Sago Worm

Sago worm is an authentic local dish for the native people in Sibu. Normally we use deep fried style for this special worm. It is very crispy, just like the fried crackers(I never try but my family said delicious!!). It contains lot of nutrition.

You can get it at Central Market easily with RM10 per basket.(Price as at Year 2008)

Pucuk Manis马尼菜

Pucuk Manis (we used to called it as 马尼菜/九指菜), a very common vegetables you can find in Sibu and almost all the restaurant will serve this vegetable. You normally will find the dry version in most of the restaurant. It is the famous and common dish in Sibu. Must try! Picture above taken from my mum's farm so it is actually quite easy to plant.



Pucuk Manis fried with egg said to be good for eyes. There have a few method of cooking, my house we make it either dry dish or cook with soup but both also fried with eggs. I like both!!

Hot Plate Char Kway Teow Tomato(Wet)

Char Kway Teow, literally "stir-fried ricecake strips", is a popular noodle dish in Malaysia. Normally if you order Wet Char Kway Teow, you get the non-tomato version.

Why I put it as "(Wet)"? In Malaysia, the stir-fried noodles normally cooked in 3 ways - Wet, Dry or Soup version.

• Wet - As seen in the picture above, it has thick gravy(not the soup version). Normally at other place, it is non-tomato version, but Sibu has it unique one. It sometime served in hot plate.
• Dry - No gravy for this kind of cooking, noodles will be fried with egg, bean sprouts sliced meat or fish cakes.
• Soup - This is cooked with lot of water and normally looks brown for the soup.

I personally dun like any chinese stir-fried noodles with tomato in it, however, I found this wet version Char Kway Teow Tomato is quite good. If you never try it, do go for it!

Rice Dumpling(Ba Zhang or Zongzi)

History:
Zongzi, a pyramid-shaped mass of glutinous rice wrapped in leaves, is eaten by people at Duanwu Festival(Dragon Boat Festival), May 5th in Chinese lunar calendar each year. The origins of rice dumplings are traced to the legend of Qu Yuan, a well-loved poet who drowned himself in a river. To stop the fish from eating his body, people made rice dumplings and threw them into the river. Another version of the legend states that the dumplings were made to placate a dragon that lived in the river.

Zongzi originally is called Bamboo Tube Zong the fillings wrapped into a bamboo tube. Later, it gradually develops with various shapes, like triangle-shape, pagoda-shape, and cudgel-shape, ect. And more and more materials can be made of fillings, providing all kinds of flavor. At present, Zongzi is not only a kind of traditional food at Duanwu Festival, but also become a common food in daily for its delicate taste.


Dumpling Type:
Generally, Zongzi can be divided into 4 types: Beiping Zongzi, tasted sweet; Guangdong Zongzi, used all kinds of materials and cost the longest time in making among the four; Taiwan Zongzi, mainly made by meat; and Huzhou Zongzi, having two flavors of sweet and salty

The dumplings need to be steamed or boiled for several hours and one superstition says that dumplings will never cook if a pregnant woman enters the kitchen whilst they are being steamed. Dumplings may also be frozen for later consumption, but must be boiled instead of steamed when stored in this fashion.

The Zongzi that you find in Sibu is mixture of everything. The common one will be the meat dumpling which show in the 2nd picture above. It usually make with pork, sausages, Chinese mushrooms, salted egg, and chestnuts. Other filling like peanut is quite common. This is the salty version.

Sweet version you can get the filling with red beans paste or mashed yellow beans.

Some types of zongzi contain no filling at all, in which case they are usually eaten with sugar or kaya(coconut egg jam).

Sarawak laksa

Sarawak laksa (Malay: Laksa Sarawak) comes from the Malaysian state Sarawak, on the island of Borneo. It is actually very different from the curry laksa find at other place as the soup contains no curry at all. It has a base of Sambal belacan, sour tamarind, garlic, galangal, lemon grass and coconut milk, topped with omelette strips, chicken strips, prawns, fresh coriander and optionally lime. Ingredients such as bean sprouts, (sliced) fried tofu or other seafood are not traditional but are sometimes added.

