Flipped It Just Right!

Hohoho, finally, found some time for blogging....well, my laptop just got fried by good'ol zeus' lightning and I have no choice but to land my foot in the cyber cafe to do my surfing. Anyways, back to the main point - 'Flip it right' is what they promise and that's what they hold up to at Paddington House of Pancakes. It's not my first visit but I dare to say, it's a whole new innovation to how to cook pancakes.

This review was specially done because my girlfriend and I really enjoyed our time at the Paddington House of Pancakes at the Curve shopping mall in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia.
(My apologies...didn't manage to take any pictures on the dishes we ordered ^_^ gomen gomen...promise there will be pictures the next time I come up with a review)

There were aplenty of different choices of pancakes over a wide variety of styles to choose from - from appetizers to main courses to desserts. I had one of the most fulfilling meal of the week. I had their pancake burgers which was, with two chicken patties in between served with fries and potatoes..I would rate it 7/10 for its taste but the draw back was its price...We also had a vegetarian pannekoek which comes with mushrooms and eggplants inside of it baked with cheese. Rating- 6/10

This is one place you will need to pay a visit to with your girlfriend/boyfriend or buddy. It's ambience is soothing but there's one drawback, the kitchen's a little too open and noisy for us to see and distracts us a little when we're in a conversation. Food? Needless to say, it's satisfying.

Here's their official website -http://www.paddingtonpancakes.com

Here's my rating of the restaurant:
Ambience - 7/10
Taste - 7/10
Price- 5/10
Service- 6/10

Ladies!!!!!Watch your Cola Intake!!!!!!

As I opened the Yahoo!homepage this morning, the interesting headline read:'Cola Raises Women's Osteoporosis Risk'. My reaction was, how would Cola could potentially harm the ladies although I know many of my girl-friends are not Cola fans. However, I have friends who are caffiene-addicted and takes 2cups or more a day of coffee...It's scary....and now, caffiene intake inteferes calcium absorption which will result in less bone formation...Hmm...I wonder, whether Coca Cola will introduce a new product - Coup 'yer Bone Up!

Read more about the report here

Satay for the meat lovers~

Do you like to eat meat? Do you like grilled meat? Well, most people love eating meat and what's more if it's grilled! If you do love eating meat, you must try one of our Malaysian exotic delicacy - satay. Usually, satay is a popular dish in Malaysia especially during celebrations and could be found throughout the country.

Satay consists of slices of meat on bamboo spine skewers, which are grilled over (usually)charcoal fire. Tumeric is often used to marinate the meat which gives its characteristic yellow colour. We usually have a variety of meat to choose from such as chicken, beef, mutton, pork(available in Malacca and Johor), venison, rabbit meat, ostrich meat and fish.

Satay is usually served with spicy peanut sauce dip, slivers of onions and cucumbers and ketupat. Pork satay can be served with pineapple based sauce. The ketupat is boiled rice wrapped in palm leaves.

The most popular types of ketupat found in Malaysia are ketupat nasi (made with plain rice) and ketupat daun palas (made with glutinous rice). Both varieties are wrapped in palm leaves and then boiled in water until cooked. It is said that ketupat daun palas originated from the northern states of Penang, Kedah and Perlis while ketupat nasi is more popular in Perak.

Satay Ingredients:

• 1 lb. meat- chicken, beef or pork
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 cup shallots
• 1 teaspoon coriander seeds
• 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
• 1/4 inch piece turmeric root
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1/4 cup evaporated milk
• 1 tablespoon cooking oil
• about 35 bamboo sticks

Directions:
Cut meat into small thin pieces. Grind together the shallots, garlic, coriander seeds, cumin seeds & turmericuntil very fine. Combine ground spices with salt & sugar. Season meat with the ground spices and let marinate overnight(in a refrigerator of course).

When you are ready to grill soak the bamboo sticks in water so they won't burn, skewer the meat with the sticks, don't overcrowd.

Grill satay sticks over a charcoal fire (barbeque grill), basting occasionally with oil using lemon grass, smash and flatten to resemble a brush. Turn the skewers often to avoid the meat from getting burnt.

Ketupat ingredients:

• Rice, washed and drained- 2 cups
  
• Water - 4 cups
• Pandan(screwpine) leaves - 2
  
• Palm leaves(usually that is how they serve it in the picture shown above)

Directions:
Cook rice in water with a pandan leaves. When rice is soft, transfer it to a shallow square or rectangular dish.

Place a layer of plastic wrap over it. Place a folded clean dish cloth over it to compress the rice downwards until the dish is firmly packed. Put weight over the rice layer by placing a tray to fit and put some weights on it such as any can food.

