Just another opinion on food
Heading back up to Ipoh in March this year, I acquired another batch of heong peah to attempt another battle. It’s been six years since the first.
The contestants in this round are Sin Eng Hoe, Sin Eng Heong, Lam Fong and Ching Han Guan. Are Eng Hoe and Eng Heong related? Who knows? We’re just going to go on taste here.
The only repeat from the previous lot (unplanned) is the sample from Sin Eng Heong. But even that has a different packet and the biscuit looks slightly different.
There’s another famous biscuit that comes from Perak, and it’s the chicken biscuit.
It contains zero real chicken, but has all the beauty of chicken flavouring. It also contains nam yu, a type of red coloured fermented bean curd, sesame seeds, sugar, maltose, winter melon, spices and a healthy dose of lard. It’s a far cry from the salty Western option in the form of Nabisco’s Chicken in a Biscuit.
The chicken biscuit comes in two forms, a thick and chewy one, and the thin and crispy one.
Heong Peah, Heong Peng, Pong Peah, Biskut Wangi – whatever way you call it, it means fragrant biscuit and it refers to the flaky local biscuit that’s filled with a sticky, chewy filling of maltose, onions and sesame seeds.
In Ipoh, famous for its heong peah, there are plenty of brands and it’s not always clear which is the best tasting. So when I was there, I took the opportunity to pick up a few brands of heong peah.