Motormouth From Ipoh – Asian Food & Travel Blog

So, how has the Lunar New Year been treating you thus far? Were you part of the crowd enjoying some Gangnam lurve up north? Or frolicking rolling on the streets in KL or on your knees thanking heavens above for the brief escape from reality of no traffic jams?!

Everywhere else was a blast I am sure. Loud fireworks, dancing lions, snakey tunes (U-la-la …. it rolls off the tongue rather fine now, though it was a pretty cringe-inducing endeavour the first listen), politicians with a sudden interest in drumming and learning the Chinese language, while some others have become YouTube darlings with tongue-in-cheek rendition of daring (to make a change) tunes.

Dahfa Fish Fillets can be tied into knots, deep fried and resulting in a very addictive snack!

To most others, yours truly in this bracket obviously, the festive season revolves around more eating than the usual days. Traditionally, we ate kuih kapit (so-called love letters; those fan-shaped crispy thin snacks), nian gao (sweetened sticky rice cakes), pineapple tarts and popped groundnuts.

But then again, humans revolutionize anything and everything. Evolution of modern CNY snacks include fried arrowroot chips (nga ku), crabsticks/filament sticks, seaweed with beancurd sheets, and even sliced lotus roots (ling ngau). But how about Dahfa fish fillets (a ready-to-eat snack to begin with) or fresh potato chips?

Fried Arrowroot Chips (Nga Ku) – Someone came up with this brilliant idea and made nga ku palatable again to the kids!

Mum has always been on the forefront of discovering and adapting new creations in the market. Well, she transformed from a baker of butter cakes, homemade pineapple rolls and tarts and melt-in-mouth peanut cookies to a range of much simpler indulgences; the deep-fried items.

When arrowroot chips and fried crab sticks were all the rage, she found joy in churning out dozens of containers of those and distributed for free. Beats conventional boxes of Mandarin oranges any day, she would say.

Freshly fried, thinly-sliced potato chips taste so much better than the ones from the shelf. 

And in spite of the four consecutive years of blogging about CNY and the reunion dinners (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012). I have never captured any of Mum’s laborious works for sharing. Hence, this year I’m doing something different.

And I bet you are already sick of eating out and the perpetual bingeing sessions throughout the past week. So let’s grab that can of beer (or Shandy) from the fridge, lift up those gigantic feet from the floor and munch away …..

Golden brown, fresh from the wok potato chips – lightly salted and damn tasty.

If you had never thought of fried Dahfa fish fillets (refer to first picture), neither have I. Since I am no fan of the (non-fried) fish fillets anyway, I merely fended off the suggestion from Mum to try them. But I tell you … they are DAMN addictive.

Savoury, slightly spicy and crunchy, the knots of 3’s turn brown pretty quickly although they are not burnt/over-fried in the first place. The entire deep frying process takes less about 5 minutes, but it’s the preparation portion that’s time-consuming. The fish fillets tend to break if too much force is exerted onto the tying process, while if they’re too loose, they crumble upon hitting the oil.

Another snack you should try is the fried potato chips. There was definitely hesitation when this was offered to relatives back then; as if most (if not all) have tried potato chips in packets some time in their lives.

But the enticing thought of tasting ultra-thin (Mum uses a shredder), fresh from the wok potato chips then lightly-salted for some seasoning effect …. is inviting enough.

As I sit here typing this article while munching on the above snacks plus the very exclusive (not-for-sale, apparently) homemade pineapple teddy biscuits (NOT from Khoo Eng Chee, remember!) … it has dawned on me now where the extra pounds originated from.

Another week to go before Chap Goh Meh. Isn’t it time to share YOUR most beloved CNY snacks stories?