Allow the rice to firm up into cake and cool it overnight in the refrigerator. Turn it out and cut into 2inches cubes.

Spicy Peanut Sauce ingredients:'

• Dry roasted peanuts - 2 cups
• Peanut oil or canola - 1/3 cup
• Water - 2-3 cups
• Sugar - 2 tbsp
• Tamarind Paste juice - 4 tbsp
• Salt to taste

Spice paste:

• Dried chillies, soaked in hot water - 6-8
• Garlic - 6 cloves
• Shallots - 6
  
• Candlenute(kemiri nuts) or macadamia nuts - 3
• Lemon grass stalks - 3
• Galangal(a type of ginger, a.k.a thai ginger) - 1 inch piece
• Coriander - 2 tbsp
• Cumin powder - 1 tsp

Directions:
Crush peanuts coarsely. Chop spice paste ingredients and blend until fine.
Heat oil and fry the spice paste with tamarind juice until fragrant on medium high heat. Add water slowly to thin mixture. Add sugar, salt and peanuts and stir frequently for 3-5 minutes.

Simmer for 15-20 minutes, or longer, stirring every few minutes until oil begins to separate. Taste and don't be afraid to add any extra ingredients to achieve the level of sweetness, tartness or heat you prefer. Serve sauce with sticks of satay, ketupat and sliced cubes of fresh cucumber and red onions.

Hope you'll enjoy the recipe~!

How to prepare Nasi Lemak

If you wish to prepare Nasi Lemak and try it out, here are the ingredients:

• Rice - 3 cups
• Coconut milk - 1/2 cup
• Water - 3 cups
• Pandan(screwpine) leaves, cleaned and knotted - 4 pieces

For sweet chilli paste(sambal):

• Dried chillies, softened and pounded - 50g
• Shallots - 50g
• Shrimp paste - 1 tsp
• Anchovies(ikan bilis) - 30g
• Sugar - 2tbsp
• Tamarind, soaked in 4tbsp water, squeezed and strained - 1 tbsp
• Salt to taste

Method
For sweet chilli paste:
Heat 8 tbsp oil in a wok, fry the anchovies until golden brown then put in chilli paste and fry till fragrant. Add sugar and tamrind water and stir fry it. Taste the paste with a spoon and add salt to taste. Continue to cook till paste thickens. Cool and serve with coconut rice.

For coconut rice:
Wash rice and drain it. Mix coconut milk with 3 cups of water and 1 tablespoon of salt.
Then, add the coconut milk and pandan leaves to the rice and cook. When the rice is almost dry, lower the heat. Let the rice to stand over low heat for 15 - 20 minutes. Serve hot(best for it's fragrance and taste) with peanuts, crispy anchovies(I personally like anchovies a lot that's why i have anchovies in my sweet chilli paste too!), cucumber slices, omelette or hard boiled egg and not to forget, the sweet chilli paste!

Servings: 4 persons

Enjoy this recipe! Hope you will be able to have a feel on one of Malaysia's breakfast~

Malaysian's favourite breakfast!!!

Well, well ,well, how should I start on this? Basically, reading this blog, I'll write about food, recipes and reviews of restaurants that I've tried, tasted, make and dine. I've not written any reviews on any restaurants because I do not have a digital camera >.<(don't laugh, it's really true!), and I have not been going to restaurants lately due to my busy working life~ Back to the topic. As a malaysian, I dare to say that most of us will have their own favourite breakfast. And I think that most malaysians like to have a breakfast of their own kind - Nasi Lemak!

Nasi Lemak, derived from the cooking process, the rice soaked in rich coconut cream and the mixture steamed with knotted screwpine(pandan) leaves for more fragrance. Occasionally, herbs such as ginger and lemon grass may also be added for additional fragrance.

This dish is served with cucumber slices, small dried anchovies(ikan bilis), roasted peanuts, hot spicy sauce (sambal), hard boiled egg, sometimes with pickled vegetables (achar) and stir fried water convolvulus (kangkong). Nasi lemak can also come with any other accompaniments such as chicken, cuttlefish, cockle, beef curry(beef stewed in coconut milk and spices). Most of these curry are spicy in nature.

You can find nasi lemak nearly anywhere as they are sold at roadsides, petrolstations, mamak stalls and restaurants. You can have it as breakfast or lunch or even dinner as you like because this dish is certainly going to be a love to your taste buds!

A Curry A Day Keeps Your Taste Buds Awake!

Hello! It's been really a long while since my last post on recipes. Been buzzing around with work and studies and the internet was out of my reach for 5months or so. That's why...

