Discounted Bread

Sis came by that night with a fantastic deal. She had gotten yummy gourmet breads from the Ritz at a discount. She came by with a giant croissant, a decadent chocolate covered croissant and some prune and walnut bread. The croissant was very buttery and oily when I cut it which is the mark of a good croissant I guess! Hurrah for discounts! :)

Phuket Food - Fruits are Good

Especially in boiling hot Phuket weather!

You'll see little carts like these all over Phuket. They're a sight for sore eyes on a hot day! Filled with ice-cold sweet fruit, it's always what I head to every afternoon. It's interesting how healthily I eat when on holiday in Phuket. It's fruits galore all the time!

This picture is for Anne Ho! :) Another Thai pineapple lover!

This is my absolute favourite which I MUST EAT upon my arrival into Phuket or Thailand. It's a huge slice (sometimes half a fruit!) of cold and heavenly sweet pineapple. I don't understand why their pineapples are so much cheaper and sweeter than ours! I like mine with a sprinkling of spicy sugar which is just simply divine! I eat this at least twice or thrice a day everytime I'm in Thailand. Talk about O/D-ing on pineapple! The price ranges from THB10 to THB20, depending on the size of the pineapple pieces, weather and your bargaining skills! ;p Yes, ironically, we don't even try to bargain with our fruit sellers here!

This was a stall owner hard at work at cutting our guava. They keep whole fruit in their cart, except for the pineapple, and cut it only when ordered which retains all the vitamins. A whole huge guava like that costs only THB30 and ditto for the Thai sweet mangoes (though I managed to get it at THB20 one wet and stormy night!).

So whenever in Thailand or Phuket, look out for these mobile fruit vendors and pick and mix your own fruit salad. You'll love its sweetness and juiciness in the hot weather!

Lemon Garden 2 Go

I haven't done a food post in a bit so here you go!

We were in Shangri-la Hotel recently for a function of which no refreshments were provided for from morning till about 4pm! Starving and crabby, we had no choice but to eat in the over-priced cafes in the hotel. Lemon Garden, as tempting as it was, was just too steep and for small eaters like us not quite worth it. The cafe next to it, Cinammon, was equally over-priced with RM22 for a cup of cappucino! That left us with no other option but Lemon Garden2Go, a funky bright cafe providing snacks, light meals and drinks.

They have trays of beautiful looking pastries and cakes and a whole chiller on another side of the room with pre-packed sandwiches and meals that can be heated up upon request. I think they have a hot sandwich counter as well where they will prepare sandwiches of your choice on delicious gourmet bread. We were served by this funny noisy guy. When he saw us contemplating the few sad-looking pre-packed meals in the chiller, he went into the kitchen and brought out the remaining last few boxes so we could have a wider choice and heated it up nicely for us.

We had beef rendang with white rice and aloo gobi (cauliflower and potatoes cooked in a non-spicy red sauce) for RM13++. Everyone thought the beef rendang was really good. Aromatic with no rancid oil smell, they were generous with their beef chunks and veges.

He also recommended their chicken charsiew which came with fried rice and stir-fried vegetables for RM13++ too. I was pleasantly surprised to find gingko nuts in the veges! I actually liked this dish though the rest didn't really. The fried rice was nice and there were lots of chicken slices that accompanied it.

We washed it down with their cappucino which was about half the price of the one at Cinammon.

And for a surprise, the friendly guy brought over a blueberry ginger muffin halfway through our food with a beaming, "Ini saya belanja!" (This is on me!) What a nice gesture! He must have seen us contemplating their display of interesting muffins! It's a big muffin generously filled with blueberries and topped with nicely caramelised ginger. Yummy!

The prices were actually quite reasonable for the portion sizes they offered and they do a fantastic array of pastries and gourmet bread. I saw quite a few people walking in to buy their morning baguette or danish pastry. I guess it does quite a brisk business catering to the morning and lunch crowd around that area and I think their pastries do go on 50% discount towards the end of the day! Discounts are good when on an austerity drive!

Pan Mee, Jalan Maharajalela

Sis had been telling me about this little stall in Jalan Maharajalela which serves it's speciality, pan mee, only on Friday lunch. It's a little zinc roof stall built around an old tree (you can see it's massive trunk through the stall!) which normally sells mixed rice during the week. But on Friday, it's pan mee day which sells out pretty fast!

