Tex Mex Cuisine

Peter latest experiments

Not so successful tortilla casserole. We bought chunky beef rather than minced beef which was a big mistake, its rather chewy but the taste was alright

Paella, the spanish rice dish. yum yummmmmmmmmm… with seasoned chicken breast cubes and prawns, very flavorful but a bit moist though

Since we love Paella so much, this is second version of Paella, with Chorizo Sausages, this time we put less water which turns out to be perfect. Its definitely a more convenient and tastier version of fried rice.

I think we will hook on this for quite some time.

A few weeks ago, Peter and I went to Frontera, a Mexican Restaurant at Jaya One for a dinner with his bunch of friends. The restaurant serves various kind of Nachos and Tex mex cuisine and its a cheaper version of Chilies restaurant. As usual, am trying to capture the ambiance and the food presentation using my lousy phone camera, which of course had failed miserably. Therefore, i have grabbed some nicer photos on the restaurant deco from sixseal.com

from sixseal.com

Famous super spicy buffalo wings. it was alright, not as spicy as what i thought it was.

The main course, Devon’s Beef/chicken Enchiladas, some sort of mexican style beef/chicken wrap i guess. Cheese Burger topped with Chilli Con Carne (Peter’s and Mine) with fries and coleslaw as sides. The cheese burger comes with big juicy beef patty, huge and great cheese. Its so huge that its enough for two person.

Hien’s Chicken burger, again the portion is quite big. Han li’s desert, forgot what is the name. Some sort of caramelized soft pudding.

Anyway, the bill come out to be RM20 per person which is quite affordable for a Tex mex meal.

Tortilla Frenzy

Just a quick one here. Peter’s best cooking so far- luxurious home made tortilla chips with Roasted chicken fillet, gracious dressing of olive oil with black olive, tomatoes, lettuce, plus lots of cheddar, mozzarella cheese and mayonese.

I never knew that making tortilla chips is so easy, you just need to get the ready made tortilla wrap from any supermarket. It will cost you something like 5 pieces for RM5.50. Then cut it to triangular pieces, add the chicken fillet and the cheese on, and let the toaster oven do the job for you. When its cooked, just add on whatever toppings you want. As easy as that!

I dont have the photo of the exact tortilla wrap package we bought from Giant Supermarket, but it looks something like this

Anyway, i planned to make tortilla casserole this weekend, it will be my show this time. Tortilla casserole is something like mexican lagsana, whereby you supposed to layer the tortilla piece, with chicken mixture and cheese altenately until it reach 5-6 layers, followed by baking of course

I love the exquisite taste of Olives by the way, the slight bitter after taste was kinda addicting. There is no doubt that i’m gonna sprinkle alot of olives on top of it.

Anyway, need to start to browse for recipe online now. Ciao!

Ps: Found the photo below from the net, i’m salivating now!

Dinner at Delicious

Went to Delicious restaurant (along Jalan Tunku Abdul Razak) for my birthday dinner last night, loves the ambiance there, the internal deco was really unique, as there were white branches extending from the pillars and lots of lights inside bird cages hanging on the wall.

Random photos taken while waiting for our food to arrive.

I’ve ordered a butterscotch shake (RM9.90) and quiche Lorianne (RM18.90), a french cuisine based on custard made from eggs and milk in pastry crust. The ingredients inside includes smokey beef bacon, onion slices and cheese, yummy. The butterscotch shake was superb, at first i thought it was a mix of liquor and milk, but it tasted like caramel and toffee.

Peter ordered a spicy zucchini pasta with feta cheese and pie nuts (RM19,90), it was very fresh and light. He enjoyed it very much as well.

Next, its the Bananna Puding (RM10.90) which comes together with Butterscotch sauce and vanilla ice cream. Its was simply irresistable, the moist bananna puding with sweet butterscotch taste and icy vanilla ice cream was a great blend of mixture!

After the dinner, we went for a walk at the Delicious Ingredients Store downstairs, they sell lots of imported goods such as champagne, smoked meat, spices, sweets and chocolates etc. You can even find the sponge fingers for tiramisu here (which is really really hard to find in KL) and some weird flavors for Pringles chips, such as Ranch, Spicy Guacamole etc.

Infront of Delicious Ingredients, The Pringles, smoked meat

Sweets and chocolates, bottles of Champagne, bread

There are some great recipe from delicious website, wished that i have an oven.

A Taste of Churrascaria (Brazillian bbq)

I went for a get-together dinner session with Peter’s friends and old mates two nights before. It was a nice carnivorous experience at Carnaval Churrascaria, a Brazilian Restaurant at Damansara Jaya area.

Carnaval Churrascaria： Around 20 of us sitting on a long long table

Although the name “Churrascaria” itself suggested bbq feast for carnivores, however the salad bar offers quite a range of different vegetables which includes spinach, coleslaw, stir fried french beans, caulis and potatoes salad, wedges, mashed potatoes, black beans, beef stew, pasta etc. Hence, the restaurant still caters for the need of those who are not too fancy over meaty meal.

