Food for friends

My collegues from Marks and Spencer, Paul and Alex came over to my house for a dinner on a Saturday night a few weeks ago. Paul is a hell food lover, he works part time in a restaurant and cooks whenever he got chance. He likes to experiment on different kind of food which include chinese cruisine as well. (^.^) Poor Alex have to be his guinee pig all the time. Well, when Alex first told me that his fried rice (or ‘chao fan’) was horrible, i suggested to him that maybe both of them would like to come over for dinner. He is so eager that it started to makes me sweat, why on earth that i ever thinking of suggesting that? my cooking skill is still blunt, and if they dont like the food because of my poor cutlery skill, it will be a blasphemy to our chinese nation!!!

Hence, i went to Lidl and bought a big bag of chips. In case they dont like the chinese food then they still have the second option. I cooked 2 main dishes and fried rice. The first one is Blackbean sauce chicken with pepper. First, the chicken was marinated overnight with black bean sauce, next it was half fried with the mince garlic and then ovened it for 30 minutes. The leftovers of the sauce was used to fry the pepper and was poured over the cooked chicken later.

The second dish is the simple stir and fry vegetable. Firstly fry the mince garlic with anchovies (ikan bilis) then leave it aside. Stir fry the carrot and caulis and when it soften, the brocollis were added. The fried garlic and anchovies were mixed together with the vege and dada! done.

I didnt fry the traditional complicated ‘yong zhao chao fan’ (the one with lap cheong and peas) or the ‘ji dan chao fan’ (a.k.a egg fried rice). To suit the English people taste, the ingrediants i used were sausage, onions and mixed vege (carrots, peas and weet corn). But the most important tips is to use overnight cooked rice and make sure the rice is not too moist and soggy. Paul was so enthusiastic about the fried rice that he was eager to help me to fry the second batch of the rice. very skillful indeed.

Well, both of the them enjoyed the meal, (phew, thank God) Paul like the chicken and he has a fun time playing with the chopsticks. Alex loves the anchoves and it surprise me that they never ate or saw anchovies before. In the end it was these little fish that caught her interest the most. hehehe…

The next day, they were boosting my cooking skill all over marks and spencer, and everyone came and asked me about it, including my supervisor. Shucks, now i’m dead, i didnt even thought of inviting her at all. Never mind, there will always be a next time.

Nyonya Popiah

This is popiah, a hokkien styled dish that is really famous in Malaysia and Singapore. This is the version that I am used to seeing. Tonite however that changed…..

What the heck is this???

HUGE! This is not a photoshopped picture but the nyonya version of popiah. Do nyonya people like things big? hm….. . Anyways it was made by my mother’s friend who is a nyonya lady. You can imagine that with the size of these fellas, it hits the spot for a complete meal on its own. I only ate one but it made me quite full. Like the hokkien popiah it is stuffed with bean sprouts, french beans, lettuce leaves, grated carrots, dried prawns, seaweed and shredded omelette but without the chinese sausage. Tasted pretty good to me. Oh and another difference compared to the hokkien version to this is , the popiah skin had to be thicker to hold in the extra ingredients without breaking apart.

Steamed Bread

I forgot to take the name of the kopitiam down for this dish. I’ll get it next week. My friends and I were eating breakfast after the Sunday mass nearby my church in Air Panas, Setapak. Way after finishing our main meals, we stayed there and chit chatted which made one of my friends order a couple of steamed bread.

I was expecting two pairs of sliced white bread without the crust slathered in butter and kaya but what we received was this :

Buns! They looked tasty like the kind that freshly baked. These buns were also slathered in thick butter and kaya spread. It costs RM 1.20 per bun. Too bad after tasting them it didnt end up tasting that good as it looks. The previous steam bread is better.

Nasi Lemak and Ayam Percik@ Pasar Juadah , Melawati

I ate this for lunch at commons kafe.

Chilli brinjals with sweet and sour chicken. I like commons kafe’s chilli brinjal. They don’t over cook it till a pulp and its still firm.The chicken was really nothing to shout about.

Dinner was much more interesting though since it was bought from my local pasar juadah. Pasar Juadah is a special kind of group of malay hawkers that gather together once a year to sell delicacies during the time of ramadhan (fasting month for the muslims) . These hawkers face hordes of hungry customers every evening for the duration of a month and based on what was reported in the News Straits Times/The Star, they make a whole year’s salary to last till next season.

There are many signature foods sold which will be talked about over the next few weeks but I begin with : NASI LEMAK

It was packed in banana leaves to seal and enhance the flavour.Like all nasi lemaks are, this came with the regular pandan rice, sambal with ikan bilis (salted fish) and nuts but the only thing that was missing was the egg since nowadays egg seems to be a chargeable accessory to a dish it is supossed to be a mandatory component of. The taste of this nasi lemak was plain.

Next up was Ayam Percik. It is a Kelantanese delicacy with locals and visitors alike that is made from barbecued chicken marinated with spicy coconut gravy. This version wasnt skewered with a barbeque stick but sandwiched in between a stick. It looks like a burger patty according to picture doesnt it? This one tasted ooook. I’ve tasted better. It came with the spicy coconut gravy as a sauce but I didnt bother to open it.

More on raya delicacies to come…..

Szechuan restaurant, Liverpool chinatown

It was Brian last day in Liverpool, and he is generous enough to treat we three gals a luxury chinese Szechuan cuisine at china town. Szechuan cuisine or 四川菜 is a style of Chinese famous dish originating in the Sichuan Province of southern China which are well known for being hot and numbing. there arent many Szechuan restaurant in Liverpool (apparently just one) as Brits not really fond of spicy food. It was quite ironic to see the waitress try to recommend something which is not spicy on the food list to an english couple. Well, If you cant eat spicy food, the rule of thumb is dont choose Szechuan restaurant, dork!

thats me, dress up in a very girlie way (which is a rare thing ;p), Brian and his ex housemate, Alice, a sweet szechuan gal, who was being helpful introducing all the Sze chuan dishes on the table to us.

She had ordered lots of meat but only one vege. The dishes are consist of 口水鸡, chicken fillet which dip in spciy red oil, 夫妻肺片, which is lung and beef pieces dip in the numbing hot oil, 干扁豆角, beans fried with salted fish like stuff, 麻辣锅, the spicy steam boat alike soup which contain lots of ingrediants such as prawn, chicken piece, bean sprout, pak choy etc., 粉蒸肉, rice flour coated pork thin chops and 青椒肉丝, finger chillies fried together with pork.

青椒肉丝

夫妻肺片 麻辣锅

粉蒸肉 干扁豆角

The food although were all spicy, but were surprisingly good. Its very appertizing and rich in taste. The 夫妻肺片, literally ‘Married Couple’s Slices of Lung‘ was one of the rare dish which caught my interest, Alice was kindful to tell us the story behind the dish. There was a married couple in Chengdu famous for making beef lung slices. The husband and wife were dainty about the lung slices they made, and often experimented with new ingredients. As a result, their lung slices had a distinct taste from the other lung slice vendors, and their business boomed. Well, the end. simple story, but a warm one indeed.

The Szechuan dish is not recommended for those who had low tolerance for spicy stuff. My housemate has to gulped down copious amounts of water all evening in an attempt to soothe her burning tastebuds. However, i was told later by my friend that its not wise to drink water while eating Szechuan food, ever hear the expression “Oil and water don’t mix”? It’s true, since most spices are oily, the water just rolls over the spice. So eat rice instead.

The evening ends with a nice desert- xi mi lu, a cold coconut milk with some fruits and jelly balls inside. The luxury meal costed around 50 pound, curtesy of Brian, thanks pal!