My 5 Childhood Memories that relate to food.

I was tagged by Shiaulin again. This time its regarding food. However I do not really remember much about my childhood. There are memories but it looks like my hard disk is a bit corrupted. So I treat this as purely memories from any part of my life. I have a lot but I limit it to 5.


Fried Chicken, holds a special meaning. When I was young, my family was not well off. We stayed in our Grandparents home until certain age before moving out to a flat. I was quite young during those struggling years, I always remembers that when we have fried chicken it mean that day it’s someone birthday or celebration of some kind, like getting good grades in school or etc. I was once told by my mom the food that is often serve on our dining table is Bean Sprouts with salted fish. Hence I always remember that Fried Chicken is considered as a “food” for rich people. I remember when KFC first open its stores in Malaysia, I remember that year, my parents took me to a KFC stores near Pudu to celebrate my birthday. Now the place is called Shaw parade. I have a particular habit in eating KFC is that I do not eat it with any sauce. I love my food to be in its original and intended state and flavour.


Shark Fin, My mom was quite an entrepreneur hence when I was in primary school, my family financial standings improved. Fried Chicken replaces bean sprouts. Big chicken drumstick either fried or steam is the frequent “stars” on the dinning table. During this stage, a lot of my cousins start to get married. This opens me to a wider variety of foods. That’s where my love for shark fin begins. In my mind it has replaced chicken as the “food” for the rich people. I look forward to weddings dinner whereby I could savour the taste of having shark fin soup slowly zip through my teeth, hovering above my tongue and slowly glides down my throat. As I grow older, I do not wait for wedding dinners, we will eat it in our monthly buffet brunch. Again I rarely take it with vinegar. I normally take it as it is.


Cockle Fried Mee Or See Hum Chow Fun, I could not remember how and when I get hooked with this food. I think it’s also around my primary time. I remember that my breakfast on weekends will likely be Fried See Hum Chow Fun which is normally bought from the market. My friend’s mother is the seller. At that time, the normal colour of the mee is normally black or dark in colour due to the dark sauce being used. She will usually fry it with cockle. I do not like taking cockles. As the normal style is to have the cockles added during the last stage of the frying hence it will be quite raw. Hence normally when I eat it I will pass the cockle to my sister. Normally I would eat it with eggs added together to complete and enhance its taste.

I remember clearly that my love for this food increase by leap and bounds when a new coffee shop opens beside the market. There is this seller that fries it with prawns. I am not sure why but I remember the colour of the mee it’s a bit orangey as compare those that fries with cockles. This shops also packs it with pandan leafs and it added a new dimension to it, pork fats. Its one food that I love very much, the crunchiness and the taste is hard to explain. Once the outer layer of the fat munches away, you could then taste the oil from the fat itself. A very unhealthy food but its one that ignite my taste bud. If you guys still remember, there is a period somewhere in the 80’s whereby everybody was afraid of hepatitis. That’s where this food gets some face lifts. Instead of cockle, there are shops that fry it with fish paste, or char siew.


Butter Prawn, I get to taste this when I started to work in my current company. It’s when I spend most of my time in overseas. So once I was back in KL I will go out with my family and eat in a restaurant. The first time I eat this particular dish was in a restaurant in a place along Jalan Cheras. I love the crunchiness of the flour and the prawns. It’s a dish that needs to eat with rice as it’s a bit salty. Even now although I could not eat it but in those rare moments when my family goes out to eat, my sister will still order it. My wife also loves it. I have thought of cooking it before but I do not really know how. As the key thing in this particular dish is the flour. I heard it also cooked with milk.


Hokkien Mee, Every relatives that knows me, will definitely knows that my favourite food is hokkien mee. I am not sure what attracts me to it. The taste, the color, the oil, the pork fats? When I was in my teens I took every opportunity to eat it. I take it as dinner, as supper, as breakfast. Of course not everyday but to me I alternate it with rice. When I took it for dinner, I would normally be the first one in the shop. I would wait for the seller to prepare his ingredient for the whole night. He normally will fry loads of pork fat until he gets a big pot of oil. When he starts to fry the mee, he will use that oil. He will normally start frying the vegetables and the pork, then he progress with putting the big yellow mee in it. Once it’s ready, he will pour some bone soup onto it and he will close the wok with a cover and let it boil until it’s cooked and dry. He will then pour the crunchy pork fat onto it and stir it a few times before it’s ready to be served.

This particular food itself changes its taste when there is a pork scare. When there is an outbreak of disease related to pork, most shops stops using pork as the ingredient, they substitute it with chicken. The taste change, its not as nice as frying it with pork. I have eaten a lot of different variety of it. I have eaten it in HongKong, Singapore and Indonesia which I think is cook differently and it looks different also. None of it beats the Malaysia Version and the most unforgettable version I have ever eaten is the one in Petaling Street. After it was served on the plate, a raw egg is put on top of it. It smoothen the textures of the mee, it taste different and it’s quite unique.

I remember one incidence that happens when I was eating hokkien mee long long time ago, which was quite scary and dangerous. My favourite store is at the bottom of my flat. During my secondary school days, I will always “lepak” (loiter around) at the bottom of my flat and on Friday I will normally eat supper after hours of chit chatting with friends. I will normally order hokkien mee. There is this one night, a full moon, while me and my school buddies were enjoying our hokkien mee, I could see that suddenly there are numerous people walking past our table, one, two, dozen and 20 plus of them. I was quite curious. Although it was dark but because of the full moon I could see that this people were having a handkerchief covering their nose and mouth. Their attire increases my curiosity that is until I saw that each of them was carrying a parang or hatchet. This actually put an answer to my question that was running around in my head. I realise that this group of people is looking for their “enemy”, to have them killed or chopped. Luckily they did not manage to find anyone if not I will be caught in the middle of a parang fight.

I will passed this tag to Shiaulin husband Lee Cheen Siong only.