chicken rice balls and satay action...

after a painless two hour bus ride, we arrived into melaka, got checked into our perfect little guesthouse tucked down a small lane in chinatown, got cleaned up and hit the streets for some afternoon eats.
taking a recommendation we got at borneo ink in kuala lumpur, we quickly found our way to famosa chicken rice ball. crazy sounding name, right? well the food was far from it. perfect chinese roasted chicken and fluffy little compressed rice balls, not too much different than matzo balls. they were garnished with sliced cucumber, green onion, and cilantro and drizzled with a bit of sweet plum sauce. since it was a chinese restaurant, the dish was served with a small bowl of hot soup, garnished with green onions and crispy fried onions. as with the beef ball noodles we ate in kuala lumpur, these too were served with a spicy homemade sambal (chile garlic sauce). we washed the whole thing down with our new malaysian favorite, fresh limejuice with a chinese sour plum. a really great midday meal and a good start to our eating in melaka.
later, we ended up at capital satay, somewhat of a malaysian institution, with tons of photos of celebrities, government dignitaries and past miss malaysias decorating the walls. i immediately knew that the food was going to be great when i saw the heavily worn stainless steel tables with built in hotpots along with a huge self service cold case full of all kinds of skewers. they offered everything from stuffed tofu or fried tofu to chicken, beef, pork ears, prawns, squids, greens, stuffed okras and an assortment of different little sausages and fish cakes. our server, thoroughly explained the whole process to me, what everything was in the cold case, how to cook it and how much it was all going to cost (not more than $5 for both of us…). we started cooking everything up in the molten hot satay sauce, a spicy sweet mixture of ground peanuts, tamarind, garlic, onions, chiles, ginger and dried spices like cinnamon, nutmeg and coriander. it really is one of those perfect sauces that i am sure is nearly impossible to recreate at home. as we dug in, i remembered the last email i got from ainsley and thought how jealous he would be to hear about this… it was all really great, i particularly liked the fried tofu and pork stuffed tofu - both were nice and spongy and were able to soak up loads of the sauce. i was also a huge fan of the small plate of cucumbers and cubes of bread that we were served to eat over - the bread soaked up the drippings from the skewers, getting nice and soggy, while the cucumber was crispy and cold - making for a nice textural contrast. throughout the meal, i noticed the servers (all eight of them) keeping an eye on us. we got a few smiles and nods, so i think we made a good showing for the foreign contingency in addition to having a really good time.
fortunately, we are here in melaka for four more days before moving on to singapore. we'll keep eating and i'll keep you posted on what we find. david