Udang Besar (M) 9.89/kg only!!

This was the scene when you’re selling king prawn (m) @ 9.89/kg in one of the hypermarket.

It was all started by Tesco Malaysia during the CNY 2006 period to sell prawn at a ridiculously low price. The move was soon matched by the others hypermarket operator and the price have never gone down for a long period of time.

The tussle is most evident between Giant and Tesco. With the most recent price lowering exercise by Tesco, consumers can be guaranteed a prolonged price war between the two hypermarket operators and reap huge savings as the margin were lowered for most of the goods.

Always remember, to shop at Giant hypermarkets that are within the vicinity of a Tesco outlet and I can assure you that you’ll be finding a lot of cheap goods on sale.

White, black, blue and golden.. Cod cod cod!

Nowadays we get plenty of variety of cod fish in the market. Sometimes it is easy to get confused with all the fancy names around.

It’s best to buy your cod fish from reputable retailers as some times it is not easy to differentiate the quality of cod fish if you’re not very familiar with them.

You can easily get cod fish from Isetan, Jusco, Cold Storage and Giant outlets. The best cod fish is the white cod with its extremely fresh taste and smooth flesh. To my knowledge, there’s no fresh cod being imported to Malaysia and all the cod fish we’ve got in the market are imported in frozen whole fish form.

When you’re buying cod fish, you’re offered the choice of fresh cod slice (actually they’re thawed) or frozen vacuum-packed (Cold Storage and Giant offer this). It is actually better to buy the frozen cod as they’re essentially from the same source. Buying the thawed cod fish means you will need to cook them immediately and freezing them again is really not a good idea.
Remember, it is never good to thaw and refreeze your meat or seafood as it will ultimately spoil the quality of the product.

Fishy fishy where r u?

Our local fresh seafood supply is very dependent on the moon. The best way to determine when to buy marine fish is by checking the lunar calendar (chinese calendar).

Unlike western countries that practise deep sea fishing a lot, our regional fishermen are still pretty much using the age-old techniques in catching fishes. During full moon period (12th to 22nd in lunar calendar), the night sky is brightly lit and marine fishes (like kembong, mabong, sardin, cencaru & etc) will be diving deeper into the sea thus making the effort to catch them so much harder. When the supply is scarce, most fishermen would not opt to venture out to catch fish because the return simply doesn’t worth the effort.

During this period of time, fresh seafood will be fetching higher prices in the wet market. You will also notice that the quality of fish are less desirable. The wholeseller or distributor will be using their buffer stock or thawed frozen seafood during this period of time.
If you’re unsure of the quality of product, it’s better to eat freshwater fishes (catfish, patin or tilapiah) or frozen seafood (dory fillet or frozen wholefish) as that will guarantee you better product quality.

YEAAAA – NAMASAKE!

Err.. what? niamahsake? No.. no.. no.. it is NA-MA-SA-KE….

Heck, what is that? Sounds awfully like the catch phrase of a japanase manga character trying to conjure a ball of energy or something like that.. :P

Namasake actually means fresh salmon in japanese sushi. Sushi is one of our favourite food and we patronize Nippon Tei KLCC and Sushi King pretty frequently.

Thinking of salmon, there are 2 main types of salmon being sold in Malaysia, there are chilean salmon (imported from Chile) and atlantic salmon (more widely known as Norwegian salmon as mostly are imported from Norway).

People will usually think of KLCC Isetan, Jusco and Coldstorage when they want to buy fresh salmon. Actually, the salmon sold in these outlets are mostly from the same source and one do not taste better than the other. However, Isetan has the most premium pricing follows by Coldstorage and Jusco.

Isetan and Coldstorage usually sell only atlantic salmon and Jusco usually carries chilean salmon as well. For the readers information, chilean salmons are all imported in frozen form and retailers merely thaw the fish before slicing them to be sold in block. Coldstorage some times have smoked sockeye salmon that is imported from the US, however it is only for those with an acquired taste bud (I personally don’t like the taste of it). Occasionally you might see Cold Storage and Jusco selling salmon trout, this is actually from Norway as well (usually imported in frozen form) and the flesh is more reddish in appearance.