I finally got the chance to try it last Friday. The pan mee came in a pretty plate which almost made me feel like I was eating in a restaurant! I think it was because they ran out of their usual plastic bowls! This was the thin version and it came with a healthy serving of meat, sliced mushrooms and my favourite fried anchovies. Taste-wise, it was very deliciously home cooked and a hefty portion for RM4! It comes with a little bowl of soup with 4 generous little meat balls! Thumbs up :)

They have the soup and dry versions and you have the option for spicy or non-spicy. Mine was a mix between the two. I think their spicy version uses meat cooked in a spicy sauce as opposed to the usual black sauce. Would love to have it again...up for lunch this Friday, ParisB?!

Our English Breakfast

Despite my efforts to eat healthier, I do miss slap-up English breakfasts I used to have when a student in Australia and at bed-and-breakfasts overseas. Nothing starts the day better than a hearty service of eggs and sossies and it keeps me going on and on and on and on like the Duracell bunny! Hehe...

It's been quite a while since I've had one so it was great fun to replicate a slap-up breakfast again at home! We had nice back bacon, BBQ sossies that split beautifully as they fried, eggs and mushrooms. And for the requisite carbo intake, we found some nice Oat and Honey bread, delicious topped with cheese! It was really good but somehow couldn't take me as far as it used to! I wonder what's changed!

Stone BBQ King

Borrowed from KampungBoyCityGal

One night I was feeling naughty and adventurous. So I skived my yoga session and invited bro and J along for a pig-out instead in Sri Kembangan, a totally alien place for us! We drove around a bit looking for somewhere to eat and got misled by Starlight Restaurant. Apparently it used to serve cheap and good Western and Asian meals previously but now it specialises in seafood. We were starving and the place was terribly crowded so decided to give it a try some other time.

Borrowed from KampungBoyCityGal

The bright lights and attap-type roof of Stone BBQ King by the main road caught our eye and since we were looking for something fast, decided to give it a try. It's actually a steamboat and hot plate all-you-can-eat restaurant for RM19.80 with a RM1 addition for what they term fruit juice.

Honestly, their spread was quite impressive for the price and I thought it was better than the one in Yuen Steamboat in Sunway. They even had sushi together with the usual fried noodles under their pre-cooked food. They had 2 raw food sections and a table of vegetables and noodles. Their meat selection was pretty good and ranged from all kinds of marinated meats including pork belly, chicken, beef and whole host of innards. They had flower crabs, prawns, several kinds of fish and the usual assortment of fish and meat balls (which are my favourite!). Downside is that their seafood freshness tends to be a bit suspect so avoid stuff like cockles, mussels or shellfish if you're not sure of their freshness.

You can have the option of clear soup, tomyam, herbal or chilli.

And it comes with a hot plate for you to cook your food on. It's quite nice having your own little BBQ and because it's open-air you don't come away smelling of the cooking food. They're very DIY and have baskets of bowls, plates, utensils and even ladles and tongs for you to help yourself to.

And once you're done with all that food, there's a whole dessert counter for you to choose from fruits, cakes, jellies and my favourite - preserved fruits (I like bad bad things!)

And of course your own DIY ice-kacang! The scary looking drinks are what they call fruit juices and they didn't taste of much at all but colouring! Luckily they have sugarcane and soya bean which tasted much better. They even have little teapots for you to fill up with hot water and chinese tea if you need something to wash away the oils from the food.

I think this place is pretty popular with students especially during weekends. We were next to a table of young boys who had at least 5-6 rounds each and were still going strong when we left! Ah, the metabolism of the young!

Chips Ahoy!

Happiness is seeing someone again after 2 weeks...and receiving a huge box of crisps! :)

As Paris mentioned, we're all crisps lunatics! We don't like sweet stuff but give us a bag of smelly fish keropok (Fish only! No prawn!), pretzels, crisps or savoury cripsy stuff and we're happy little campers! Sis and bro studied in the UK so they're all huge fans of crisps while I studied in Oz so I'm a bigger fan of *cough* healthier things like Japanese rice crackers!

Needless to say, it was terribly exciting opening the box! It was like Christmas had come early! And the booty?

• Walkers 14 pack
• Walkers 26 pack (Woot! Have you ever seen a pack so big before?!)
• Hula Hoops 7 pack
• Seabrooks 6 pack
• Monster Munch 6 pack (This came recommended)

Woohoo! Even mom who doesn't normally eat unhealthy stuff like crisps took home some to snack on! We've converted her into a crisp fan!