Anyway, I woke up early in the morning today and my dad told me he needed to use the car. Hence, he accompanied me to work as I drove to my office. We stopped by a mamak stall nearby my office and had breakfast. I had a roti telur with dahl curry.

I wasn't quite happy with the curry. Liquid, too clear, can't taste a good dahl for sure. It was one of the worse dahl curries ever made out of the hands of the mamaks! I have known quite a few mamak stalls who actually cook good dahl curry. So, I thought why not share the curry recipe with everyone?

Here it goes, it's really simple:

• 1 cup skinned dahl or yellow split peas

• 1/8 tsp. ground tumeric

• 1 tbls. peeled and very finely chopped shallots

• 1 tsp. ground cumin seeds

• 3-4 whole fresh green chillies slit down their middle

• 4 tbls. vegetable oil or 2 tbls. coconut oil and 2 tbls. ghee

• 1/2 tsp. whole black mustard seeds

• 10-12 fresh or dried curry leaves

• 1-2 whole hot dried red chillies broken up into 2-4 pieces each

• 2 tbls. peeled and finely sliced shallots

• 2 cloves garlic peeled and finely chopped

• 5 oz. (1 medium) sized tomato chopped

• 3/4 - 1 tsp. salt

• 1 1/4 cups tinned or fresh unsweetened coconut milk

Pick over the dahl and wash it in several changes of water and drain. Put in a pot and add 3 3/4 cups water as well as the tumeric. Stir to a boil. Turn the heat to low and cover, leaving the lid slightly ajar. Simmer the dahl for about 45 minutes.

Now put in the chopped shallots and ground cumin. Stir, cover in the same way as before and cook for another 15 minutes. Add the green chillies and cook for 10-15 minutes or until the dahl is tender. If the dahl seems too thick at any point, add up to 1/2 cup of boiling water.

The dal, at this stage should be like a thick paste-like soup. Leave on a very low heat as you complete the final step.

Heat the oil in a small frying pan over a medium flame. When hot put in the mustard seeds. As soon as the mustard seeds begin to pop. (this take a few seconds) put in the curry leaves and the red chillies. When the red chillies darken (this happens almost immediately) put in all the sliced shallots and garlic. Stir and fry until the shallots turn a reddish-brown color. Now add the tomato pieces. Stir and fry until they soften.

Pour the entire contents of the small frying pan into the dahl. Add the salt and mix. Add the coconut milk and stir it in. The dahl may be cooked several hours ahead of time and then reheated.

Hope you enjoy the recipe~

The Durian Season is back!!!!

A selection of branded durians in a plantation in Balik Pulau, the durian centre of Penang


The Durian season is back! And it's ready to kill all your noses! Durian, Malaysia's king of fruits is set to dish out it delights to all you durian lovers out there! For those of you who do not know what durian is, here is some information for you.

Wikipedia defines durian as:
The durian (duɾiɑn) is the fruit of trees belonging to the genus Durio. There are currently 30 recognised Durio species, all native to south-eastern Asia. At least nine species produce edible fruit. Durio zibethinus is the only species available in the international market, but other species can be found in local markets in their native region. The durian fruit is distinctive for its large size, unique odour, and its formidable thorn-covered husk. Its name comes from the Malay word duri, meaning "thorn".

The fruit can grow up to 40 cm long and 30 cm in diameter, and typically weighs one to five kg. The shape of the fruit ranges from oblong to round, the colour of its husk green to brown, and its flesh pale-yellow to red, depending on species. Its hard outer husk is covered with sharp, prickly thorns, and the flesh within emits a strong, distinctive odour. Some regard this odour as fragrant, while the uninitiated often find it overpowering or offensive. The edible portions of the fruit are the custard-like flesh and the seed.
And what they say about the odour?

Writing in 1856, the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace provides a much-quoted description of the flavour of the durian:

A rich custard highly flavoured with almonds gives the best general idea of it, but there are occasional wafts of flavour that call to mind cream-cheese, onion-sauce, sherry-wine, and other incongruous dishes. Then there is a rich glutinous smoothness in the pulp which nothing else possesses, but which adds to its delicacy.

Wallace cautions that "the smell of the ripe fruit is certainly at first disagreeable"; more recent descriptions by westerners can be more graphic. The English novelist Anthony Burgess famously said that dining on durian is like eating vanilla custard in a latrine. Travel and food writer Richard Sterling says:

... its odor is best described as pig-shit, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock. It can be smelled from yards away. Despite its great local popularity, the raw fruit is forbidden from some establishments such as hotels, subways and airports, including public transportation in Southeast Asia.

