A Cameron Highlands breakfast

WELL I'm probably taking a punt in labelling this The Cameron Highlands brekky, but it certainly seems that every morning the locals in this part of the world are digging into feathery roti canai.

So we did too, of course. Though only once, 'cos after our hostel finished its kitchen renovations - on our third morning - and re-started offering breakfast, it was hard to pull ourselves away from banana porridge and tropical fruit with yogurt at genuine 1970s prices.

Or perhaps just an excellent exchange rate. Whatever.

Every Indian eatery has a giant circular fry pan at the front and a bench where balls of buttery dough sit ready to be flattened, flicked and twirled before being slapped on the heat then folded, folded and folded.

Roti is like tissue paper, begging to be prised apart with fingers, like fairy floss, then dipped into a runny curry.

This brekky The Crew opted for three sweet versions minus the curry at such an early hour.

There was kaya, the deliciously subtle Malaysian coconut jam, honey, and banana - sliced and cooked slightly between the folded sheets of roti.

Cold Milos, Horlicks (malted milk) and a black coffee for me and we were charged for a day of doing, well, let's admit, not a whole lot.

Little India in Malaysia

TESS and Benton are becoming big fans of Indian.
T loves her garlic roti and dahl while B has become a biryani fiend.

“Do they have biryani?” B is often heard saying when he's not saying, “Tess loves garlic” – a bit of a running joke as T thinks it makes her sound as if she’d like to chomp down on a clove.

Our first night in the Cameron Highlands delivered one of our most delicious Indian meals from an eatery welcoming us with hanging skewers of burnt-orange tandoori chicken and open benches for twisting and twirling sheets of cloudy buttery roti.

T and B were starved.
They ordered set banana leaf meals – T with a vegetarian option and B with a mutton curry.

We were quite jealous when they came out – rectangular banana leaves were laid out like a placemat for each and loaded with steamed rice, different sorts of spiced vegetables, curry, dahl soup and papadums.

T’s garlic roti was plump with chopped cloves – “Tess loves garlic”, Benton perhaps said again, though I can’t remember. And yes, this time she did!

Pictured outside our excellent guesthouse: less than AUD$3 a night and a brekky menu to boot.

After investigating the Main Man’s technique for cooking naan – flattened, wet and stuck to the inside of a cooking barrel – Wes opted for the tandoori set.

The chicken leg was skewered and put inside the barrel to re-heat, alongside the cooking naan, and served with two kinds of curry – dahl and chicken - and a mint dipping sauce.

I tried egg and onion dosai – a thin rice-flour bread cooked on a round stove until extra crispy, then folded in two and served on a giant silver plate with dipping curries.

Nice for a light meal and best eaten like the locals - with fingers for licking.

Drinks (clockwise): strawberry milkshake, mango lassi, ginger tea and banana lassi.

Tea for four, Cameron Highlands

SCONES with jam and cream plus a pot of Malaysian-grown tea means just one thing.
I am there with The Crew in tow, already planning a follow-up session while discussing serious matters such as “What do you feel like for dinner?” and “Where will we eat for breakfast?”

Yes, we are big fans of the Cameron Highlands, about four hours from Kuala Lumpur by bus, or if you’re lucky like us, an air-conditioned mini-van for four from Taman Negara.
(This travel-in-four business certainly has its financial perks!)

Cameron Highlands reminds me a little of the Blue Mountains or of Toowoomba.
Wispy curtains of mist float through the air, the temperature is quite cool – especially in comparison with the rest of Malaysia – and everywhere you look there’s lush green hills studded with flowers, butterfly gardens, strawberry farms and tea plantations.

Tanah Rata, where we’re staying, is a small town with one main street lined with eateries, including some excellent Indian - though with perhaps slightly shoddy service.
We’ve been feasting on light-as-air roti, naan, dosai, tandoori chicken, daal as well as a plethora of curries (to be featured in the next post).

Almost every other place offers scones and pots of Cameron Highlands “Boh” tea or fresh strawberries “plucked” – as the signs all say - from local farms and served with cream and icecream.

Yesterday we visited the Sungai Palas Tea Estate.
What a lovely surprise it was and incredibly picturesque with rows upon uniform rows of tea shrubs winding up and over each hill.

The café area was a tourist’s delight and an ode to good design, I thought – a kind of floating platform with louvres for unobstructed views cross the tea plantation leading onto an open verandah.

Sipping tea in such a serene environment is really such a gorgeous way to spend the morning.

“Boh” tea has been around since the 1920s, and is owned by an Scottish family.