The grading of salmon is based on the colour of their flesh. However the colour makes no difference in the taste. The colour comes from the fish feeds and it can be artificially controlled by the farmers.

Fresh atlantic salmon is air flown into Malaysia on weekly basis and one of the major exporter is Hallvard Leroy. They are the world largest exporter of farmed salmon.

The best way to cook a slice of salmon steak, is to add a spoon of olive oil on the frying pan, heat it up and cook both side of the fish steak for around 2-3 minutes. Bon appetit!

Marinated raw meat or seafood - Yummy???

This is only relevant to the people of Bolehland as this is a localized content for Malaysian.

Well, sometimes when you visit hypermarkets or supermarkets, be it Carrefour, Giant or Tesco, you might find trays of marinated raw meat or seafood selling at a premium price. All looking nice and tantalizing, however be warned that chances are the marinated meat or seafood that you’re so tempted to buy is not FRESH.

Most of the time, it is done to disguise the degraded quality of products. So it is always better to choose your meat and spices separately and spend a little more time to marinate them yourself.
The deciding factors of choosing a fresh piece of chicken wing or ikan kembong are the physical appearance and smell of the products. Once those are taken away, it will delude the customers buying decision.

The art of storing seafood… yeah it’s an art

CNY is just around the corner and some of you housewives and househusband will be storing a lot of seafood for the festive season. Wet market will most likely be closed during this period because the Selayang Wholesale market (where most of the Klang Valley fresh produces are sourced from) will be closed for one week during CNY.

Well, since I am in the mood today, I will share some tips in keeping some of your seafood fresh for a few days!

Cockles (Kerang) / Lalah / Live Oyster – our friends here are actually still alive when you buy them from the market, so please treat them with respect and do not just put them into the fridge as the temperature will kill them and thus emitting an unpleasant smell. If you have bought too much stock and unable to finish them :
- Get a small pail and fill it up with water
- Mix in few spoons full of salt and put them in.

They will be able to stay fresh and juicy for few days without you freezing them to death! Btw, I would not recommend putting them into the freezer because this will spoil the cooking quality.

Cut fish (Barred Mackerel-tenggiri batang/Threadfin-kurau/Grouper-Jenahak) – these are some of the more well known fishes that consumers like to buy in slices. Sometimes, they can’t finish at one meal so the uncooked balance will go into the freezer. It is again not the best method to store the fish meat, as during the process of being frozen the membrane of the protein cells will break and that will make the fish meat dry and hard the next time you take them out from the fridge to cook again.

- Best way is to take a clean plastic bag and put the fish meat inside
- Seal it up and put it in a container with water and ice (mix half container of ice with half container of water, make sure you mix the ice water first before putting the plastic bag in or else the normal water temperature will cook part of the meat)
- Put the container at the top shelf of your fridge (not freezer!). This will help to keep the meat fresh for 1 or 2 days without spoiling the quality.

Prawns, if you don’t intend to cook your prawns, make sure you dun soak them or put them under running pipe water. Our Bolehland pipe water temperature on a hot day is indeed “boleh” in cooking part of your prawn before you even put them into the frying pan.

If you plan to keep some fresh prawns, do the following:
- Leave the shell and head on. Don’t clean them yet.
- Take a container and fill it up with cold water (ice water is even better).
- Mix in few spoons of sugar (yeah, that’s the secret)
- Put the prawns in and make sure the water level is high enuf to cover the prawns.
- Put it in your freezer! This can last for months.

Why the sugar you might want to ask, the sugar will keep the prawn meat firm and juicy and apparently they’ll taste slightly sweeter too.. haha… for obvious reason.

Rules of thumb in handling fresh seafood :
- Make sure your hand is clean
- Do not leave any seafood expose to the room temperature for too long. Bacteria will grow very fast and thus causing it to spoil faster. Always prepare and store your seafood immediately after you bought them.
- Do not put / soak / cuci / clean / wash – wat-te-verrr… the seafood using pipe water, if you do not intend to cook them.

