Smaller towns abundant in fresh seafood harvest

ACROSS the street from Perak’s Sitiawan wet market is a coffeeshop serving boiled golf ball-size cockles at night.

Across the street from Penang’s Menara Boustead in Jalan Sultan Ahmad Shah is a lane that leads to the huts of flower crab fishermen.

Cockles in Bagan Lalang, Butterworth. – LIM BENG TATT/The Star

During spring tide, they return every morning with flower crabs and sometimes spiny lobsters, and they sell them all live.

About 5km from Sik town in Kedah is a Wednesday pasar malam (night market) where a fishmonger sells freshly caught wild lampam (tinfoil barbs).

Though bony, this fish has sweet, cottony soft meat.

In Perak’s Kampar wet market, there’s an elderly woman who specialises in scraping the meat of belida (giant featherbacks), a freshwater fish with meat so sticky when minced that we make fabulous fishballs with it without adding fillers.

The ease of finding culinary joys away from big cities is also found in Butterworth, in the form of a char koay teow stall in front of the hawker’s kampung house in Bagan Lalang.

He ladles a heap of bulbous, half-boiled bloody cockles onto the char koay teow, just like in the old days almost anywhere in Malaysia.

All of the above are not cheap.

The boiled cockles in Sitiawan is RM30 a plate. The live flower crabs, RM50/kg. The live lobster, RM200/kg. The lampam, RM50/kg. The giant featherback meat, RM40/kg. The cockle-laden char koay teow goes for RM16.50 to RM26 a plate, depending on other condiments.

But that is how it is today when there’s less food security and “real food” is harder to find.

When I spent a few days in Klang Valley early this year, I dropped by a popular morning market in Petaling Jaya where I once lived, to check out what foodstuff were sold.

Just the sight of the small, soggy shrimps and the opaque, sunken eyes of fishes for sale turned me off.

A fisherman in Penang removing a live flower crab from his net.

I realise that big, fresh prawns as well as fresh meat and so on produced in the smaller towns of Malaysia seldom make it to Klang Valley because the best yields are absorbed by local demand.

Do not underestimate the spending power of populations there.

It seems that the chances of the best yields and harvests reaching the metropolis is lower.

Perhaps Klang Valley folk should consider domestic “market tourism” trips.

When you come to Penang next time, have a large, good quality ice box in your car and on your last day, visit Pulau Tikus morning market or the Batu Lanchang afternoon market.

Bring back fabulous fresh seafood to cook yourself healthy meals.

Oh yes, I loved the cockles of that expensive Bagan Lalang char koay teow so much that I became worried over claims that cockles have heavy metals.

Fresh tinfoil barbs at a night market in Sik, Kedah.

So I googled “cockles heavy metals” to look for articles of scientific research on the matter.

Much to my joy, recent years’ research on this in both Malaysia and Indonesia found that the heavy metals content in cockles are well within permissible levels. What a relief!