Friday, November 20, 2009

Buy1Free1 chippie deal@


KL has not been kind to us, in terms of reasonable value, imported chips per se. however, on one of dogma's mindless trip around Mercato Hartamas, his eagle eye spotted the bundled packed of TIM's Jalapeno Cascade Style Potato Chips @ 14bucks for 2 packs.

Yes, it was nearing its expiry date.
Yes, it seems like noone is buying it. but quick witted Dogma managed to googled out a tons great review of this chips, rating it among the top 10 potato chips in the States.

Once opened, it releases a strong whiff of Jalapeno spiciness in the air, quickly suffocating any living beings in our small little room. It smell like someone just cut open a Jalapeno and furiously rub it against your nose tip, and i do mean, furiously..

It was spicy, and it was saltish.
It was anything but the greatest chip in the world,
but Tim's Cascade Style Jalapeno Potato Chips was a good venture away from the usuals Kettles, Ruffles and local Chipsters

Sekinchan Grouper Fish Head Restaurant@Cheras

DY, Ashley and Declan was visiting KL over the week. After trying the Tiger Fish restaurant in Puchong on their previous trip, we decided to bring them to Cheras for some good old Chinese Food..
This is the absolute favourite of mine at this restaurant, BitterGourd Fried Egg, with just the right amount of wok hei and bitterness on creamy egg.

next up was the signature dish of the restaurant, the Grouper Fish Head with Signature Sauce. It was a concoction made from chopped onions, parsley, and light soya sauce.

The fishhead was furious, big and fleshy.. Packed with yummylicious seafood sweetness in it. However, i would love to try the other flavours ( ginger, assam pedas flavour) the next time i visit this place. The fish head is a steal at only RM40 bucks for this gargantuan bodyless carcass




DY ordered a black sauce baby shark dish. This shark meat was cooked to perfection where it was moist, soft and packed with tangy chilli and onion marinates.




The last dish we had was the claypot yam chicken. You gotta try this to believe it... thick, creamy yam reduction sauce intermingled with charred salted fish mash..giving the tender chicken a good soak before delivering up to ur taste bud.. mmm mmm mmm, marvellous.............




Home Baked Bread Courtesy of RP's Recipe@YY's home

Demona: I've always enjoyed listening to RP speak of her baking adventures. Besides her never failing to speak with passion on her baking sessions (even if the finished product may end up as a big boo boo), she incorporates in lil' DIY tips and tricks, homemade to-do or not-to-do rules and these almost always gets me trilled and excited and motivates me to want to try baking with the given recipes.

I lack major experience when it comes to bread baking. When she gave me the recipe of the butter bread in which she swore her life (jk!) on its super-ultra-unimaginably tasty aspect, I'd thought I'd given it a try since it is also a part of my future dream of running a famous bakery. I should learn more from her if I want to make this dream a reality one day.

Demona: Worrying that I might have over beaten the dough, I lost patience and tenacity and poured the dough into the bread batter mould. At first, it did look fine to me, I assumed the batter was thoroughly beaten already. However, the cake turned out being a little soggy even though the hint of sweetness taste was truly... very well locked into the dough.

Demona: My first butter bread! Though the shape of the bread is way off the normal charts, but its taste could superseed certain bread that are commercially made today. I know what I needed to improve on if I were to re-do... beat the batter until its really smooth and light! Then I would have a really soft, light bread than the one above which was still a little heavy and damp, but a fairly delicious taste!

Super duper late lunch@Kuala Terrenganu town

on route back to KL from Pulau Perhentian, we stopped by Kuala Terengganu for a quickie lunch. I have to say, the food was quite a let down...
The above claypot mice noodle (loh shhh fun) was bland, saucy and nothing much to shout about..

The mice noodle was fat, but just taste of soy sauce.. SKIP!


