Here In My Home - Malaysian Artistes For Unity

Tuesday 15 May 2007

Malay style beef soups in the Klang Valley

Let's talk about beef soup but over here if you want great tasting ones, you have to travel a bit further away. My favourite is located at the crossroads of Kg Melayu Subang on the Sungai Buloh Shah Alam trunk road. The shop has a branch a little further away at G-mart but I prefer to eat at the owner operated stall as I feel it tastes better here. If I eat there, I must have extra soup bowl without the contents to pour over my rice. However if somebody wants chicken soup or other types, I have to say sorry as the stall specialises in only making beef or more correctly beef ribs soup, with more meat than bones as usually available elsewhere. Also unlike elsewhere, here I do not add soy sauce to the soup as it tastes marvelous enough without such extra condiments. It is a different story with the soup prepared at the Subang mosque. Here I really have to add the chilli soya sauce mix and extra lime cuttings to cut the fat and its saltiness. Here you can have the soup with various meats as the soup mix comes from a single large boiling pot, but if you want more meat don't ask for the ribs soup but ask for the beef strips instead as you will get a mount of beef in the bowl. Here I also ask for extra plain soup but has to modify with the lime and soya sauce to add more oomph before I pour over the rice, and at the near end I also will pour the remaining rice into the soup bowl itself and slurp it all up.

Have you heard of cholesterol soup? I have eaten this twice, and the location is right in front of the kampung melayu subang police station. This soup if eaten regularly by me will surely cause me sudden death. The ajinaikmoto seasoning aka MSG my god is intoxicating but the actual reason the soup is called cholesterol soup is its contents, as all the parts of the bovine, even the ones not usually sold is used.(Anthony Bourdain would be proud). The owner buys these up lock stock and barrel and cooks all together in the magical boiling pot of soup. So do not be surprised that other than beef parts, intestines and other internals and fats, you may also get some unidentifiable parts that is usually extremely fatty. That is how it gets its name and if you do not add the chilli soya sauce and lime cuttings, for me it would be extremely heavy to consume.Definitely not for dainty appetites. Another place that prepares something similar is at the quarters of Alam Shah mosque at Jalan Pasar KL. But it is not as heavy but it does also have a jumble of innards etc in it. So to have something nearer to KL this place will be my destination, but on Fridays the queue is extremely long so forget about dining at this time. Nonetheless if you still want a taste of Malay homemade soup, the stall besides the girls secondary school near there is good enough except unlike the shops mentioned before thus, the soup is offered as a side dish so do not expect it to be served hot as it is placed in a big pot of boiling soup. So you can forget about having a steaming bowl of soup here.

Recently I went to ikan bakar ASBA stall again, and wanted to have their beef rib soup because I had the flu. The taste of the soup was just alright but it had a lot of bone chips as it was made from short ribs and was not meaty at all even when I took two pieces. Thus it was only bearable as a side dish. Nonetheless the most rubbish place I have had beef soup was at the KLIA quarantine centre canteen that I was previously misinformed the Gear Box or knuckle soup was wonderful. The taste of the soup was palatable but what makes me mad was that the meat of the knuckle was cut away already, so when you get your knuckle soup there is only a small portion of meat. Hello Uncle, you think people can get full by just sipping the bone marrow ka?Just after sipping a few times the marrow is all gone and then what, you can get full just drinking the soup?This is definitely a place that will not see my return visit.

These are the few places where i have memorable moments of eating beef soup and once i remember more places and get more pictures, i will modify this post. Why didn't I write about the world famous doraisamy soup you may ask, look at the titlelah. This is a story on malay style soup what......

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