Sally's Kitchen Homecooked Food Delivery (for May)

As mentioned in my previous blogpost, I'm indeed lucky to have found Sally's Kitchen Homecooked Food Delivery in my very neighbourhood that dishes out not only great tasting food but at such affordable prices too.  So, I obviously continued with my food orders from them.

Week 1 of May started with Lemak & Assam Patin Fish Slice Curry @ RM13 with Homemade Seafood Tofu & Loh Hon Chai.  When I ordered, I didn't know what to expect when the food description had the words of lemak, assam and curry all in the same sentence.  So, is this assam or curry, I wondered?

First of all, the lemak & assam patin fish had a reasonable amount (5 - 6 slices) of patin fish together with tofu puffs, tender okra and softened cabbage.  It turned out to be a cross between a curry and an assam.  It tasted more of a curry (there's the taste of santan) than an assam but you do get a tinge of sourness from the tamarind paste (assam jawa)...certainly not the flavours of a typical assam fish that we know.  I later found out that this is a Nyonya version which is a mix between curry and assam...and it's known as Nyonya-style assam curry fish (I think this description is less confusing).  This curry/assam was packed full of flavours and adequately spicy but nothing I couldn't handle.  I would order this again in a heartbeat.

The Nyonya-style assam curry fish was accompanied by homemade seafood tofu.  Even this was well done....fragrant and nicely seasoned.  It came with a separate packet of chilli sauce which wasn't needed at all since we were in the company of a good curry.  The vegetables of loh hon chai (braised mixed vegetables) had pak choy, (Chinese cabbage), bean curd sheets, shimeji mushrooms, carrot and glass noodles.

The other option for Week 1 was the Sweet & Sour Pork Rice Set @ RM12 with Long Beans Omelette & Stir-Fried Cabbage with Dried Shrimps.  The sweet and sour sauce was decent enough but I found the pork chunks (which resembled meatballs in shape but without the minced mouthfeel) to be denser with an almost non-existent crispy texture.  This one fell short compared to the many good ones I've eaten.  You could say this one had a chap fan standard instead of a restaurant quality dish.  Perhaps, this dish suffered the effects of delivery as I've often said sweet and sour pork is a dish that doesn't travel very well.

Although I appreciated that the sweet and sour pork was fried with pineapples (besides onions & green bell peppers), I wasn't too thrilled when I realised they were canned pineapples.  Canned pineapple just doesn't have the texture, sweetness and freshness of fresh cut pineapples. :(

The long beans omelette and stir-fried cabbage with dried shrimps and shredded carrot are common dishes you can easily get off the chap fan line and were simply there to complete the meal.

Week 3 (kitchen was closed for the Raya holidays) featured Nasi Lemak Kunyit with Ayam Goreng Berempah @ RM12 with the usual condiments of hard-boiled egg, cucumber, fried ikan bilis (dried anchovies) & kacang (nuts) and sambal (all packed separately).

The ayam goreng berempah (fried spiced chicken) drumstick was nicely fried and fragrant with a balanced taste of spices.  You can taste the fragrance of the lemongrass and curry leaves in the spice mix.  I was glad that the lemongrass wasn't overly used (as some can be where you can taste nothing but lemongrass).  Some might wish the chicken meat to be juicier but I was ok with it seeing that the chicken drumstick had good flavours and was cooked through (which I certainly appreciate as I had gotten my fair share of still bloody fried chicken leg or drumstick).  In fact, I dare say that this ayam goreng berempah is comparable to the good ones made by the Malays (even better than some).  Well, well, who knew a Chinese chef can make a just as good (if not better) ayam goreng berempah (I'm both surprised and proud).  Next, we should learn to make a just as good Mamak or Indian-style fried chicken...hehe! ;)

Unfortunately, I can't say the same for the sambal which have room for improvement.  It was still a very 'Chinese' sambal (if you know what I mean that's full of onions) which is totally different from a Malay version but still better tasting than some Chinese-style sambal I've eaten in the past.  They did a much better job with the super spicy but addictive fresh sambal that came with the Nyonya Lobak set.  As for the good quality, crispy ikan bilis and freshly fried kacang, there's nothing to fault.

The other choice for Week 2 was the Hakka Fried Pork with Chow Lup Lup @ RM12, the latter of which I was first introduced to at chap fan stalls and later ate it from a restaurant specialising in Hakka dishes, chap fan-style, not knowing what it was called then.

The Hakka fried pork (char yoke) arrived fully looking the part with its colour and smell.  This one was cut much thicker than the previous Hakka Fried Pork Belly Rice Set I had, so you can taste the marination in the coating a bit more.  Although the flavours were there, the texture was much too dense for my liking (where the lean meat was a bit tough and the fatty part was not soft enough)...and the fact that it was cut thickly didn't help its cause.

The Chow Lup Lup is made up of a combination of stir-fried diced long beans, carrot, preserved radish, tofu, roasted peanuts and minced pork (although some of the ingredients can vary depending on the cook).  This vegetable dish has a very crunchy mouthfeel because of the texture and the way the long beans, carrot, preserved radish and roasted peanuts are cooked.  This version had a slight hint of heat but the vegetables were much softer than usual (due to the effect of being enclosed in a box probably).

Week 4's selection began with the Pork Curry Rice Set @ RM12 accompanied by Stir-Fried Cabbage with Glass Noodles & Salted Egg.

The tender pork curry came with three chunks of potato but when I bit into the first piece, I found it undercooked.  Luckily, the other two pieces were nicely soft.  Again, the pork curry was aromatic and thick (they're quite the specialist with curry-related dishes as none has ever been unsuccessful).

The vegetable component was stir-fried cabbage with carrots and glass noodles...a bit similar to loh hon chai from week 1.  Instead of the usual fried egg, we got a salted egg this time for the third component of this dish.  I consider myself lucky that the salted egg I got was of acceptable quality (compared to the ones I saw on their FB page).

The other option for the final week in May was the Lemon Chicken Rice Set @ RM12 with Stir-Fried Vegetables & Minced Pork Tofu.

I was pleased to be confronted with boneless lemon chicken (breast) pieces even if they were slightly more dense as it had good flavours.  I could clearly taste the lemon in the coated chicken pieces and enjoyed the sweetish-sourish appetite-inducing flavours.

The minced pork and sauce was also pretty successful as it had decent flavours going on.  There was one whole square piece of fried tofu beneath all that minced pork topping.  The stir-fried vegetables turned out to be cabbage, shredded jicama and carrot again.  These three (+ Chinese cabbage) seem to feature very too often and at times I do wish for other options.  But knowing that white-coloured vegetables keep (and travel) better than green vegetables, I guess we don't have much of a choice (this is also the case with many other food deliveries).

The food I had in May was leaning more towards standard fare but certainly decent.  There weren't any that wasn't nice....just that there weren't as many standouts this month compared to the first 1 1/2 months.  I wish I had known about them sooner (or if they had 'advertised' in our resident's whatsapp group earlier like when they first started some time in the middle of last year, right after the first MCO) but I can still count my lucky stars that I know about them now. ^.^

Their forte seems to be Nyonya and Hakka related dishes with a penchant for spice.  Now that I've had their food for close to 3 months, I'd still rate their Taiwanese Braised Pork Rice (Lu Rou Fan) as the best followed by their Thai Green Curry, Nyonya-style Assam Curry Patin, Nyonya Lobak with Egg Belanda and Mee Siam with Kapitan Curry Chicken (in that particular order...hah..hah) as their top 5 dishes.  For now, I'm taking a short break from them not because I want to but because I have to due to MCO 3.0 as Sally's Kitchen is temporarily closed until further notice.