FOOD PORN: A visual delight!

About time for another trip to Malaysia! My blogs have been sporadic over the last couple of years mainly due to lifestyle changes and also laziness! During that time, I have never stopped taking pictures of food wherever I went and I will take this opportunity to post a mixture of images from previous trips to Malaysia dating back to 2009.



If you are an experienced blogger, perhaps you can advise on how I can make the process easier and quicker so that I can update more frequently. At the moment, I find the process quite laborious.... What I do now is:

1. I load each photo into photoshop to resize it (otherwise, 5mb per image will take too long to load!)

2. Then I upload them to imageshack.us

3. Then I write my blog

4. Then I click on each thumbnail of the photo I uploaded into imageshack and copy the url tag and paste it into the html code of the blog I am writing. I can only do this one at a time as imageshack does not display ALL the html tags on one page. If I can find a way of displaying all the tags on one page, it will make life a lot easier!

5. Once done, I save it and publish the blog.



So, if anyone can make this process easier, I will be able to upload more updates in the future.

Below is an Esquire Kitchen special - Kung Po Chicken. A "must have" whenever I eat there.

1-Utama branch.

A steamed pomfret at Oversea Restaurant @ Asiajaya, PJ. Fresh but quite bland as it lacked seasoning.

A Yook Woo Hin (Petaling Street - Chinatown KL) speciality - Char Siu. You won't find much better in the city.

Another Yook Woo Hin dish - Beef ho fun. Absolutely delicious! Super tender slices of beef in a rich egg sauce over a bed of smooth flat rice noodles.

The two pics below are the display shelves at Jin Xuan Hong Kong Dim Sum @ Damansara Jaya.

See my full review here.
Ji

This lovely Sang Har Meen was taken at Paramount cafe at Sungei Wang Plaza. I found out about this place from Lyrical Lemongrass' blog here.

The two pics below were taken @ Uncle Duck restaurant @ Berjaya Times Square in KL. Considering the name, the duck was decidedly average and the black bean beef ho fun was one of the worst I ever tasted!

4 dishes from Sri Suria cafe in Amcorp Mall in PJ. All looked lovely, but tasted worse than most hawker vendors. Worst of all, two out of the five of us who ate there had diarrhea the next day! Not a busy restaurant even on s Sunday, so the food must have been not too fresh.

Nasi Lemak - probably their best dish.

Fried Rice - bland but looked nice!

Chow Kuey Teow - terrible! No wok-hei .. must've been fried in a skillet!

Wonton Noodle soup - again, bland!

This was my half eaten lunch at Lumut bus station. Beef Rendang and water spinach. Cost a lot less than in KL and tasted very nice!

Sapporo Teppanyaki, Manchester

This was the first time I had ever been to a Teppanyaki restaurant in the UK. Its only my second time in a UK Japanese restaurant. The first was an awful experience 10 years ago and it had put me off them.

On this occassion, it was a works do and I thought it was a good time to try again. The fact that this restaurant was rated the number 1 restaurant on Manchester on Tripadvisor gave me some optimism!

Unlike most city centre oriental restaurants, this one was not located in or around Chinatown, indicating to me immediately that they cater mainly for western diners. When I saw the menu, my thoughts were confirmed. I was a bit disappointed that there was no squid in the menu, but understandable as it is not a popular ingredient among Brits.

However, as the evening progressed, the whole dining experience was rather interesting. It was not like anything I had ever experienced before. But before that our starters arrived. I had a rather large portion of bbq spare ribs. Unlike your typical Chinese restaurant ribs, these were really tender and succulent. I suspect they have been twice cooked .... steamed and then baked. Great start so far.

Before the chefs began cooking our meals they went throught a few unusual rituals, which were very entertaining and engaging for the diners. However, I am certain there was nothing traditional about them and certainly does not appear to have anything to do with Japanese dining rituals, but please do correct me if I am wrong.

Firstly, the chef heated some scalloped potato slices and tossed them in the air, to each of the diners to catch with their mouth. He will keep trying until you catch it, leading to food all over the floor!

