Railway Tourism: Lenggong Food Festival

As I mentioned in my previous post, after breakfast at Mak Tok’s House in Bukit Gantang, my family and I joined the rest for Lenggong Food Festival. Lenggong is a town in Perak, Malaysia. It is situated about 75 km north of Ipoh.

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It was drizzling and all foggy in Lenggong that morning. 🙂 Reminds me of the time I spent with my family in Genting last year. There are a lot of food that I have never seen or tasted before, and I took the opportunity to sample each and everyone of it at the food festival.

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First one that caught my attention was Nasi Daun Lerek. Similar to lemang, rice was all wrapped up and cooked in huge bamboo.

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The only difference with lemang is that instead of glutinous rice, normal rice was used instead.

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The taste? Very bland. I prefer lemang more than this, but it is tolerable with various traditional curries and dishes.

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Masak Besamah. One of my favourite that day. This traditional thick and half dry curry is lovely.

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Next up: herbal rice or nasi ulam.

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I tasted a scoop of this, and asked for more. 🙂 it is so minty and refreshing.

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Belitung curry with pumpkin. Unlike the one I’m familiar with, this curry is sweet instead of spicy. A welcoming change and my husband and I was sucking away happily on these. Yup…you need to sick on the belitung to get the teeny meat out. 🙂

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Next is Lambuk with freshwater prawns. I naively thought that lambuk is a variation of a traditional Malay porridge, but here in Lenggong, lambuk is actually some sort of bamboo shoots.

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Here is the ingredients for Lambuk with Freshwater prawns.

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This dish is savoury and superbly delicious and finger licking good! The crunchy bamboo shoots complimented the sweetness of the freshwater prawns very well and if I did not need to save some space in my tummy for other food in the food festival, I would have taken this with piping hot rice over and over again!

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Next on my post was Gulai Rebung Masak Lemak 🙂 this is the variation of bamboo shoots curry that I’m familiar with. It tastes okay I guess. I prefer the exotic lambuk more now. 🙂

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And then there is a never seen before traditional fruit salad, Kebebe.

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Various kind of wild kampung fruits were pounded together with shrimp paste, salt, lime juice and sugar.

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To be honest, it doesn’t look very appealing, but don’t judge it by it’s appearance. This sweet and sourish traditional fruit salad is absolutely exotic and divine.

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For those who fancies Javanese food would be surprised to see that there is Pecal Lele available for visitors to feast on during the food festival.

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It was okay. Nothing to really shout about and I’ve tasted better ones in Kuala Lumpur.

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Banana Curry with smoked beef. An exotic curry made from banana and smoked beef.

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This curry is another one of those kampung dishes that I have never seen before. The taste is savoury and a tad thick and gooey. Goes very well with plain rice. I like this banana curry very much, and would probably attempt to make em on my own one day.

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Rendang Daging Masak Hitam. The beef was wonderfully tender and was absolutely tantalizing to the tastebuds. 🙂

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Not a fan of fish, but these Ikan Pekasam Goreng is not only appetizing, but addictive and fragrantly pungent as well. Again, this traditionally fermented fish dish that is fried with loads of shallots goes very well with plain rice.

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Next up is Kampung Beng specialty, Pindang Ikan Sungai. Freshwater fish was used for this dish.

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Along with other ingredients that I am not exactly familiar with.

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The freshwater fish is wrapped up and steamed.

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This is the end result after long hour of steaming. Again, I’m not a big fan of fishes. The bones are a big turn off. But I tried this nevertheless. It is flavourful, and I wouldn’t mind a second or third mouthful if it wasn’t for the tiny bones.

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Finally, there is something I’m familiar with in the Lenggong Food Festival; Yong Tau Foo. Hahaha…I practically devoured this so did my boy.

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Freshly steamed pau.

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And last but not least, something sweet to end my gluttony; Putu Mayam.

Overall, Lenggong Food Festival was a great food trail, and I learned that there is a lot of uncovered gastronomic treasure that is left unknown. 🙂

There was plenty of activities during the Lenggong Food Festival, but because of poor redirection on the organizer’s part and the lack of attention by our tour guide, I was not informed about it and missed out most of the activities. I’ll update on that soon should I see updates on other media friend’s blog, so do keep an eye on this post if you are interested to find out more about it

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