All I can say is that luckily whatever imported crisps we get here are too expensive and no one travels to UK often enough. Otherwise, we'll just be sitting tubs of lard :p

Dad Cooks Dinner

One of the best things about having your parents around is coming home, tired and starving, to a hot and delicious home-cooked dinner. I battled heavy traffic and wet roads yesterday and opened the door to be welcomed by the heavenly smell of sambal. Hurrah! Dad cooked dinner again!

And cook he did! We went marketing during the weekend and bought some prawns and squid. Guess who was bent over the sink cleaning them?! Needless to say my hands stank! How can something that smells so bad raw taste so good when cooked?! Dad cooked sambal prawns and squid! It was full of onions and tasted really delicious with hot, steaming rice. I'll have to learn this!

We had the sambal with one of my favourite vegetables - bitter gourd. Research has recently shown that bitter gourd has lots of medicinal properties. Dad just sauted it till it's soft with some garlic. My late grandma used to cook a mean bitter gourd dish by throwing in an egg just before it cooked to make a nice eggy gravy.

We topped it all off with a fried fish each. This was kerisi or Japanese threadfin bream which is really yummy deep-fried. Just lightly season with some salt and you're good to go! One of my favourites!

A healthy home-cooked dinners like this always makes my night!

My Healthy Breakfast #2

So far, so good! I'm still on my healthy breakfast fix! Today's breakfast was Post Cereal's Honey Bunches of Oats with Almonds. I don't eat almonds but this box has been lying around for ages so I figured I better finish it before it expires.

One thing I love about this cereal is the tiny honey bunches of oats! It's tiny clusters of oats held together with honey that burst with a yummy sweetness when you chew on it. Okay, so that sugar part isn't too healthy but I'm sure cereal beats nasi lemak on the health scale!

One more strange thing about me - I only eat soggy cereal. So my cereal has to soak in the cold milk for a while till its mushy and soggy!

It's a Simple Life

Some days after a long crappy and PMS-y day at work, after being yelled at, after battling the rains and horrible traffic jams, all you want to come home to is a simple hot dinner and a nice hot shower.

And so, it was nice to come home to this - Koka instant noodles (no MSG!) with vege, fishballs, fishcake and hard-boiled egg. Don't you think sometimes in this crazy world we live in, the simplest things in life are the best?

Salmon Steak Cafe

We paid a visit to SS15's Studentville recently. It's been at least a good 10 years since I've last stepped into that place and although icons like Lim Mee Yoke have sadly closed down due to what I suspect was competition from Asia Cafe, it was still interesting to see the little Tuna Twist cafe opposite Taylor's College going strong!

Wondering what to eat, we came across Salmon Steak Cafe and decided to give it a chance. I've passed it at night before and it's usually packed at night with students dining under the stars in its outdoor annexe. But in the daytime, they operate from their little no-frills shop. Inside reminds me of tiny Chinese restaurants I used to frequent overseas, packed wall to wall with studends and offering really cheap food. They had a list of dishes for RM5.00 including a drink of ice lemon tea which we ordered from.

I had the fried rice with fish fillet and was pleasantly surprised to see the size of the fish! The fish was what the local supermarkets sell as dory and it came wrapped in an omelette together with an eggy fried rice which was surprisingly tasty. That black splotch was a black pepper sauce which actually tasted much better than it looked and went well with the rice.

Bro had the beef fillet with the same eggy fried rice. The good-sized fillet came smothered in the same black pepper sauce and was quite tender and nice.

It's rather no-frills (look at their plates!) but for the price and portion size, who can complain?! It's RM5 deals are even available on weekends which makes it a very popular place especially with students. It is worth a try if you don't mind simple no-frills food and hanging out in StudentVille and feeling a little old amongst the 18 year olds!

Russian Roulette

Welcome to the Glass Menagerie at Pantai Seafood! *cues flashing lights and music* Where we play Russian Roulette every night! Presenting the players...

So who's the "lucky" player tonight?

Will it be Turbot at RM278/kg?

Turbot: Don't bug us! At RM278/kg, we're trying to procreate more good investments!

How aboooouuuttt Scotland Clams at RM118/kg?

Scotland Clams: Bleahhh *sticks out tongue*

Maybe it's haruan at RM40/kg?

Haruan: *sinisterly slinks by*

Oysters at a cheap RM7?

Oysters: Oy! What're ya looking at?! Stop crowding us!

Lobsters at RM233/kg, perhaps?

Lobsters: What're oysters complaining about?! We're triple their value and still crowded!

Might be Snow White at RM183/kg?

Snow Crabs: Who's the fairest of them all?

