Fish from the highlands, anyone?

Home style... deep fried eggplant with deep fried tofu and minced meat.

The stir fried tianqi with kei chi... so good.KUALA LUMPUR, March 12 Unpretentious Chinese food with a home-cooked flavour that you can easily identify with is always appealing. A good place to look for this is in Bandar Menjalara in Kepong, Kuala Lumpur. There are several restaurants here that I like, and one of these was Dlicious, that served those wonderful Taiwanese dumplings and noodles. Alas, after seven years, it is no more.I managed to get K.C. Chong, its owner, on the phone last week and he told me he had switched to serving healthier meals with home-grown ingredients from Bukit Tinggi. The restaurant is now called Highland Fish, and its speciality is red tilapia farmed in the highlands, as well as vegetables grown there; even the spring onions and coriander.Theres a ready source of spring water, said Chong, that is channelled to the fish pond and the water is changed naturally every two days. So theres no mud taste in the fish that thrive in the pond at a level of 2,800ft.

The Sanbai chicken was absolutely flavourful.The fish is cleaned at 3pm every day, smeared with salt and hung in the chiller for three hours before it is cooked. This gives the fish a springy texture. You can have the fish cooked in three ways with the original sauce, or ginger and chilli, or basil. We took the ginger and chilli style, which we liked very much for all that ginger zest and heat from the cili padi. The fish tasted fresh, sweet and smooth.The basil style was a little bland, but I can imagine it tasting better if the basil had been turned into a paste with some chilli. The fish is not very big for the seven of us, we needed two, and each co! st just RM18.We had a Tianqi Cai (or teen chat as the Cantonese call it) stirfried with some kei chi or wolfberries. There are all sorts of health benefits from Tianqi, a Chinese herb among them, anti-ageing, good for the stomach and liver, regulate your sugar level, stops bleeding, etc. As a vegetable its delicious fried with ginger, garlic, with some kei chi tossed in. This dark green vegetable has a soft and silky texture.Beancurd with Minced Pork, Sanbai Chicken, Seasoned Mutton, Simmered Pork, a White Gourd Scallop Soup and Deepfried Crispy Eggplant altogether made up a hearty meal.Sanbai or Three Cup Chicken refers to the proportion of wine, soya sauce and sesame oil used to cook it, together with ginger, and lots of basil which is added last. The Sanbai Chicken here was exceptional. It came to the table still sizzling in a claypot, and all the lovely aromas of basil and ginger floated up. It was very generous with the basil which imparted its fragrance to the dark, sticky and lightly sweet sauce. I also sought out the knobs of ginger coated in the sauce.

The steamed tilapia with finger and chillies... delicious.The Seasoned Mutton braised with fu chook or soya sheets could have done with some spice to banish the smell of the meat. Simmered Pork is the Tung Por Yook which the old restaurant used to serve as well. It tasted good.I also enjoyed the Deepfried Crispy Eggplant with deepfried beancurd brought together with a minced pork sauce and topped with lots of chopped spring onion.The White Gourd Scallop Soup is double-boiled wintermelon with some dried scallop and cuttlefish, with all the lovely flavours steeped out of the ingredients.There are still Fried Dumplings, Spring Rolls and Taiwan Sausage on the menu, and they make delightful appetisers.Our bill for seven of us, including drinks like Longan Luohan Guo, Ayu Jelly, Honey Lemon and Waterchestnut came to only RM155.Highland Fish is located at 61, Jal! an Medan Putra 1, Medan Putra Business Centre, Bandar Menjalara, Kuala Lumpur, Tel: 03-6272 4492.