Sensing our frustration in the food, Viv went and bought some minute pen*s like fish cake for us..the fish cake was pretty fresh and you could taste the minced fish meat in there. It wasn't full with gelattin/rubbery stuff like most KL/Singapore hawkers stalls do. However, the best part of fish cake was......................

The SMELLY ASS Chilly...I kid you not, taking a bite of the fish cake with the chilli, really "marinates" your mouth and breath well.. It was super stinko but yet alluring at the same time.....The remaining of the 4 hours trip was pretty mind refreshing, with all of us wide awake from the garlicky, fermented chilli smell...





Final night dinner@Pulau Perhentian

Demona: On our last night in Perhentian, we'd chosen to unzip our flies, loosen our belts, added extra folds on our tummies by having a scrumptous seafood dinner by the sea. The weather was kind to us. Despite hearing growling thunders, and dashes of lightnings in the midst of thick clouds up ahead, it did not rain. We had the whole chilly windy night to ourselves until the clock struck 12 to kick start the day our country gained independence.

There were several BBQ dinner places along the beach. However, being kiasu flers, we chose to dine at the restaurant which had the most patrons. Many people = Possibly better food and service.

Demona: Viv and Dogma went over to the BBQ area, where all the sizzling action took place. Readily marinated raw seafood were displayed on trays and all we needed to do was..point, point, point. Before you knew it, they had nicely landed on the hot BBQ grills heated by burning charcoal.

This was the parrotfish meat. Not much taste from the marination was locked in and the meat was particularly tough! It was my first time eating a parrotfish and personally, I wasn't sure if the fish was overcooked or the nature of its meat was tough itself.

Demona: This was another type of grilled fish. I could not remember what fish it was, Dogma, any assistance on this? All I could remember was that this meat had more flavours: sourish salty, slightly spicy with a hint of burnt grill taste at its ends. The meat was much more tender too, making it much more favourable than the parrotfish.

Demona: This was the sting ray meat. Somehow rather, the sting ray meat that you eat at foodcourts baring fairly famous names for grilled seafood stalls eg: Asia cafe, midvalley cafeteria etc could grill better sting ray meat than this. After the third trial of grilled fish, we lost specificity in the different tastes. They began to taste alike, except that one meat might be slightly tougher than the other, or more tender. Hmmmmmm....


Demona: We also had some grilled prawnies. Again, nothing much to shout about. The prawns tasted pretty bland... and boy oh boy, we were all too lazy to peel those shells off!


Demona: Each grilled dish came with a rice platter, comprising of some salad (horribly yuckified), a slice of watermelon, and a slice of banana cake...? This was my first ever encounter of having served banana cake with rice.
Thankfully, the few bland grilled dishes were rescued from further disappointing remarks from our fiesty, good food craving tongues thanks to their excellent home made spicy dipping sauce. Initially, it tasted sweet. Slowly, the fragrant onion taste started to unfold, and then.. KABOOM! Hot spicyness hit our tongues, caused by the chopped chilli padis.

Demona: Each of us also ordered a grilled baby crayfish/lobster? for ourselves. A seafood dinner ain't complete without one of these babies! The meat was quite tender and sweet, but I could not force myself to dig in and indulge on the roes that were still attached on them.
Demona: The squids were slightly over grilled also, making them tough. We surely were testing the durability of our teeth alright.


Demona: p/s: The fish with the tender meat description was almost immediately whalloped clean. What was left was its bone. Boy oh boy, we were human-like piranhas yikes!

Verdict: Even though the grilled seafood barely earned the rights to be name delicious, taste wasn't the priority in our to-do list for dinner. We truly enjoyed eating them, while having the salty sea breeze blowing on our faces, laughing at silly lil' jokes, gulping down cans of beers etc. The company and its warmth was what made this dinner most meaningful for this entire trip.
So Viv, Mich, Dogma. Let's plan our next beach trip, with more of us flers next time around. YK's suggestion: Nusa Dua, Bali. Or Cebu? Gosh. I'm excited already writing all these down.







