Ginger, rice wine and chicken bliss!

Lift up the fluffly omelette and it's the rice wine chicken!

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 11 My palate is still tingling from the ginger and my nose is still remembering the heady aroma of the Chicken in Rice Wine with Egg at Restoran Sai Kong in Kepong. Imagine a fluffy omelette with ginger strips floating on top of this rice wine chicken in the claypot.

The fried glutinous rice is a must-try.

My friend Jessie and I simply love this: it used to be food served to mothers in confinement. Now restaurants have this rice wine chicken on their menus, but none does it as well as Sai Kong in our opinion.

And its so generous with the kampong chicken, ginger and black fungus in the claypot. There are only two of us having lunch, and we slurp up every bit of the rice wine! The wine has a balanced sweetness, and a delicious aroma, which is the hallmark of a great homemade rice wine. There is not even a sour tinge.

Curried pork ribs... perfect pairing with hot white rice.

And the perfectly turned out ginger omelette soaked in the wine is the next best thing. You get the heat of the fragrant ginger as you bite into it.

Jessie always calls ahead to make sure we get our Korn Chau Loh Mai Farn (fried glutinous rice). Shes addicted to it, and so am I, thanks to her. Its a dark-looking glutinous rice fried with dried prawns, diced Chinese sausage, char siu, egg and mushrooms.

Its the skill of the frying that the rice grains do not clump together but remain separate, and surprisingly, its not oily. All the flavours of the diced ingredients cling to the glutinous rice, making it irresistible.

The Curried Pork ! Ribs cou ld do with less curry powder, but that was only a minor fault. The Indian curry leaves in it made up for this somewhat, as well as the very tender meat that fell off each rib.

A plate of well-fried sweet potato leaves with sambal made up the rest of our meal. The portions of food were for at least four people, and we ended up taking leftovers home. What did we pay? RM12 for the Fried Glutinous Rice, RM33 for the Chicken in Rice Wine (it was worth every sen!), RM18 for the Curried Pork Ribs and RM8 for the vegetables.

Sam Po... braised pig's trotter, pork ribs and tendon with octopus all in one pot.

We came back again a month later to have the same Chicken in Rice Wine with Egg, as well as the Fried Glutinous Rice.

This time we added to our meal the Sam Po (three things in a pot), another specialty of the restaurant. This has a well-marinated, deepfried pigs trotter, tendon and ribs braised in a claypot with octopus. Yummy aromas rose up from the pot, and the flavours of the nam yue (red fermented beancurd) and octopus were well-infused in each meaty soft rib, gelatinous tendon and pigs trotter, achieved by the slow cooking in the claypot. Needless to say, these were wonderful eaten with rice.

A yummy vegetarian dish of pumpkin, lai pak, gluten puffs, water chestnuts and mushrooms.

We also had a vegetarian dish, in the spirit of Chinese New Year. It comprised slices of pumpkin, black and abalone mushrooms, gluten puffs, chat tai (vegetarian sausage) and water chestnuts. It was a very nice combination. The pumpkin was soft and creamy, the water chestnuts were sweet and crunchy, and the gluten balls soaked up the tasty sauce.

Restoran Sai Kong is located at 23 Jalan Helang Sewah, Kepong Baru, 52100 Kuala Lumpur! . You ca n approach the place from Segambut, from Desa Sri Hartamas. Turn left, immediate right, go straight, count four traffic lights, turn right and you will be there. Call 016-274 7633, 03-6273 2242.

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