The selections are vast – from black to fruit blends such as earl grey and tangerine, clove and cardamom, and cinnamon.
And what a variety of good quality cakes and tarts there was to complement them! Almost unheard of in Asia outside of major cities.

There was a very moist banana and carrot cake with cinnamon cream cheese icing, a coconut tart, strawberry tart, scones, chocolate cake with icecream, butter cake, lemon cake and apple pie.

We sipped tea, we took piccies, then we began the winding walk out of the plantation only to catch a ride for the remaining 1km in the back tray of a ute with a bunch of Singaporean school boys.

Good times.

A Singaporean breakfast

WHEN the sign on the wall reads, “How do you like your eggs? Runny and wet or wet and runny?” you know there’s little chance of getting your eggs hard-boiled.

But just how runny can a boiled egg get?

I thought the universally agreed-upon definition of soft-boiled was hard whites but runny yolks.
Sloppy whites is a no-no. They warrant a return to the kitchen.
Or so I thought until sampling the traditional Singaporean breakfast of kaya toast, half-boiled eggs and black coffee.

On testing out this brekky at Ya Kun Kaya Toast, a chain eatery in Singapore, I didn’t quite understand Benton when he told me the lady broke the eggs into the bowl.

“I think they’re poached,” I said, more than once, such was my confusion as to how a) a boiled egg could come cracked in a bowl and b) how it could indeed be so undercooked.

“No, they’re boiled, I saw her crack them,” Benton said again.
“They must be poached,” I said again.
“No, they’re boiled, I saw her crack them,” Benton said yet again.

And yes, finally I understood that they were indeed boiled and were exactly what the sign promised, “runny and wet”.

The eggs are so barely cooked it’s difficult to round them onto a spoon. They’re so gelatinous they slip and slide, wobbling off and sloshing about the bowl like a semi-set jelly. It seems the way is to whip them slightly, add a few drips of soy sauce and then use the egg for dipping your toast in.

Strange but tasty, though I would prefer my whites to be slightly firmer. Tess concurred.

Kaya toast is delicious and comes highly recommended by The Crew – Benton, Tess and Wes.
Crispy thin squares of toast with the crusts cut off, sandwiching slabs of butter and a smear of “kaya”, coconut custard jam.

On our second kaya toast venture, pictured above, I asked for my eggs “not too soft, please”.
But it seems nobody is prepared to bend a tradition that’s been “the same since 1944”, as another sign read, so runny and wet it was, once again.

Suck it up and enjoy!


Kaya brekky ratings from The Crew
Wes: “Can’t get enough kaya and butter. Not a fan of the eggs. 10/10 not including the eggs.”
Benton: “I liked dipping the toast in the eggs. They were too gooey but I still liked them. I love kaya jam – it’s really good. 9/10.”
Tess: “Tasted like my Mum’s vanilla cream pie with toasted shredded coconut. Eggs a little too soft and runny. They needed some substance. Minus the eggs, 10/10.”
Carmen: “The kaya is very subtle; sometimes too subtle. The butter is a definite must, though sometimes there’s too much and when the toast is cold it doesn’t melt. Runny whites scare me but taste good when I dip and don’t think about it too much. Mmmm, strong coffee. 8/10.”

Hawker centres and Sarawak laksa

HUNTING down the most recommended dish in each town we visit is becoming one of my favourite things to do.

Why, it was just last night when we embarked upon a journey in search of a tiny hole-in-the-wall, fairly shabby-looking food stall at a particular hawker centre in the middle of Chinatown, Singapore, for some very popular chicken rice.

In the end the stall was unfortunately closed, but nevertheless Tess and Benton - who have joined us to travel up through Malaysia for a fortnight - luckily share my enthusiasm and are happy to suss out the best places to eat. (Though perhaps not on Tess's part for the meat dishes!)

More on our Singapore adventures later.

For now it's a quick diversion back to Borneo, the home of the orangutan and also our most sought-after-recommended dish, Sarawak Laksa.

The first time I ordered a laksa Wes ordered something different. And he was so jealous that he decided from then on he would have laksa at every opportunity.

This particular number, pictured, was one of our favourites. Not too creamy from coconut milk, just the right amount of sour aided by a squeeze of fresh lime. The noodles were soft but pleasantly chewy, and the addition of strips of omlette was welcome.

My only complaint would be that Malaysians seem to have a habit of cutting the noodles, creating a bit of a conundrum with the chopsticks because they're actually much easier to hoover in long tendrils and more difficult in small bits.

To drink, a "White Lady" which was a bit of a fancy ice creation at the Open-Air Market, in Kuching: a tall glass, a scoop of fruit at the bottom - most notably lychees- topped with ice and layered with cordial syrups.

Wes was suitably impressed.