Personally I like Sarawak Laksa quite a lot because of the unique taste and they have less coconut milk. You can find it in most of the coffeeshop in Sibu.

You can find the list of restaurant in Sibu HERE.

Kompia(光饼)

"Gom bian" (光饼) (or Kompia)- a Foochow delicacy made with flour, baked in an oven and with sesame on top.It can be eaten either with or without filling. The one kosong(means empty) is the traditional, the rest with filling are the improved version. You can see market selling the one fill with meat and a special gravy.

There are 2 types of kompia, one is the one I introduced just now which tasted salty, another is called ZhenDong which tasted sweet, it is softer and fluffy. Both types are advised to eat while hot else it will become harder, so normally we will try to re-heat it and it will taste better.

Kompia

ZhenDong

Bek Ding Yuok(八珍药)

"Bek Ding Yuok" (八珍药 in Chinese)(or pek ting ngor): The soup of eight essences - nice, sweet, tasty and nutritious Chinese soup made of at least eight types of Chinese herbal materials. It is good for health especially helping in recovering from lost of blood.

八珍汤，古代中药汤剂，使用当归、川芎、白芍药、熟地黄、人参、白术、茯苓、炙甘草制成，有补气之功效。用于治疗气血两虚，面色苍白或萎黄，头晕耳眩，四肢倦怠，气短懒言，心悸怔忡，饮食减少，舌淡苔薄白，脉细弱或虚大无力

This type of herb soup seems not very common at other places, they said it should be good for ladies. Like my friend in West Malaysia, they said guys never drink this. However, in Sibu, I think generally all people despite the gender will drink the soup.

It is basically a black soup, which usually have 2 tastes, sweet and bitter version. I personally like the sweet version and that is the only sweet soup(not dessert) that I drink.

Dian Mian Hu(鼎边糊)

"Duёng Mian Ngu"(鼎边糊) (Dian Mian Hu)- a savoury soup with soft rice cake is available at several stalls as a hefty breakfast or a late night supper. It is often served with fish balls and squid. This is traditional foochow dishes also. It can be eaten any time, from breakfast to dinner. It normally sale at RM3 for normal one and RM4 if you added special ingredient like meat or fish ball.

鼎边糊主料是以白米和水磨成的米漿，做法是锅汤烧开后，将米浆淋置锅边，稍干后用小铲刮入锅中，与海鲜、蔬菜、肉类等配料煮成的汤合成，口感爽滑，味道清甜，十分美味

Where you can find this?
诗巫德古路美景花园的<福远茶室>(山民迷你市场旁边)
They have curry Dian Mian Hu and curry pan mee also.

Bian Nyuk(扁肉)

"Bian Nyuk"(扁肉, also called wonton, 雲吞) - a meat dumpling which can be served dry or in a soup. The way of making is almost the same. It is easy to make and you can make it at home too. Same as kampua, BianNyuk also can have different flavour, the ooriginal white, dark(with soy sauce) and red(with chili sauce). My another favourite dish, whenever get back home, sure want to try this.

Kampua(干盘面)

"Kam Pua" noodle (干盘面) (kampua) - noodles tossed in pork lard or vegetable oil, fried shallots, spring onions and sometimes soy sauce and/or chili sauce. It is available at almost all coffee shops and food stalls.

You can tell from the colour of kampua what it is actually added. Original kampua is always white like the picture above, black kampua is added with soy sauce(you can request to add chili sauce) and red kampua is added with chili sauce. I prefer the original one, simple and so nice.

There are 3 types of noodles, made with the same ingredient but texture different. The 1st picture show the flat noodles, the 2nd picture is the curly version and the original, the 3rd picture is the round straight version. I personally prefer the curly noodles over the other 2.

Kampua can be served in soup too. By default if you order kampua, it always come with dry version. If you are tired about the dry one, try the soup one, it tasted good.