Lei Cha!!!! 擂茶!!!

Finally!!! After craving lei cha for quite some time, I GET TO SATISFY MY CRAVING!!!!!!!!!!!!

There used to be a lei cha restaurant in SP, but it closed down :( That was the best lei cha I have ever eaten till now...

I found a place in Singapore that sells lei cha too! It's on the 4th? 5th? 6th? or was it 7th? floor in Lucky Plaza. Well, SY and I always forget which floor it is on, so we always spend quite a long time in the lift :P

Anyway, the lei cha there is not bad, and I dragged SY out just to eat lei cha for quite a few times now, I think. XP Of course she doesn't eat lei cha, she'll just buy some bento box (speaking of which, I think the term "bento box" is quite weird, cuz since when do you say "I'm eating a 便当盒？") or some non-veggie stuff :)

Apparently lei cha is sold somewhere in Vivo too!! But all the times I've been there, I've never seen any... :( Maybe I have to search harder...

Finding lei cha this time was totally coincidental! We were in a shopping mall somewhere in Selangor (this is the best I could do, I don't know where we are), planning to have lunch, then for some reason I felt this weird attraction (okaay, I'm exaggerating) to this particular restaurant. There was this menu outside, and I just randomly flipped open a page (which is quite towards the end btw) and TA-DA!!! LEI CHA!!!! So, my mom and I insisted on having our lunch there :) And we both had lei cha! (to the horror of my dad and my sis :P)

LOOK AT THIS!!!!!!!!!! I FOUND YOU!! I FINALLY FOUND YOU MY BELOVED LEI CHA!!!!

THIS. IS. IT. And brown rice too :)

I miss you my darling... :)

Okaay, I'll write some things I know about lei cha here :)

Firstly, lei cha (擂茶) is a Hakka dish. Apparently it is called "Thunder Tea Rice" or something like that (when I saw the menu in Singapore). It was called "Pounded Tea Rice" or (something like that) when I ate it just now though... Actually, lei cha is supposed to mean "pounded tea" in Hakka, but maybe because the "lei" (擂) in lei cha sounds the same as "thunder" (雷) in chinese (also "lei"), so it's translated as "Thunder Rice". That's what I think though, I'm not really sure about it.

The whole dish is practically made up of vegetables and rice. So, my fellow carnivores may not enjoy it that much... As you can see from the picture, there are a few types of vegetables, tofu and some peanuts in the rice. Sometimes there's ikan bilis (anchovies) too!! And the green gravy? gruel? I'll just call it "soup" then. The green soup there is made by grinding green tea and some cereals (pumpkin seeds, sesame, peanuts etc). I think there are herbs too, cuz it tastes a bit herb-y. The "soup" tastes really rich and I TOTALLY LOVE THAT THING.

When I eat, I just pour all the "soup" into the rice and stir everything. :) (My sis was like *horrified face*) It tastes awesome like that. You can feel so many tastes at the same time. I like it most when the rice and veggies are soft, but the anchovies are super crunchy! It's like, you're biting soft and starchy (the rice) stuff, and then there's the crispy ikan bilis!!! (I better stop here before I go all ASDFGHJKL on lei cha)

Anyway, the serving was really huge (it is huge everytime I eat lei cha) and I'm super full, even till now... which is, hours after I ate that thing. Well, at least I won't feel as guilty as I would if I ate something fattening, like ice-cream... (lol that doesn't make sense at all)

p/s: HEECHUL HAS WEIBO??? OMG MY DEAD ACCOUNT HAS RISEN. His chinese, he wrote chinese characters, as in 汉字, not pinyin!!! I wonder who taught him that... most probably ZhouMi. Could it be Vic??