HOME > Chowhound > China & Southeast Asia >



  • 4




What we had:


Address details
Dragon Star Seafood Restaurant
Kampung Tunku
47300 Petaling Jaya
Tel: +603-7877 6673

  1. Click to Upload a photo (10 MB limit)
  1. Oh my. OH MY. What a fabulous-sounding (and lovely-looking) meal. Methinks this place will be in your regular rotation from now on. :-)

    I have a lotus root sitting in my fridge...what to do with it...what to do...

    That "kum chin tofu" does sound somewhat like what I remember it as at places like Sang Kee (a.k.a. my mistaken "kum pou tofu", heh) *except* it was formed from balls of tofu (it really did seem like a finely mushed up mix, or it was just simply very soft tofu) rather than a block of it. That deep-fried crispy pock-marked surface also sounds familiar. The minced meat and scallions on it with the corresponding sauce also seems familiar, except that egg white was also put in it so that it had that silky texture with those streaks of just cooked white in it, if you know what I mean. IIRC, it also wasn't always available - and looking back it was, I suppose, an indication of whether the kitchen had made a batch of it that day, or that they had "run out" of it.

    What I relate here about "kum chin tofu" is based on memories from long ago but I think it is useful (to me, anyway) to get a grasp in current times on what "kum chin tofu" is and the variants of it that are found. What would be a "typical" or an "unusual" version of it that you would get in Singapore and how would the tofu have been made?

    3 Replies
    1. re: huiray

      Singapore's "kum chin to fu" is *exactly* like the one you described, i.e. little orbs of tofu minced/mashed with egg & other stuff, then deep-fried till you obtain that loose pock-marked skin. The "kum chin tofu" balls are then cooked in an eggy sauce of minced pork, sometimes crabmeat. The best "kum chin to fu" in Singapore was at the Hil Street Food Centre which has since been pulled down (around 1992/93) - I didn't know where the hawker went as I was working in HK for a large part of the mid-to-late-90s.

      My immediate thought of what to do with lotus root is to boil it with pork-ribs & dates :-D

      1. re: klyeoh

        Aha. Thanks for the tid-bits about KCTF in S'pore.

        Heh, that was what I was thinking too about the lotus root, but your description of that veggie dish with the lotus root gave me pause. Could you tell if the lotus root was already cooked/pre-cooked before being used in that stir-fry?

        1. re: huiray

          The lotus root still maintained a nice crunch, so it was certainly *not* parboiled beforehand.

          But I'm sure you know how traditional Cantonese cooks operate - before they even deign to stir-fry the vegetables together, I suspect they quickly plunge each ingredient into hot boiling oil to "flash-fry" them, then quickly remove & drain. That's before all the ingredients are then combined together in a hot wok with the sauteed garlic, onions, other condiments and stock.