Food store for 3 days@Pulau Perhentian

Viv, Mich, Demona and Dogma had a fabulous trip to Perhentian Island recently...Sunny day with cool sea breeze, White sandy beach loaded up with hairy apes.....What a great weekend getaway from the hustle and bustle of Kayel Life...

However, tough times calll for tough measures. We loaded up on self prepared food for the 4 days trip, which vanished is double quick time in the presence of these 4 hunrgy, chest stomping hairy apes....

The pictures was the only memory of the food we had on the first day of the trip, before they were abducted and devoured by the hairy apes...




Impromptu fully wully dinner@Chef Low Restaurant, Bangsar


after our usual rejuvenating swims at Tivoli Villa, we took a slow ride around bangsar hunting for food that would replenish our worn our muscles ( woot woot). Demona brought us to this little restaurant hide behind TMC Grocery at bangsar. The fried singapore beehoon picture above come in large portion, and filled with heavenly wokhei. The abundance of fillings in the fried beehoon was a sheer pleasure to eat with....


Fried Squid in Salted egg yolk: Yes... these are huge squid tentacles fried in salted egg yolk and curry leaves. However, it was quite a let down for this dish. The tentacles are huge, yes, but the texture was a tad too hard... Signs of frozen dead squid i guess. The taste of salted egg yolk was overpowering and too oily for our liking...... We quit at the 8th tentacles...

Hairy Pig Throters: I bet this is not from Chef Low but rather a restaurant at SS15...but i guess demona post this up bid farewell for this hairy piggy year... As you could see, the little hair/fur poking out from the skin was not the most appetizing view..Poor dogma (aka me) have to do the routine job of clearing the dish up...



Thursday, November 19, 2009

Sunday Hearty Breakfast after hearty manna@Tengkat TongShin

Demona: The great thing about Sunday mornings:

a) traffic is a breeze
b) we rejuvate our heart, body and soul with manna of Sabbath's Day.

and...............

c) excuse to foodventure foodies in the KL city centre (usually we rarely make a trip downtown due to crazy traffic and distance, but since St. Andrews is in KL itself... yippie!)

Our usual brunch deciding style? Cruise along the roads around KL and stop to eat at any interesting looking eateries that caught our tummy juices's attention.

After having spiritual manna, we had a sudden surge of craving for physical manna. Toast bread! Preferably ala kopitiam style. We stopped by a corner kopitiam lot along Tengkat TongShin, which was packed with hungry ghosts. Looking at its popularity, there we went, "zoom-ing" our car to any slot available by the road side (illegal parking), and walked over.



Demona: The toast bread's presentation and performance crushed our craving almost immediately. Not only did the bread tasted horribly lousy, it was quite hard also. Even if a 5 year old kid was forced to eat this for his breakfast before he goes to school , he probably would be crying his heart out to his mommy, for ruining his favourite childhood food.


Demona: The meat balls were pretty average. Its taste didn't run far from the ones you usually get if you happen to order a pork noodle dish in an overly commercialised chinese food court.





Demona: The noodles earned fairly better reviews compared to the other dishes which we had ordered that morning. Adding minced meat into noodles could never any worse than, OK-LAH. Too much oil was drizzled over the noodles, but beggars can't be choosers! Dogma slurped every string of noodle anyway.
Undoubtedly, the only food left behind was the toast bread. Even the "i-feel-guilty-if-i-don't-finish-my-food-and-it-will-be-thrown-away" feeling that most food gluttoners almost always have (like us!) just could not possibly take another bite out of it.
Fellas out there, especially not so fussy ones... the stalls selling the main meals are average, but do try to resist the temptation of having toast bread on a Sunday brunch from this shop.. because the disappointment (like the one that we had) would really ruin all the great fun happy memories we all have, having to eat fragrant buttery toast bread, dipped in a hot cuppa' kopi sioh!