Possibly even the King at RM288/kg!

King Crabs: Shh..maybe if we crouch real low they won't see us!

Or our last player - Mexican Geoduck at RM152/kg?!

Geoducks: Why do they call us obscene-looking?!

Disclaimer: No marine life was harmed in this round of Russian Roulette. Their stakes were much too high!

Pantai Seafood

So much for being in a boot camp, I had a major pig-out weekend! Fail! But I shall not torment you with how guilt-ridden I am so it's on to the good part - the food!

Bro previously sang praises of Pantai Seafood. An attempt to make a reservation on Sunday afternoon was met with the response that they were all full for the aircond section, so we had no choice but to opt for the outside which was luckily quite cool. I'm not sure how to describe where exactly it is except that it's somewhere off the NKVE in Kg. Kayu Ara. We were just starting to enjoy the idyllic view of the kampung roads we were going through when boom! We arrived at a big restaurant filled with rows and rows of cars. Popular and crowded is an understatement!

The food took quite a long time in coming and we took bets in guessing which would come out first. My guess was their signature pork knuckle since it was probably pre-cooked while sis guessed squid but they fooled us with this fried snapper. This was really something different. It was deep-fried snapper swimming in a creamy butter sauce and topped with crisp fried curry leaves and buttery bits.

Taste: Best eaten hot, it was nice and crispy. The mild-tasting sauce added an interesting flavour to it. I'm not a fan of creamy stuff but the rest liked it. We saw another table with a brownish sauce, similar to this texture and figured maybe the crispy bits are meant to be mixed together into the butter sauce.

One thing good is that when your first dish appears, you can be assured that your next few will start appearing in rapid succession! This is another signature item - two style kailan. It's deep-fried shredded kailan leaves over stir-fried stalks.

Taste: I found it a bit oily but I liked the little anchovies generously sprinkled on the top!

This is a must-have and their speciality - deep fried pork knuckle! They bring it to your table to show it off first before removing it to cut it up but if you so desire, you're free to ask them to leave it for you to tear into :)

Taste: Served with a sourish plum sauce, this was one of my favourites! It's crispy on the outside and tenderly soft inside. Delicious!

Kam heong lala was next. This was done with the bigger type of lala but to our disappointment, there wasn't much meat at all in the shells. The few mouths I took were either bits of shell or horrors..sand!

Taste: There wasn't much flavour or taste either and worse, it was cold by the time it came to our table. Thumbs down!

We've been having a hankering for sotong goreng tepung for a while already so we insisted on this despite the staff telling us everything else was deep-fried!

Taste: I was quite disappointed though to see if coming coated with thick batter. I was hoping for the thinly coated crumbly batter that the Malay stalls do so well! An unfulfilled craving leaves an unfulfilled Pinkelle!

The highlight of the night - the crabs! They recommended salt egg crabs which is supposed to be their signature dish. Signature indeed...it made up for some of the not-so-good dishes.

Taste: We had two very meaty crabs which came generously coated with salt egg. Very enjoyable and it was rather reasonable at about RM33/kg!

The bill came up to under RM40 per pax for 5 of us which wasn't too bad at all, considering the amount we ate and took away! As we were finishing, we saw a couple who had just come in. The guy asked his girlfriend to hold an empty table while he went off to place the order. She however, insisted on following him and needless to say, in a popular place like this, their table was gone by the time they came back! Tsk tsk...girls, don't attach yourself to your guy when he needs you to hold the table in a terribly busy restaurant! :p

Mushroom Bruschetta

We gave mom a break this weekend and cooked up dinner for a change. Bro prepared his mushroom bruschetta as appetiser - Best in USJ, Best in KL and some say Best in London! :)

As usual, we never have ingredients when we start cooking so off it was to Village Grocer in Bangsar V. If you've never been there before, do go in and take a stroll. It's got amazingly fresh veges and herbs from all over the world and gorgeous salad mixes, right down to edible flowers!

A quick nip down to the herb garden didn't turn up any basil so the chef picked up some rosemary instead which he chopped up finely to add into his mushrooms. Saute the sliced mushrooms with garlic and a dash of good ol' salt and pepper, spoon it up on crusty slices of baguette and you have a delicious appetiser that'll leave you wanting for more!

Note: You can lightly toast the baguette slices before spooning on the mixture to give it an extra crunch. We didn't want to fire up the oven for a few slices but if you use fresh bread like how we did, it's really good untoasted too!

I'm Craving For...

