Kuala Lumpur: Imbi Market -- characters, fruit, flowers, and dead chickens

Jack Fruit on the outside

Jack Fruit on the inside, you eat the yellow meat that has a large seed inside

Our chicken breast and chicken butcher

The migrant workers kindly hold up a freshly boiled and plucked chicken

Chicken butcher's mom

My elderly fishmonger

His scale

These Chinese-Malaysian women fondle, prod, sniff, and complain about the fish and the price until I'm sure they haggle the price down to half of what I pay. And, the fishmonger loves it.

Who is behind the basket?

Ta-Dah!
Boom's job is to carry the basket filled with vegetables.
One of his many jobs at Imbi Market

Can't even guess which of the hundreds of Chinese greens this one is. All I know is I buy and saute it.

Our weekly vege order.

Our vegeman

Our fruitlady. They have such women at every produce hawker stall -- their only job is to stand there, ready to collect your fruit for you, giving you the best ones, most or least ripe depending on what you ask for. She ADORES Boom and Boom hides, avoids, and claims he doesn't like her. She now steers me away from the bad fruit.

Sugar cane, I think

Malaysian pineapple

Papaya, I think?

This flower lady now tells me, "For you, Special Price!" I love that because it means she's been doubling or tripling what she's charged me since I'm a white expat all these months, but now that I'm a regular she probably only doubles what she charges the locals when she sees me coming.

Boom LOVES getting the flowers and paying for them himself. And so does the flower lady who laughed hardest when I said I had to get extra special lilies because my mother-in-law was coming in town, and YOU KNOW mother-in-laws! Oh, yes, do the Chinese-Malaysians ever know mother-in-laws -- they are big lore and well-respected intimidating old ladies.

Boom's ultimate goal at the end of the Imbi maze -- CREPES!
Get this: 20 crepes for $3. Food is so damn cheap here.

He has about 10 small crepe woks he's constantly flipping, cleaning, swirling batter, and moving around. He's the Dad, his wife serves the crepes/takes money, and the son has his own jam crepe stall next to theirs.

Click HERE for a video of the crepe making.

My favorite soup at Imbi Market -- You may remember my previous blog on "Blood Circulation Soup." I have it weekly. This soup stall was closed on Easter and I really couldn't handle it. Had to have my weekly soup. I suffered through pork porridge at a competing neighbor, feeling like a traitor, wondering if it'd give me food poisoning. It all reminded me that while I feel like such a savvy market go-er here, with my weekly Imbi Market trips, I really am not. If we had to start fresh at a new market, I'd be flummoxed. It's such a warren of hawker stalls and smells that make no sense.

Abraham's much-cherished weekly crepes and nutella. His face and hands get COVERED in nutella. A couple weeks ago, a Chinese-Malaysian older woman brought over a bowl of water and started scrubbing his face and hands down until he was a bit raw but clean. He was a little stunned. I had Boom give her a pink rose, as a thank you. She reminded me of my Aunt Molly, the Headmaster of Imbi Market.

Incense

More incense

Ah, the "carrot cake"

Does this look like carrot cake to you?
I tried to get an answer over why a stir fried item was called "cake"
All I got was that it's made with shaved white carrots and then the older woman made a lot of gestures she seemed to think mimed cake-making. Then we laughed very hard. She had no idea why it was called cake. Something about steaming it made it cake.
Click HERE for a video of him making carrot cake. Note the powerful fan shooting the strong smoke up through a hole between umbrellas. And, you can see how tired Boom gets at the end of an Imbi trip, even though he loves going to Imbi market with me. The rest of my family is completely grossed out by the chicken gore, smells, juices on the ground, etc, to the point that Ken almost passed out his one and only time here. But, Boom is a valiant Imbi shopper.
He has a line of older Chinese-Malaysian women barking orders. But, as with all lines in Malaysia, it is not really a line. A line has no meaning. Every week he smiles at me, I place my order, then he proceeds to take everyone's order who comes after me, serving them first, until I practically sit in his lap to get his attention and he gives me $1.25 worth of carrot cake. Must be worth the wait.

Now, when he sees me coming he says, "Spicy." Like he knows I'm a real local now, can handle the spicy. He probably still puts half the local amount of chili sauce in mine.

Ah, the trees above Imbi. Sprawling.

Umbrella-covered eating at plastic tables.

Yes, those are fish heads.

For fish head soup.

After 5 failed attempts at fish head soup, and stinking up my house for no good reason, this fish head soup was a success, in my book at least. In the beginning, I'd get the fish from the fishmonger and tell him to just keep the fishheads that he loving offered to wrap up for me, along with the bones, etc, for soup. He was shocked I wouldn't want it. Finally, one of the pushy Chinese-Malaysian grandmas told me I HAD to keep the heads and make fish head soup it was so easy. I could not say no or I might be banned from Imbi Market. I went home and made a weak, sad soup. But, I consulted with a few other women in line, repeatedly, and finally made it work. By the way, fish head soup is not actually served with the heads in it. It's just boiled in the broth for 30 minutes along with ginger, carrots, herbs, etc, the heads are removed, then you add the noodles and more.

Crunchy Fish Head soup toppings. My kids ate both the soup and toppings!

April 24, 2011