Kway Chap, a Teochew dish made famous by laborers who piled the trade is found mainly in Singapore and if you happen to jump across the causeway to Johor Bahru, it does not exist.
Instead you have a variant of it known popularly as Kway Tiu Kia, a rice noodle dish that is a little divorced from the Singapore version. As a kid, my Grandmother would take me to a lane in Meldrum walk in the 1970s, where a Teochew family would serve it as a breakfast meal in the morning. Those were the good old days and the fresh pork offal and meat would be sliced thinly into a small plate and accompanied with a bowl of Kway Tiu or Hor Fun as the Cantonese like to refer to it.
What made that dish stand out was the taste. It was well balanced and and I will always remember it. The taste between the meat and the spices used to cook the dish would be perfect. Unfortunately, I have been programmed to accept this type of taste whenever I eat anything remotely Kway Chap or Kway Tiu Kia.
For me, the secret to making a great Kway Tiu Kia is the soup base. Here I have seen many failures. The cooked broth is often too strong with spices such as Cinnamon or Star Anise. Sometimes, other herbs are added to virtually kill the taste buds once you taste it, other times it is bearable.
The version found at Johor Bahru's Tasik Utara, though with an attached history of more than 2 decades, is not to my liking for this same reason. Another known locally as "Restoran Hi Wan" also does not do the dish justice as the soup broth is too strong.
The only one that has found favor with me is the one located in Cedar Point, Century Gardens. It opens in the morning right to about 2pm and is closed on Thursdays.
Made by a Cantonese family, they have applied their Cantonese style taste to the cooking and made it their own. They too have been around for the last 2 decades though I did notice that the quality of the broth can sometimes be inconsistent.
The pork broth that is used primarily for this dish comes from cooking the pork offal, such as tongue, skin, intestines, tripe, pork belly, and tofu. The broth is diluted into a soup and served with the Hor Fun or flat rice noodles. This is where the inconsistency lie. Sometimes they add too much boiled water while other times it taste just right.
The use of spices to flavor the offal is crucial. Too much of it and you can't taste the meat. Each part of the offal has its own taste and this is very important to not destroy these flavors. Fortunately, they always get the taste of the meat right while the rice noodle soup is often a hit or miss affair.
A single serving for one person can be as low as US$2, and this goes up depending on variety of pork offal you order. Go a little crazy and you'd be hit with a huge bill of between US$3 to US$5 per person. Now that's a lot of money to pay for pork offal.
Kway Tiu Kia @ Meng Fang
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