Fried ice-cream! I first tried this wonderful dessert when I was a student in Melbourne. A good friend brought me to Chinatown and promised me the most delicious dessert ever! After a huge fried chicken rice meal (I miss the portion sizes there!) the waiter brought these two little round brown gems. Tasting it for the first time, I never knew what ecstacies I've missed! It's crispy hot from the fryer on the outside and cold creamy on the inside! I don't know what batter they used but it leaves a delicious buttery taste in your mouth which is simply divine with the cold ice-cream!

I thought that first encounter would be my last as I didn't know where they sold it here. I've recently, though, caught tantalising glimpses of it at the SS2 pasar malam though I never tried it. Sometime back, we decided to give a small neighbourhood Hong Kong eatery, Star Hong Kong Cafe, in USJ 9 a try and lo and behold! On their menu was the exact same fried ice-cream! It was like a reunion with a loved one and it was just as heavenly as I remembered it!

Do give it a try if you come across this elusive gem! :)

Indian Delights

I was tortured yesterday by Lemongrass' delicious Indian lunch that left me with a terrible urge for banana leaf! You see, no one ever wants to take me for banana leaf lunches as they claim I'll be a waste of money since banana leaf rice comes with unlimited helpings of rice and vege! I've been lucky to grow up with a dad who absolutely loves Indian food so after looking at all of Lemongrass' drool-inducing pictures, it was really nice to come home to find that dad had bought Indian food for dinner!

We really like this stall's fried chicken but yesterday, there was only 1 left so dad bought a piece of fish to supplement it. The fried chicken was a bit hard as it was already quite late but it's really delicious when eaten there and a steal at RM2 for a drumstick!

So since they were out of fried chicken, we had this little fried chicken pieces too. I'm not sure what they're called but they looked like they were marinated in tandoori mix before frying as they had that distinctive red hue. I found bits of curry leaf in it too. This is seriously addictive stuff! The chicken are in delicious little bite-sized pieces that's nicely flavoured and dry.

A nice bowl of mutton curry rounded it off. It was a pretty big portion but went down well since it's a firm favourite! This was well-cooked, one of the better mutton curries I've had. The meat was well-cooked and filled with flavour, it didn't take jaws of steel to eat them!

And to combat the heatiness of the meats and soothe our guilty conscience, a big plate of stir-fried vegetables with fresh shitake mushrooms.

Really good but oh...so filling! Not the best thing to have before a couch potato night with Desperate Housewives! :p

Nasi Goreng Kampong

After a busy morning, I was really hungry by lunch but didn't want to go down to the food court to pack lunch. A short minute or two in there leaves you coming out smelling like the food court itself! Luckily a colleague was going down so I got her to pack me some nasi goreng kampong which I've been craving for a while. So much for attempting to be healthy!

She came back with this. When I opened it, my heart sank. Firstly, I hate my food liberally sprinkled with tonnes of fried onions. I don't mind fried onions in small quantities for flavouring but I hate the sweetish commercial types which this was. The fried ikan bilis wasn't fresh and the rice was quite empty except for 2 tiny pieces of chicken that were so small, I mistook them for pieces of garlic at first!

Grrrr...don't you just hate it when your cravings aren't filled?! I sulkily attempted to eat about 1/3 of it before giving up. Not only was it oily, it didn't have any taste sans fried onions.

And that won't be the only reasons why I won't be buying anymore food from that stall. As I was uploading my photos, I discovered something I didn't see on the pack itself!

*pukes* I think, or rather hope, it dropped off after I took the photo and before I started eating! *shakes fist at stall owner*

Pudu Pan-Mee

I recently took you on a little tour of Pudu for delicious soup. Now, to introduce it's neighbouring pan-mee stall! It's right next to the soup stall and I usually end up ordering pan-mee too while having soup. Got to kill two birds with one stone since Pudu isn't that close by!

It's manned by this husband and wife team and they do a brisk business to both their own customers and the soup customers who don't mind something extra soupy! They only have one version - soup but you can have the option of either hand-cut pieces or long noodles. I prefer the hand-cut ones. It tends to leave it with a rough, uneven texture that makes good chewing!

A bowl comes piping hot with lots of vegetables, pan-mee pieces, mushrooms and lean pork slices and topped with a handful of crispy anchovies. The meat and mushrooms have been pre-cooked in a savoury gravy which adds a nice flavour to the soup.

I find that it makes a nice dinner if you're looking for something light. Then again, I am quite the pan-mee fan! Do give it a try if you are ever in that area!