Next city on the list is the vibrant island city of Penang, Malaysia.
Here’s some stats:
| Country | Malaysia |
| Founded | 1786 |
| Area | 293 km² |
| Elevation | 14 m |
| Population | 1.7 million |
Let’s learn a bit about the cuisine. Wikipedia tells us the following about Penang cuisine:
Penang cuisine is the cuisine of the multicultural society of Penang, Malaysia. Most of these cuisine are sold at road-side stalls, known as "hawker food" and colloquially as "muckan carts". Local Penangites typically find these hawker fares cheaper and easier to eat out at due to the ubiquitousness of the hawker stalls and that they are open for much of the day and night. Penang island. On February 22, 2013, Penang was ranked by CNN Travel as one of the top ten street food cities in Asia. Penang has also been voted by Lonely Planet as the top culinary destination in 2014.
After having a look at a few different dishes, I was interested by Penang Laksa. It’s got the city in the name, so it must be a good choice right?
After some research, the recipe intrigued me because:
- The recipe has no coconut cream or form of fat, which I assumed was required for Laksa
- There were some “hacky” recipies that used canned tomato sardines instead of mackerel (what?)
- Lettuce, pinapple and cucumber in a soup (what?^2)
Equipped with a whole £1.60 of canned sardines (thanks Waitrose) I was ready to tackle this recipe.
The other benefit is that this dish is super easy and super quick to make. It basically involves taking canned sardines, some spices, onion and aromatics, blending them and then adding water to make a soup base. All in all the dish probably took 20 minutes to make, and most of that involves prepping the accoutrements, such as cucumber, lettuce, pinapple and boiled eggs.
The dish came out pretty good. It’s definitely very fishy tasting, so if you aren’t a fan on intense seafood soups I wouldn’t recommend it. I’m glad I made it because I’d have never considered using canned fish to make a soup. I’ll never look at Waitrose canned tomato sardines the same way.
Here’s a photo of the end result (yeah, I forgot the pinapple). Try to make some Penang Laksa yourself!