Well.. that’s all for today. Tune in later for more seafood insights!

OH Crab(p)!

Most flower crabs aka blue swimming crab(Portunus pelagicus) sold in Malaysia hypermarkets & supermarkets are frozen defrost seafood. Yup, they come in 10kg/carton box! They will claim that it is fresh but in actual fact they’re taken out from the freezer, defrost and viola -> on the ice-bed ready to be sold. Fresh flower crabs are still available at a slightly more premium price and usually found in wet market.

Male flower crabs have blue marking on their shell and the females are dull green. Most flower crab sold here are imported from India, Indonesia and Pakistan. Newly moulted flower crabs are being used to make the popular soft shell crab.

So, how do you tell a frozen crab from fresh crab so you’ll not get rip-off during ur next wet market visit? Easy -> just knock on the shell and the answer shall be revealed to you! J Hehe.. well actually there’s a simple check that you can do, look at the tentacles that’s sticking out from the front of the shell. For fresh crab, they should be intact and flexible to the touch. Where else for frozen crab, the tentacles are most likely damaged during the freezing process thus either broken or missing.

There, a simple seafood buying tip courtesy from your daily wat-te-ver moments!

Dory Fillet or Basa Fillet?

I have had the experience of being the seafood buyer for largest hypermarket operator in Malaysia (they’re expanding fast and deserved to be the market Giant by all means) for a year and that gave me invaluable experience in knowing the trade and tasted so many types of seafood!

I guess by now, many of you out there have tasted the dory fish. Do you actually know what is dory fish made out of? Mind you, it’s not the Ms.Dory from Finding Nemo.

Dory fillet, also known as Basa fillet (for US market) comes from the Pangasius fish. For Malaysian, it is ikan patin (river catfish). Surprised? Well, almost all the dory fillets sold in Malaysia hypermarkets and supermarkets are imported from Vietnam. Vietnam is the world’s largest producer of dory fillet now. The ones that we usually see in markets are in packages of 500gm up to 1500gm, containing 2 to 4 pieces of fish fillets. Those fillets are IQF (Individually Quick Frozen). During the IQF process, glazing (25-40%) will be applied to the fish fillets (to protect the fish meat and ensure its freshness). Basically, when u’re buying the IQF Dory fillet, 25-40% of weight are actually water!

There are generally 3 grades of dory fillet (quality and taste), the better grade of dory fillet is creamy and slightly pinkish in appearance. The worst grade of dory fillet is dark pink and yellowish (when cooked, the fillet is smelling and tasting very MUDDY)

When buying any fish fillet, if possible please go for those packages with large pieces of fillet instead of multiple small fillets in one package, this is mainly due to the fact that large piece of fillet contains lower glazing and you’re not paying more for water! Usually dory fillet comes in 3 sizes (120-170gm per pc, 170-220gm per pc or 220gm & above). The price per kg increases with the weight.

3 major hypermarkets operators in Malaysia carry this product. C4, Giant and Tesco. I have had the nightmares -> having only steamed dory fillets (without any sauce or seasoning) as lunch to try all existing brands in the market. The verdict as follows :

C4 – carries only a single packaging of 500gm per packet. Quality of product is ok. However the smaller packaging also means consumers are buying smaller fish fillets, which translate into higher percentage of glazing.

Giant – carries 2 types (800gm & 1.5 kg) pack of dory fillets. Quality of product is the best in the market. Good fillets size with reasonable glazing (you can test it out if you want. Just weight the fish meat before and after thawing).

Tesco – carries free weight. Products are usually repacked in food-grade wrappers or plan clear plastic packaging. Highest percentage of glazing (almost 40%) and product quality is the worst. Strong muddy taste when cooked.

The Country Farm (there’s an outlet at LG Bangsar Village) serves one of the best dory fillet dish around. Go try it out. The Vietnam Kitchen also serves a good dish using the dory fillet. One of my favourite outlets is in USJ Taipan (next to slimming sanctuary), easier to find parking and nice dining environment.