Celebrity chef

In UK, Chefs are treated as celebrities. In a sense that when they are walking on the street, the girls will screaming at them and ask for autograph sign; People would pay big pounds to eat in their luxury restaurants; and some of them even get the chance to sing in the celebrity X factor in front of Simon Cowell even though they are tone deaf.

the cough *tone deaf* cough chefs

This proves that Brits are definately food lovers, to an extent that they even worshipped the chef. One of the high profile chefs in UK is Gordon Ramsey. I am not quite his fan as he is one of the rudest man on earth. If you did watched his show ‘The F word’ then you will know what am i saying. the vulgarity is too exaggerate, in a sense that i’m not sure he is swearing because he was obliged to swear as that is what the show title implies, or he is expressing his emotion.

The F chef

Every week Ramsay gets new non-skilled chefs to create starters, mains and desserts for 50 customers, and they have to prove themselves as worthy chefs with 150 customers paying. Well, the chefs recruited came from all walks of life, Oxford cough *nerdy* cough students, mechanics, plumbers etc. Cant deny the fact that the chef has his own character, as well as his food. Some of the unique food he cooked includes the pigs which he fed with expensive alcohols (what the heck!!), the eel fish dish and etc. Well, Its enjoyable to see his show if you have high resistance towards vulgarity.

Compare to Ramsey, jamie Oliver’s show is a better choice for friday night show. He had transform from the naked chef to the serious canteen chef, took over responsibility for running the kitchen meals in Greenwich school for a year. He was cursed by the students , the collegues, he was depressed at some point but that was the starting point of his school dinner campaign. The response was so great that the UK Government pledged to spend £280m on healthy school dinners. However, his also receives a great deal of critism when he killed a lamb live in the ‘Jamie great escepe’ series.

The winner of “Most Inspiring Political Figure of 2005″ in the Channel 4 Political Awards 2006.

Chefs in UK not only sing, swear like uncivilized, also active in political moves. no wonder they are so much famous than our own malaysian cough *not so* cough favourite-chef Wan.

Celebrity chef???? i’m not so sure.

The tale of the piggy and the noodles

Setapak prawn mee. That is where this bad tale starts and has a nice ending. Went there with my mom on the way to town to have lunch. This area has a reputation for absolutely gastronomical prawn mee. But it becomes a guessing game because there are 3 kopi tiams that sells prawn mee.In the end we choose the first one.

This lady single handily deals out bowls of the noodles and this was what we had :

Prawn mee and curry mee. Both of them turned out to be dissapointments. There was nothing significant about the both of them except that the curry mee had too many little cili padis that for the first time made me unable to finish the gravy right down to the bottom of the bowl.

Walking away from the kopi tiam after facing a sad lunch, we stopped by a teo chew shop that sold chinese confectionary. I haven’t had this biscuit in a long time . It’s made from pork oil and pork fat and stuffed with either lotus or red bean. It also comes in cute animal shapes

This little piggy went to the market and this koala bear was lost

They both tasted nice but the piggy was way better. These little things costs RM 2.50 and RM 1.50 respectively. They definately made a happy ending to lunch.

Coke in UK

There is a Chinese saying that describes some women change their boyfriend like changing clothes. But, I have found a true forever-changing legend that even women cannot compete with- COKE! The everyone-knows carbonated drink shed its skin like no one does. The molt was so frequent that, last week when i visited home bargain, i found two different coke bottle design that i have never saw before.

Now this is the proof.

During the world cup fever, the coke bottle looks like a football!! For heaven sake, the bottle will be thrown into the bin after finish drinking anyway. And they even have the silver version of coke, which has a striking golden world cup picture on its label.

But when it comes to taste, its quite disappointing. The one I tried before is cherry coke and zero coke. Well, its not like I eager to try anyway, the name already gives me a weird feeling. Coke with cherry???? Well, Coca cola are sure one generous company, the sample which is like a mini size coke can was distributed along the street during their first launch. Well, if you wonder what it taste like, its tasted like cough syrup. Whilst for zero coke, which claimed to contain zero% of sugar, tasted exactly like carbonated drink, all gas and no taste at all. Wasn’t sure how different it is from the diet coke.

Coke is definately ‘unique’, taste wise and appearance wise, thats one truth i cant deny. i even heard people talks about bacon tasted coke (YUCKS!!). Well, no wonder their closest rival, pepsi cant even beat coke with David Beckam.

Secret Recipe @ Alpha Angle, Wangsa Maju

Secret recipe is a great place for cakes as local KL people knows but it also sells food for lunch and dinner.

This is what I had. Black pepper chicken with herbal rice with a side of salad.

It costs RM 15.00 and it tasted bland to me. There was nothing fantastical about it especially the rice. It was without any taste. The chicken itself was ok although the pepper was overpowering the other flavours of the meal. The salad….well there isn’t much to say about salad.Quite disappointing.

But then Secret Recipe had found its saving grace…….

CARAMEL CREAM CHEESE CAKE!!!!!

Yes caramel is a craze for me now thanks to my gf. This cake blew my disappointments away. The top layer is caramel, cheese in the middle and the bottom portion is a layer of digestive biscuit. The trio intertwined together created an orgasmic taste in my mouth. It is really thick with the caramel taste but it is just nice enough to allow your taste buds to have a sense of cheese and biscuity goodness. As you can see the price to the right displayed on the table stand menu, per slice is RM 5.80 and RM 68.00 for the whole cake. Let me say that 1 slice is enough to make you happy. Any more than that will make you sick of the thick taste. I highly recommend this cheese cake.

Char Kuey Teow @ Tiam Fatt , KL

Let the Italians have their spaghetti because we have something equivalent or even better than that. We have char kuey teow. Its a chinese born dish that means fried flat noodles that is very popular in Malaysia and Singapore.

It is so popular that it even has it’s own entry in wikipedia. Here are some excerpts :

…….made from flat rice noodles (called Shāhé fěn or hé fěn in Chinese) fried over very high heat with light and dark soy sauce, chilli, prawns, cockles, egg, bean sprouts and Chinese chives. Sometimes slices of Chinese sausage and fish cake are added. It is fried in pork fat, with crisp croutons of pork lard, which give it its characteristic taste.It has a reputation of being unhealthy due to its fat content. However, when the dish was first invented, it was mainly served to labourers. The high fat content and low cost of the dish made it attractive to these people as it was a cheap source of energy and nutrients.

Who cares if it it unhealthy? It’s blood yummy.

The char kuey teow I had is located near my neighbourhood, Taman Melawati. I can safely say it is the best one I have had compared to many other spots minus Penang. It’s location is nestled in the corner behind a building and the restaurant is called Tiam Fatt.

This cook’s version had a generous serving of prawns and chinese sausage mingling with egg and bean sprouts. It is placed on top of a banana leaf to add some color to the presentation. Looks classy too. A small plate costs RM 3.30 and a big plate costs RM 3.50 if I remember correctly. YUMMY!

Here’s how to get there.