From Boat To Wok

By CLARA CHOOI
Photo by LEW YONG KAN

AS any discerning seafood lover will tell you, seafood is best eaten when the catch is fresh from the sea.

In the town of Sitiawan, located some 88km from Ipoh, this is the only way seafood is eaten; the morning haul goes straight from the boat to the wok.

In fact, a typical day of any restaurant owner at the town’s many coastal villages begins before the crack of dawn on a fishing boat out at sea.


Scrumptious: Ling Hock Ping showing some of the seafood specialities at his restaurant.

One such person is Ling Hock Ping, 50, whose restaurant Ah Pek Lee Kou Hock Seafood is one of the town’s most frequented open-air eatery.

The outlet is just one of the many popular restaurants located along Jalan Pasir Panjang in Kampung Cina.

“Whatever food I serve for the day comes from my morning catch. That way, everything is always fresh,” he said when met recently.

Hock Ping, who took over the restaurant business from his late father Ling Loo Loo 25 years back, goes out fishing every morning for six days in a week.

“We leave at about 5am every day when the sea is calm. My men and I will load up my sampan and spend a few hours fishing until our haul is big enough,” he said.

Once a sizeable amount of ikan kerapu, senangin, ubi, jenahak, bawal putih, oysters, mantis prawns, kerang, siput manis (sea snails) and tiger crabs are caught, the haul would immediately be brought back to the restaurant and business begins at 10am.

Hock Ping’s wife, Beh Ah Luan, 54, does most of the cooking at the restaurant and is helped by the couple’s three children, Keong Seong, 30, Siew Hiong, 27, and Siew Ing, 23.

Now, though the freshness of the seafood is important, the style it is cooked in is really what creates a scrumptious dish.

Here is where the restaurant earned its reputation for serving some of the town’s tastiest seafood creations.

Anything that gets steamed, fried, or grilled in Beh’s wok is always “drool-worthy” and customers there would vouch for that.

“I think what makes our food special is the fact that we created all the recipes.

“Everything was by trial and error. We taste the food at other restaurants, pick up the kind of taste that we find best and try to recreate it here by improvising,” said Hock Ping.

One of the restaurant’s most ordered dish is its steamed mantis prawns.

“People love this dish because it is steamed with butter and served over steamed egg,” said Hock Ping.

Steaming it, he added, brings out the natural juices of the mantis prawns and the butter lends the dish a slightly salty flavour.

Another delicacy and a favourite among many patrons is the siput manis (sea snails) dish.

“The snails are naturally sweet. All we need to do is steam them,” said Hock Ping.

To eat the snails, a toothpick or a fork is used to pry the snails out from their shells.

Some may find this a little distasteful but the sweet and juicy taste of the snail is enough to convince anyone otherwise.

Crab lovers, in turn, will not be disappointed when eating at Hock Ping’s restaurant.

Whether cooked in assam curry, sweet and sour chilli sauce, spicy black pepper gravy or steamed with butter, his fresh flower crab dishes will have you planning your next visit to the outlet.

The bright orange palm-sized crabs are so fresh that they are easily pried open and the slightly salty taste of the sea still drips from its tender meat.

Another seafood favourite at all of Sitiawan’s restaurants is the fried oyster omelette dish.

At Hock Ping’s outlet, the eggs are beaten to a fluff and fried together with the oysters, chillies and onions until they are brown and crispy on the outside and soft and fragrant on the inside.

“Besides this, I also have another oyster speciality – the bihun soup with oyster,” he said.

Instead of using the regular bihun, Hock Ping uses thick, white rice vermicelli imported from China.

“The taste of the bihun is different and it affects the soup by giving it a milky taste,” he said.

The bihun is boiled together with ginger, onions, lots of fresh vegetables, prawns, mussels and, of course, oysters.

“We make sure the soup is boiled long enough so the taste of the seafood comes out in the soup,” he said.

Besides that, the restaurant also serves all styles of prawns – buttered, steamed or cooked in tamarind and chilli padi.

Its fish dishes, too, are mouth-watering, whether cooked with ginger or deep-fried and laced with soy sauce.

“Still, at the end of the day, what’s most important to the customers is how fresh the seafood is.

“One way of knowing if your fish is fresh is by looking at its eyes. When they (the eyeballs) come out of their sockets when they are cooked, then you know it is fresh,” he said.

Of course, like all eateries in Sitiawan, the best way to wash down a wholesome seafood meal is by drinking cool toddy (coconut flower wine).

In fact, if you are lucky, you may just be just in time to taste the sweet and sour alcoholic beverage just as soon as it is made.

“Here in our shop, we buy our toddy from the local brewers. But everything is fresh, as usual, and made on the very same day it is served,” said Hock Ping.

So seafood lovers, take note.