Penang Char Koay Teow - Fallacies, Mislabels and Essentials
Sydney can be lovely, but I do miss authentic Penang Char Koay Teow , which I must emphasise is a Hokkien or Fujian or Chiuzhou street food delight and not a Straits Chinese or Nyonya dish. CKT, or literally stir fried rice noodles, has humble origins, prepared only when you are ready to eat and makes use of the experience and skills of the ladle stirrer, cooked on a well fortified metal contraption that has been seasoned and heated through the years. Ideally, charcoal fire is best to bring out the taste and texture of this dish. Those rice noodles prepared several hours ago and served from a hot plate at food courts or even some so called restaurants, do not qualify to be called Penang CKT. Whether you use more of dark soy sauce, or the lighter version, can be due to personal preference, but for Penangites, we do not serve the CKT looking well dosed with dark soy sauce, like in Singapore and Johor, where they have a dish called Orr Koay Teow. To deserve to be called...