Street food 1

Next stop: Penang, which is famous for its street food and hawker stalls. Street food's always a bit of a gamble - it can either make or break your whole holiday eating enjoyment - but it's a risk I'm willing to take for a plateful of char koay teow, the fried rice noodle dish with prawns, onions, clams, chilli and beansprouts which you can buy at virtually any street corner in Penang. This is koay teow thng, a noodle soup with fish balls, served in my favourite colour dining accessories.

Melaka

Apparently the thing everyone likes to eat when they visit Melaka is chicken rice balls. So, of course, we did it too. There were loads of restaurants around the town touting their rice balls but we went for a local-filled place on the same road as our hotel in Chinatown, which as it turned out served only three dishes, so we had them all: rice balls, boiled chicken, and cabbage. The rice balls are basically made with slightly glutinous rice flavoured with chicken stock and rolled into little balls.

The best thing about the restaurant was the fact it was a traditional Chinese shophouse: the back of the dining area opened onto a lovely airy courtyard and someone’s house. They seemed to be ten-a-penny in Melaka’s Chinatown, and most of them are pretty well preserved, but then history is what this city’s all about. 

Chicken rice balls

Nuts for coconuts

As I've discovered over the years, a trip to Malaysia is all about the food. Having two breakfasts (one at home, one outside - maybe roti canai or fried noodles), or randomly popping out for a laksa, even if it's not actually a mealtime, is pretty normal. Even going to the food court at one of the malls in KL is a gastronomic experience: my favourite is the sleek, glossy, upmarket one in Bukit Bintang's Pavilion Mall, where I had a hot, hot curry laksa yesterday and a Penang-style turnip and peanut wrap. 

The Batu Caves just outside Kuala Lumpur is definitely one of the best sights to see in the area. We were just in time to see the end of the Thaipusam festival and the roads around the cave and its temple were packed with stalls and stalls selling brightly-coloured sweets, snacks and drinks, Indian slippers, bubble machines and beaded jewellery. The place was jangling and jostling with energy and people and music and traffic. After a sweaty trek up the 250-odd steps to the cave and back down again, we stopped for a coconut break. The top is sliced off with a sort of machete and inside is a slightly acidic, clear but very refreshing 'milk' - it's more like juice, but apparently as the coconut ages and dries out it becomes a creamy milk. 

Supper Club Episode 2

It's been a while since our epic adventure in goulash for Supper Club, but I feel I should finish what I've started.

After the coldest-ever trip to the shops (this was the weekend of the near-apocalyptic snow flurry in London) we returned home mid afternoon to finish preparing our dinner for eight. Bearing in mind that we'd stayed up til 3am the night before - after going out on the razz - to start cooking the goulash, it was with extreme horror that we discovered we'd added WAY, WAY too much paprika and the fiery brown liquid in front of us was in no way edible. To make things worse, the paprika I'd used was from Hungary, and therefore written in Hungarian, so I had no idea of the usage instructions or what was even in that crazy powder.

Significant Other resourcefully solved the problem by siphoning off all the insanely hot gravy and replacing it with water. We poked it anxiously. The rather sad-looking stew returned to the oven, and we hoped for the best.

Everyone started arriving a few hours later and by now the dinner was, thankfully, shaping up. We made them have two shots of slizovitch first and served a selection of cold Polish and German meats for starters, with freshly-baked bread rolls and a Czech-style potato, boiled egg and gherkin salad which was made very easily by combining the ingredients with mayonnaise and lemon juice. I would probably never have thought to buy Polish salami before but it was fab - a bit like a more smoky version of a Peperami, which, let's face it, we all love.

At last the massive Le Creuset dish was got out for the goulash moment and I must say, it was pretty good. The sauce was spicy, slightly sweet from the carrots we'd added - not a disaster, as we'd feared. The knedlicky dumplings were steamed and we had Savoy cabbage with it. A warm glow of achievement settled upon me (or maybe that was just the combination of wine, slizovitch, sloe gin, beer...).

That's the best thing about Supper Club: it's stressful, even if you don't mean for it to be, and something will inevitably go wrong, no matter how prepared you are. But it's a really good excuse to make an effort, and try things you never normally would cook at home.

(At this point I would give the goulash recipe... but seeing as it was hardly an expert attempt, here's one that actually went right!)

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Czech Potato Salad

1/2 jar gherkins or cornichons, sliced

1 bag new potatoes

a handful of chives

1 jar mayonnaise

juice of 1 lemon

3 eggs, boiled

salt and pepper

Boil the eggs and the potatoes. When cool, peel and cut the potatoes into small chunks. Do the same with the eggs. Add them with the sliced gherkins to a mixing bowl and combine with the mayo, lemon juice, chives, salt and pepper.

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