The passador or the waiter will bring out cuts of barbecued meats (some in big loaf) on skewers, and move around, carving the meat at your request. The big knife which he used to carve and slice out the meat are a bit scarry though. I cant really differentiate the taste of Brazilian barbequed meat and the usual d.i.y. barbecued meat, except that it was grilled to perfection, not much of the burnt charcoal bitter taste, and very aromatic as well. On top of that, the meat went very well with the self made mint, salsa sauce and others like HP and Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce.

The range of the meat they served wasnt that much of variety actually, there are lamb, garlic beef and medium rare beef slices/ribs, chicken, Chicken Ham, sausages, and fish. Peter’s mates mentioned that they used to have prawns and gizzards as well. To my surprise, the lamb actually tasted better than beef, usually i’m not so much of a lamb person as i’m put off easily by the lamb smell, but they’ve done it nicely, juicy and succulent, maybe its the Brazilian secret recipe. The signature beef (see image below) was something i don’t dare to try, cuz i can see the meat was bloody red, chewy and it leaves traces of blood in the plates. urghhh…. .

The Passador and the meat lover Adrian


The image above were grabbed from http://starbucaneer.blogspot.com as i totally forgot to capture the photos of the food, until my plate is empty

Another highlight was the pineapple, it supposed to be grilled until slightly brown. however, for some reason the piece he gave to me wasnt caremelized, hence it tasted extremely sweeeetttt…

The grilled pineapple and pieces of lamb meat

Its a good place for the carnivores as you can eat all you want for RM48++. In my opinion, there is still some room for improvement for the ambiance though, it would make a whole lot different if they can play some nice Brazilian song and make the environment more lively rather than just hanging a Brazil flag next to Malaysia’s.

Shanghai Yummies pt2

Here comes my part II culinary experience in Shangahai.

WARNING: Tons of photos!!Viewer adviced to take lunch before read this.

First day breakfast cum lunch at office canteen, pathetic western food with the burger patty sweet taiwanese hotdogs, mash potatoes, seaweed soup, salad and fruits. Its nice and filling but nothing much to shout about. A bit expensive though, the whole set comes at RMB28 (RM14).

Went to the famous Shanghai Shopping street- Nanjing street on the first night. Even though its nearly 10pm, the place was still congested and flooded by sea of shoppers. To some extent, the scenery and the cool breeze reminded me of the pedestrian shopping street in UK, but with a mix of local (Chinese advert, colorful neons lights) and foreign (branded clothes, shoes and the fast food restaurant) scent, and of course the major difference is that in UK, all shops closed at 5pm, but in Shanghai, the city never sleep.

Nanjing Shopping Street

Found some old looking chinese restaurant at a corner of the street. Without much expectation i just walked in for a bowl of beef noodles to warm up my body.

To sit alone in a table of four is a bit funny though, as i’m surrounded by families of Chinese people eating and chatting happily among themselves with a full table of food.

I went for the beef noodle (RMB 10) and of course a tray of siao long bao (RMB10). The portion of the beef was pretty generous, a bit raw but tasted fine. A bit similar to Vietnamese’s Pho but with Chinese yellow noodles and lacking the fragrants taste of basil and mint leaves.

Here comes the second day luxurious lunch which causes RMB200++

My first impression of the first dish is: Sze Chuan style meat! as the ‘花椒’ (a type of chinese pepper) smell and the layer of spicy oil floating on top reminds me of the sze chuan’s steamboat which i had once in Liverpool. Turned out to be i’m half correct, yes, its sze chuan style, but its not pork or chicken, its

FROG MEAT!!!

I’m at horror when the host told me that its not even frog (田鸡) but bigger frog (toad??) (牛蛙). Chinese describe it as the cow frog, which is bigger and unglier than the green color frog which we usually saw. Nevertheless, The meat was tendy but quite bony though.

Here is my favourite PORK with a big layer of juicy fat! it tasted heavenly with the chili oil

The ‘lobak’ 酥 with yummy shredded lobak inside and coated with sesame seeds outside, very crunchy and hot

豆鼓猪肉丝(fermented bean pork) with alot of onions slices, but a bit too salty

莲藕 (lotus roots) with sweet glutinous rice inside the hole of the root, yummy.

Toufoo soup with alot of corriander

Stir fried beans with 丝瓜, looks simple but surprisingly sweet and fresh

Of course and a good cup of tie kunyan chinese tea to wash off the fats and oil

i skipped the second night dinner as my heart was tormented and churned by guiltiness for eating so much for lunch, as an act of repentance, i ate …….. siao long bao instead. hahahaha… no difference.

The third day i was in a rush to airport so only managed to catch a fast meal. This is so called the chinese fast food restaurant, 东方既白，i have no idea why it was named in that way as it sound like rude words actually (pronouced as ‘tong fang ji bai’ in chinese, geddit?). The environment was similar to KFC and McD and they served food in seconds! However being a fastfood restaurant, it also came at fast food restaurant price, RMB 25 (RM12.50), a bit expensive though.

I went for a simple meal with the 卤肉饭 (pork cooked in soy sauce for long long time) and the Black Glutinous rice desert. The rice was so tender and it came with an 卤蛋egg and chicken wing as well. The desert is similar to the Malaysian Nyonya black glutinous rice deserts, except that its used cream and was cold , rather than with Coconut milk and hot.

Overall, it was alright. I am very much enjoyed and accustomed to Chinese food but for some reason, during that 3 days trip, i missed nasi lemak sambal more than ever!