Heritage food: LOH KAI YIT and TAU KUAH PAU with duck sauce

 

One other very charismatic hawker was the Loh Kai Yit man. This stall was unique as the man did not use a pushcart. Instead he used a
trishaw and also had a personal rider. We understood his predicament as he was handicapped with only one good leg. He could not possible use a pushcart nor could he ride a tricycle. He had a huge pot over a charcoal stove mounted on the trishaw and he sat down to serve the customers. His dish of braise meat with his special sauce was a delicacy , and perhaps one that is probably lost


[Editor: Loh Kai Yit is a Cantonese braised dish with rich gravy and ingredients like Chicken wings (kai yit). pork belly, pig skin and offal along with other items like cuttle fish and taupok often braised in a fermented bean curd-based sauce.]



One very innovative vendor was the braised duck seller who was known for his special Tau Kuah Pau. (best described as  bean curd pouches stuffed with diced braised pork, innards, fish cake and prawn cake and flavoured with his special sauce made up of braised duck gravy chilly and vinegar). He went about on a bicycle with a huge wicker basket mounted at the rear. He would park his bicycle at some shady spot, remove an equally huge rattan tray that was used to cover the basket, and place it on the rider's seat which also served as a base for his chopping board. His bean curd puch is a rarity and the version available today pales by comparison.



There was another braised duck hawker but his business was not even remotely based on selling braised duck. In fact I had never tasted his version of braised duck and I probably would not want to, as his ducks never looked appealing. They appeared to be dry and were probably days old. 

He was not in the business to sell his braised ducks! He was running a gaming operation and his earnings came from bets from his customers rather than the sale of ducks. In fact he would not even consider selling his ducks. For a small outlay of a few cents, a customer stood to walk away with a whole duck if he could beat the hawker on three successive throws in a disc game. The law of averages was very much in his favour and few seldom won. That explained why his ducks looked rather stale!


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