Anyone favour Catfish or “Ikan keli” for lunch at Public Market TTDI?

Normally I see many Malays like to eat fried “Ikan Keli” for their lunch. I had not tried eating this fish until last few months that I was introduced to try this fish at Public Market at TTDI. My friend told me that she loved eating this fish for quite some years when she was working at some outskirts areas at Kuantan. She said the dish is one of her favorites.

I then decided too to try it out at the Public Market at TTDI nearby my work place. I have ordered at 1 of the stall at the market and ta pao it back to office to eat. After sometimes, I had chance to join my friend who work in another department and she told me to try out the other stall near the back of the market which has bigger size for the fish and is same price.

Here it is one of the time that I have taken the catfish for my lunch with one of my colleague.

The catfish is marinated with turmeric powder and I guess also with some small amount of salt. I am not sure there are anything else been added to it as surprisingly it did not have any mud smell (so I guessed must be farm-raised). The texture of the meat is very soft and fresh white colour. The fish is fried until crispy on the spot when you picked your own fish at the counter stall. It come separately on another plate together with some long bean, some lettuce leaves, cucumber slices and some tempeh slices and a small dish of sambal as a condiment. You will get a plate of white rice and also a small bowl of soup with the dish. It is considered a reasonable price for a lunch as it only cost about RM6.50 now as price increased from RM6 in previously last 2 months.

This will be my source of protein and I know turmeric nowadays are widely pushed as an anticancer food also. Of course, they are also readily available in fried or other recipe served in other stalls that are selling mixed rice. I preferred it to be ordered on the spot and cooked it on the spot if I have enough time to enjoy my lunch.

Anyway, besides this catfish, they also have tilapia fish that can be selected and it is slightly expensive than catfish by RM1 extra. Both also I guess it being breed in a farm as I think nowadays many foods that we have especially seafood are basically catch from farming and hardly can get it from natural river as the sizes of the fish are almost similar.

I googled about catfish and I found that catfish is high in Vitamin D and farm-raised catfish contains low level of omega-3 fatty acids and a much higher proportion of omega-6 fatty acids. Hmm…making me think again…is it good to have this kind of food? What say you???