Sally's Kitchen Homecooked Food Delivery (for July)

After closing for the first two weeks of MCO 3.0 and about a week during the EMCO, I was thankful that Sally's Kitchen Homecooked Food Delivery has resumed operations once again.  That's good news for those of us who orders from her weekly since they're located in our same neighbourhood.  Good food with no delivery charges is hard to come by these days with food delivery platforms now in such high demand that delivery fees are at its highest with hardly any discounts in delivery charges.

Week 3 of July started with something old, something new, the Curry Chicken & Osmanthus Egg Rice Set @ RM12.  The something new is the osmanthus egg while the something old was the curry chicken from the mee siam with chicken curry kapitan previously.

The only osmanthus I was familiar with is the sweet dessert of transparent osmanthus cake made with osmanthus flower in a jelly-like cake.  Some would even have goji berries or water chestnut in them.  So I was wondering what this osmanthus egg was.....it turned out to be a mixture of scrambled eggs with Chinese dried mushrooms, wood ear fungus, glass noodles, julienned carrot and spring onions that was served on top of a piece of sang choy (lettuce).  It was ok...nothing to be overly excited about.

The curry chicken was pretty much the same in flavour with the previous curry chicken kapitan.  It was still thick and delicious...and I fully welcomed a bit more potatoes this time round.  Knowing how good the curry chicken was from past experience, I did not hesitate to get an extra a la carte portion @ RM8 for our dinner later that day.

A rather generous portion as you can see...this was almost two portions of chicken curry (drumstick & thigh) which I reheated for our dinner (as I only ate one piece of chicken & potato for my lunch earlier in the day).  

That same week, Sally's Kitchen also had for sale their Hae Bee Sambal @ RM12 (for 150g), a classic Nyonya dried shrimp sambal.  This slightly spicy dried shrimp sambal is made with the pounding or blending of lots of dried shrimps (har mai) and frying it with a chilli paste until dry.  So far, their attempts at the dishes they put out have turned out mostly successful but (unfortunately) I can't say the same for their hae bee sambal.

How good a hae bee sambal really depends on how good the quality of the dried shrimps are...and this one fell short.  It was also missing that chilli oil to make it more fragrant.  I have to say my mom makes a much better dried shrimp belacan sambal (har mai ma lai chan lat chiew).  When we visit her, she would make extra tubs for us to take home.  It's so good, I even spread it over a piece of cucumber...simplicity at its best!

It was very easy for me to assemble this look-alike nasi lemak (but with plain rice lah) for our dinner that day with their curry chicken and dried shrimp sambal by just throwing in some fried ikan bilis, hard-boiled egg and cucumber slices.

The following week saw Chinese Pork Chop Rice @ RM12 featured with sides of potatoes & onions in a sweet and sour gravy with stir-fried mixed vegetables of cauliflower, broccoli, carrot and shimeji mushrooms.   I liked that there was a variety of vegetables and they were cooked until soft. 

The fried pork chop was cooked in a sweet and sour gravy along with potatoes and onions.  The pork chop was lean but sufficiently tender.  This dish is quite similar to sweet and sour pork except you'll be missing a bit of that crispiness you'd get with the smaller chunks of pork since this was done with a piece of pork chop.

The second option for the week was Nasi Goreng Kampong Inchi Kabin @ RM12 which paired a nasi goreng kampong (fried rice) with deep fried chicken marinated in spices served with fried egg, anchovies & sambal belacan.  Inchi Kabin is typically a Nyonya version of fried chicken and this one was well executed.  Even though the chicken didn't arrive fully crispy, it still had good flavours and the portion was really generous with 3 good-sized pieces of chicken from the chicken thigh/leg section.

Besides the Nyonya fried chicken, you also get a decently cooked nasi goreng kampung with two large prawns (it had the crunch like frozen prawns but at least it had the taste of prawns), a fried egg, crispy ikan bilis and a sambal belacan (the same one served with the previous Nyonya lobak set).  If that is not value for money, I don't know what is.