The unusual odour has prompted many people to search for an accurate description. Comparisons have been made with the civet, sewage, stale vomit, skunk spray, and used surgical swabs. The wide range of descriptions for the odour of durian may have a great deal to do with the wide variability of durian odour itself. Durians from different species or clones can have significantly different aromas, and the degree of ripeness has a great effect as well. In fact, three scientific analyses of the composition of durian aroma — from 1972, 1980, and 1995 — each found a different mix of volatile compounds, including many different organosulfur compounds, with no agreement on which may be primarily responsible for the distinctive odour.

This strong odour can be detected half a mile away by animals, thus luring them. In addition, the fruit is extremely appetising to a variety of animals, from squirrels to mouse deer, pigs, orangutan, elephants, and even carnivorous tigers. While some of these animals eat the fruit and dispose of the seed under the parent plant, others swallow the seed with the fruit and then transport it some distance before excreting it, the seed being dispersed as the result. The thorny armored covering of the fruit may have evolved because it discourages smaller animals, since larger animals are more likely to transport the seeds far from the parent tree.The seed should be consumed with caution as it can possess a sharp, bitter flavor.

So, I'm going to introduce the different species of durians in Malaysia.

The following is a selection of branded durians which was photographed during the 2004 and 2006 AsiaExplorers Durian Feasts.

D11

"Number Eleven" is a very popular durian in the 70's. It has creamy yellow flesh with a pleasant taste and a subtle smell.

D604

The D604 was first cultivated by the late Mr. Teh Hew Hong of Sungai Pinang, Balik Pulau. The flesh is quite sweet, and has some "body" to it as the seed is small.

D600

This durian originates in Sungai Pinang in Balik Pulau. The flesh has a bittersweet taste to it, with a touch of sourness. The one that I documented is a bit hard.

D700

The flesh is darker than D600, like chrome yellow. Also slightly hard. Crispy, but the smell is not very strong.

Ang Sim (Red Heart)

Ang Sim is a durian with flesh which is quite soft and very sweet, and dark yellow in colour. It also has a nice aroma.

Khun Poh

This durian takes the name of the late Mr Lau Khun Poh, who first budded it. Khun Poh has beautiful orangy flesh with a slightly bitter-sweet taste and a heavy aroma.

Hor Loh (Water Gourd Durian)

The flesh of the Hor Loh is very soft, dry and quite bitter. It has a sharp smell to it. Hor Loh was first cultivated at the Brown Estate of Sungai Ara. It got its name from its appearance resembling a "Hor Lor" pumpkin. If the durian hits the ground hard when it falls, the flesh tends to be bitter thereafter.

Ang Heh (Red Prawn Durian)

Ang Heh originates from Pondok Upeh, Balik Pulau, and has a round-shaped husk. The orange reddish flesh is highly aromatic, very soft with a bitter-sweet taste.

Xiao Hung (Little Red Durian)

Xiao Hung, whose name means "Little Red One," originates in Sungai Pinang, Balik Pulau. The flesh has a bittersweet taste to it, with a touch of sourness. The one that I tasted for this write-up is a bit hard. There are only one or two seeds per section, but the flesh is thick.

Yah Kang (Centipede Durian)

Yah Kang flesh is whitish, the taste is superb, milky, like very sweet, melting chocolate. The name "yah kang" means centipede, and accounts for the number of centipedes found at the foot of the tree, hence giving it the rather unusual name.

Bak Eu (Pork Fat Durian)

Bak Eu has a slightly acidic aroma. The flesh is whitish while the taste is quite bitter but nice.

D17

D17 is dark cream flesh. The taste is slightly dry but sweet. It is a tasty durian.

Coupling

This durian is gets its unusual name because it looks like two durians joined together, one big and one small. When split open, you almost thought the two halves belong to two different durians. Coupling has whitish flesh which is slightly dry but tastes good.

Ooi Kyau (Tumeric Durian)

The name Ooi Kyau (tumeric) describes the colour of the bright yellow flesh of this durian. It is very sweet and tasty.

Chaer Phoy (Green Skin Durian)

Chaer Phoy is shaped like a small canteloupe. The skin is bright green, giving it the name which means "green skin". Chaer Phoy has creamy white flesh which is a bit dry, not too sweet but tasty.

Ang Jin (Red Yoke Durian)

As the name suggests, Ang Jin Durian has deep orange flesh. It is very sweet and tasty.

Lin Fong Jiau

This durian is named after Lin Fong Jiau, aka Mrs Jackie Chan. I wonder whether it is indicative of the relationship of the celebrity couple, for Lin Fong Jiau is bittersweet.