodle/dough tendon”; also spelled mien chin or mien ching) is one of my favourite “vegetarian” ingredients. My mum was taught how to make wheat gluten (we call it mee kun in hokkien or meen kan in cantonese) by a neighbour in Kuching many years back. It is not as easy to get this in the market compared to tofu-based products and it is usually associated with vegetarian dishes. I will come up with a vegetarian recipe in the next post.

Upon discovering the simplicity of making the wheat gluten, I realised how much profit the manufacturers would be making. All you need is flour to knead into a dough, water to wash the dough and oil to fry the gluten. I must encourage you to make this on your own because it is absolutely easy, not to mention healthy as you are making it from your own kitchen. Moreover, it is quite an experience to make it for the first time as you will be amazed (just like me) on how the dough transforms into a rubbery texture (gluten) after washing it in running water.

This is the recipe for Wheat Dough or Mien Chin Read the rest of this entry »

You can give me Curry Chicken with Potatoes anytime and I will gladly savour it. It’s great when eaten with rice and no less delicious when bread is dipped into it. There are many types of Curry Chicken and this is more of a crude home recipe which I experimented with from time to time.

I have always wanted to be able to cook Curry Chicken just like how the Indians do but will just have to make do with a more “Chinese” flavoured recipe for now. I think I will have to pester my Indian colleague for her home recipes.

Meanwhile, this is my own recipe for Curry Chicken with Potatoes Read the rest of this entry »