Next, he juggled some of the cooking utensils, like the bartenders in Cocktail juggled bottles. Then, just for show, he lit up the flat pan with some alcohol.

When it comes to cooking the food, we could see exactly everything they put into it. I kept waiting to see if there was going to be a secret ingredient but there was nothing obvious.

And here is my portion. This alone was £17. To their credit, all the ingredients were super fresh and you could have extra portions of rice if you wanted for free. It may not look much, but I assure you it was more than I could eat.

I must say however, that the food tasted very home-cooked, and not difficult to reproduce yourself. The flat pan meant that there was no "wok hei" taste in the food. However, I ended the night satisfied enough, as the price we paid was for the entertainment as well as the food. It was definitely worth experiencing, but I dont think it is something you can do on a weekly basis without wearing out the novelty value.

Location:

Sapporo Teppanyaki

91 Liverpool Rd Manchester M3 4JN

Gordon Ramsay in Malaysia - C4 UK

Last night I watched a fascinating episode of Gordon's Great Escape. In this series, he travels around south east asia to sample the food and learn how to cook some of it from the locals. Along the way, he will feature some bizzarre foods that most people do not consume, at least not in the west.

The episode on Malaysia was perhaps a little bit tame compared to the last couple of episodes due to the lack of unusual food. The only "weird" food featured was a bulls penis curry soup. We did see the harvesting of birds nest, but this was mainly for the export market and its not something commonly found in roadside cafes.

However one amazing revealation I noticed was that Gordon does not appear to know how to cook rice! He had no idea how to use a conventional rice cooker and made a mess of his coconut rice. Who would have thought!!

Gordon pictured struggling with nasi lemak

If you are in the UK, you will be able to watch this online here.

At around the 40 minute mark, you will see him struggle with his rice!

Prawn fried rice

Its been awhile since I blogged but been so busy recently. Here's a quick and simple dish I cooked tonight. Thought that the tiger prawns looked nice in the rice, hence I uploaded this picture. Personally, I think having too many prawns spoil the taste a dish. In future I won't use more than 4 or 5 large ones, and add other ingredients instead to enhance the taste of the rice.

Gong Xi Fa Cai - Happy Chinese New Year 2011

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Have a prosperous and stomach filling new year!

House Special Chow Mein - Wong Wong Bakery, Manchester

At last I have managed to find a cheap compact mobile phone with a camera AND a battery that lasts up to 2 weeks between charging. Now I can take pictures anywhere I eat and do not have to plan ahead to take my camera with me.

One such occassion was when we were passing a branch of Wong Wong Bakery near Openshaw in Manchester. It was actually a little cafe attached to a Chinese warehouse and serve a limited amount of dishes to a mainly Chinese clientele. Hence their dishes are authentic and near restaurant quality but a bit cheaper.

This is the most expensive dish on their menu coming in at £7 for a large single portion. A stir fired mixture of fish balls, fish cake sliced pork, char siu, siew yook, roask duck, prawns, squid and straw mushroom over a bed of crispy noodles. Taste great and better than some more upmarket restaurtant in Chinatown.

Highly Recommended!

Sambal Seafood Medley

Happy new Year 2011!

Here's a posting to get me back on track with the theme of this blog, which is cooking.

Sambal tumis with seafood, especially squid is one of my favourite Malaysian dishes.

I managed to pick up some prepared seafood from a local supermarket and thought I'd make some fresh sambal (chilli ) sauce to cook this.

The ingredients for the sauce are red chillies, onions (preferable shallots which I did not have at the time), garlic, toasted belacan (fermented shrimp paste) and tamarind juice.

Its best to pound it manually in a pestle and mortar but I was lazy and used a blender. I added salt and sugar during the blending process.

Then heat plenty of oil in a pan, brown some sliced onions, then add sauce and fry till fragant.

Then add seafood and fry for 3 - 5 minutes. Not too long or it will turn tough and dry, especially if you are using octopus.

And finally here is the dish. Would have looked better with some coriander garnish, but I had none at the time.