Loh mee is plenty filling, but after a meal like that something sweet seems right.
In Serendah, a speck of a town somewhere between Ulu Yam and Rawang, we speed past a hand-lettered sign advertising 'barfi'. The shop behind it is simply too cute to pass by, so we prevail (OK, I prevail) upon Dave to make a U-turn.
Pall Cova Punjabi shop has been supplying Serendah and surrounds with Indian sweets since 1967. It's a couple of days before New Year's Eve, 2006, and Krishen Lal has already repainted his wooden display case to mark its fortieth birthday.
There's lots on offer here - pall khua, ladoo, halwa, jelebi - but the barfi is fresh (the shop smells like milk) and, though it's not our favorite Indian sweet, we feel compelled to give it a try.
Mr. Lal makes it himself in a kuali worn matte black with use, on a single gas burner in a small room at the back of the shop. It's just fresh cow milk and sugar, he says, nothing else. Cooked for two hours, the ingredients meld into a sweet rich and dairy-ful enough to make a Punjabi swoon. Cut into squares and cooled, the barfi hardens but melts like butter once it hits the tongue.
Also extremely sublime - perhaps even more so than the barfi - are this man's Indian 'donuts', dark brown and glossy and unusually heady with the scent and flavor of cloves and cardamom.
Pall Cova punjabi sweets shop, No. 14A Main Road , Serendah. Specialists in wedding and festival sweets. Special orders welcome. Tel. 012-3547778.
Your photographs are gorgeous. Food looks good enough to eat off the screen, although that would probably be disastrous! I'm a big fan of palkova and am definitely gonna track this place down.
Posted by: Lyrical Lemongrass | 2007.01.30 at 16:27
The shop looks wonderful. Everything about it looks just right, from the wooden display case, to the stainless steel container holding the barfi.
It is slightly humbling to realize that Mr Lal has been quietly making and selling indian sweets long before many of us were born, and certainly long before any of us could spell 'entrepreneur'.
Hurrah to the Mr Lals of Malaysia.
Posted by: ELE | 2007.01.31 at 08:52
I'm not familiar with this confection, but it sure looks good. I might have just passed the sign right by, given what the name sounds like in English...
Posted by: Tammy | 2007.01.31 at 09:46
LL - thanks for the compliment!
ELE - I couldn't have (and didn't) put it better myself.
Tammy - yep, too bad about the unfortunate resemblance to the English colloquialism for 'vomit'. The resemblance ends there though, I can assure you!
Posted by: Robyn | 2007.01.31 at 11:29