That same week saw a third dish offered (for the first time), Zha Jiang Mian @ RM9.90 with minced pork & potatoes served over a bed of noodles with sides of pickled radish, julienned cucumber & carrots.  Zha Jiang Mien (or Char Cheong Meen) is a popular noodle dish from China that's often referred to as Beijing Fried Sauce Noodles.  It's a dish where thick, flour-based noodles are tossed with a rich, meaty sauce (usually pork mince) along with finely shredded cucumber and carrot.

The sauce is usually made with a sweet bean sauce or hoisin sauce and ground bean sauce (made from fermented yellow soybeans that's saltier and less sweet).  The thick meat sauce was generous and plentiful but I found tiny cubes of potatoes in it (which I initially thought were pork lard bits at first glance).  I don't think this would be in a typical char cheong meen dish, right?

I did enjoy the wide, flat and chewy noodles which were cooked right.  Though the meaty sauce tasted decent, it didn't quite taste the same nor look as dark as some char cheong meen recipes I've eaten (the one I had in Esquire Kitchen comes to mind).  Then again, I'm no authority on zha jian mian since I hardly eat this type of noodle.

The menu for the final week of July kicked off with a repeated dish of Thai Green Curry @ RM13 with sides of Onion Omelette and Stir-Fried Long Beans & Carrot.  The Thai Green Curry was one of the first things I tried (and liked) from Sally's Kitchen, so I reordered when the dish came round again.

This time, the green curry came with added softened cabbage besides brinjal.  Unlike previously, there weren't quite enough brinjal + it was cooked too soft (coz the pieces were cut smaller) until it kind of disintegrated into the curry.  The green curry was still delicious, just not as good as I remembered when I had it the first time.  It was missing a bit of that green curry paste flavour as I tasted creamy santan more than anything else.

Another choice for the week was this Braised Hakka Pork Belly with Stir-Fried Green Vegetables @ RM12.  It arrived in a long plastic container with 3 compartments (I've to say I've not seen a container like this before). Hey, this will come in handy as a recycled container to tapau chap fan (of 3 dishes).  This is one food delivery that have their food packaged in many types of containers. 

The Hakka Char Yoke or braised pork belly was excellent...the half lean, half fat chunky pieces of pork and black fungus were nicely tender and the delicious sauce, with a hint of Chinese cooking wine, was good...maybe just a teeny-weeny bit salty but that will be taken care of when eaten with rice.  I liked that the pork belly this round was not as fatty as the previous Braised Mui Choy with Pork dish.  I also preferred this to their previous Hakka Fried Pork.

The stir-fried greens turned out to be tenderly soft Hong Kong Choy Sum with crispy fried shallots.  A nice touch to round off the meal...just wished there was more of it.

The final menu for July was this Fried Meehoon with Dried Shrimps with Curry Vegetables & Fried Wontons @ RM12 served with a dipping of fresh red bird's eye chillies and soy sauce.

The white-coloured fried meehoon with omelette shreds was not oily and good even on its own (for me) though others would most probably prefer to eat it with the vegetable curry for more flavour.  The fried wontons arrived fully crispy with a pork mince filling...nice and crispy, nothing to fault.

The vegetable curry was really good with ingredients of softened potatoes, carrots, long beans, cabbage, brinjal, ladies finger and beancurd puffs.  If there's one thing they do well, it's their curries! ;)

Again, Sally's Kitchen has come through for me in helping me solve what to eat (and not having to cook) for at least 3 meals (usually dinner) in a week now that they offer a third dish for Fridays.  Actually, I quite enjoyed their fried rice and fried meehoon which they (surprisingly) did rather well, not too oily or overly savoury. The other would be their deliciously tender Braised Hakka Char Yoke & Black Fungus (with its hint of Chinese rice wine) which certainly deserves to be ranked among their top dishes so far.....with hope of more to come! ^_~