M
Ma Chao
Guest
Sunday October 31, 2010
Pepper murukku a hot item
By CINDY TAN and ALLISON LAI
[email protected]
MALACCA: V. Manickam’s special home-made black pepper murukku draws the crowd even from other states. This delicacy, sold at RM16 per kilo, is the top-seller for the 36 year-old who is running a stall in conjunction with Deepavali in Little India, Jalan Bendahara here.
The murukku is so popular that he can sell between 20kg and 30kg a day.
“I have customers coming from as far as Johor Baru. The black pepper murukku is very famous in South India, so I decided to market them here because no other stall was selling them,” said Manickam, who has been manning the Deepavali stall for the past 10 years.
Popular snacks: Manickam showing the black pepper murukku, which has been a hit, at his booth along Jalan Bendahara in Malacca.
He also operates a restaurant in Jalan Hang Tuah. Another stall owner M. Saravanan, 45, offers a colourful array of South Indian sweetmeats such as jelebi, attarasam, laddu, kuih batu and ghee balls to his customers besides the usual savoury snacks like murukku, green peas and ompadi.
The sweetmeats are normally bought for prayer purposes, while the snacks are meant for Deepavali guests, said Saravanan who has been running a stall here for the past 13 years. Homemaker V. Mala, 45, meanwhile, is busier than usual, offering home-made cookies at her stall in Little India.
Mala said sales had been brisk since she set up the stall last Friday with her pineapple rolls being the most popular. “I also have Malay and Chinese customers. Many of them also like my peanut cookies,” she said.
