malaysiafest and cabramatta moon festival
Malaysiafest is held annually at Tumbalong Park in Darling Harbour to promote Malaysia’s unique cultures and traditions. But really it’s all about the food 😀 and so Helen, Minh, Simon and I arrive bright and early at 10am.
But first a pic of me with this tiger- Malaysia’s national icon. Look at the tigers eye holes!
Apam Balik ($7 for 2). It’s like a crispy pancake. With crushed peanuts, sugar and corn. Yeah it sounds weird but don’t knock it till you try it!
Just 2 seconds before spotting the pisang goreng ($5) we had eaten some “banana fritters” and had been disappointed that it was just banana cake and then deep fried. That tasted like fail hence lack of photo. But this! This was PROPER pisang goreng! Glorious banana fritters all crispy and golden with a scoop of icecream to wash it down.
Curry Chee Cheong Fun ($8.50). After seeing people holding bowls of noodles Minh goes off to lineup for the curry chee cheong fun. 5mins later she has eaten everything but left behind the noodles- “there’s too much noodles!” she cries
Roti canai ($5). The popular stall of the day is Mamak with its long queues but hey anything for a fluffy roti and curry or their teh tariks!
Malaysia boleh! Impromptu picnic = win! Char Koay Teow fried flat noodle ($7), Char Koay Kak fried radish cake ($7), Ang Ku Kueh ($5 for 3), and another Apam Balik pancake.
This is what we may have looked like…
And then we trekked to Cabramatta for the Moon Festival and met up with Howard & Linda and Karen & Shaun. My awesome powers of persuasion meant i managed to con Howard, Karen and Simon to take part in the mooncake eating competition with me heh heh. At least we didnt have to eat 4 in 4 mins like previous years! Tho we did have to sign a waiver in case anything happened to us haha and props to Helen for taking photos for me!
Pretty much it was first to finish their mooncake wins. Oh and they made us open our own mooncake packet which i thought was a bit unfair considering i always need scissors to open those things. Because i am weak. Oh and like our tshirts? Sponsoring at its finest.
20 seconds into the comp and about halfway thru our mooncake i think we were all thinking oh crap why are we doing this. i know i sure was. Without any water eating the mooncake was near imposs to eat fast. The lotus paste stuck to our tongue and the crumbly egg yolk oh man. Later on Howard tells us how he hears his neighbour wheezing and starts worrying he’s choking mid mooncake chomp.
When we realise that Simon is going to win, Howard, Karen and i stop all attempts at eating and cheer him on heh heh foodbloggers stick together yo. Simon scores a mobile phone for his troubles
And then i had to get eat something savoury. Bwahaha check out this crazy potato coil on a stick ($2.50)! Deepfried of course 😀 And with the option of chicken salt, cheese salt or uh one other salt that i cant remember. It wasn’t as crispy as i would have liked but it was still tasty! As was the custard apple shake mmm sweetness.