popiah party

Have always enjoyed a good hearty home-cooked meal at Imbi grandma's and last weekend's lunch was no exception. Can you guess what we had then? Something that we had to 'work on' first before having it 'feast on'. 

With THIS being the main ingredient, it's pretty easy to guess now eh?

The sidekicks ...

For me, the key that binds it all together................the amazingly crunchy and fragrant fried shallots!

And of course, we must never forget the sauces........the tim cheong and chili paste

 Equally crucial is the quality of the popiah skin that one uses. Auntie buys the good thin kind and steams it a bit to soften its texture slightly.
Can you spot my lil boy trying to run away from the camera?

Biggest mistake when wrapping your own popiah is the tendency to stuff too much ingredients into one roll.

The result is a torn popia skin, moreso if you've earlier slabbed the sauces directly onto the skin, thus turning it soggy. Sauces are better spread onto the lettuce leaves. -.-

Now THIS.............is perfection!

Now what's better than having your own popiah party?
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Having a Levain salad and pastry party for dinner afterwards. ^^

darren's vege

Darren has been taking solids for months now; his favourite being soft and mushy slow-cooked porridge. At only 10 months, he's able to gulp down 1 rice bowl of porridge laden with fish meat and mashed-up vegetables - all in one seating. He eats 2 bowls of those in a day. If it isn't fish, i'd cook the congee in some chicken stock for the taste. 

Now when it comes to preparing the vege (of the day), i found the most practical way was to prep the vege and store batches of them in the freezer. This can be done for almost all types of baby-friendly vege, and i've since tried carrots, sweet potato, broccoli, green peas, corn and spinach. 

Important note though, all vege should be steamed rather than cooked in boiling water (All the nutrients would end up in the water which you would be discarding anyway). 

select only the young shoots of the spinach as they cook and mash easier

The cooked vege goes into the food blender; a few 'whurr whurr's and voila, you're almost done!

Any regular ice cube tray will do, though i did try getting those with lids (to protect from freezer burns on the surface of the food). Couldn't find any (sigh), so settled for those regular type.
I love spooning the gooey mushy vege into the tiny square sections.

 Freeze them enough and you can remove them from the tray, into air tight storage bags or just containers like this. I love making and storing a variety of vegetable cubes so i can cook with different types of vege daily. Also this means Darren doesn't end up getting orange hands and legs from consuming too much carrots for too long a time. ^^

A contented and active Darren after a hearty meal....

Dessert time....Darren gets a first feel of 'Tam Tam'...
dun worry, 'feel' only , not 'taste'.

"HO HO CHIAK"

nanyang authentic

You know how every once in a while, you feel like splurging in some 'designer' hawker food fare. For instance, when you have the sudden urge (and don't mind spending the extra bucks) for Mdm Kwan's rich flavourful bowl of curry laksa, knowing that you can get it at that roadside stall for only RM 5?

Well, i had my experience of 'designer' chicken rice at NanYang Authentic, Pavilion recently. Something about having the word 'Authentic' in a food outlet's name that somehow draws my attention to it. As if all the other chicken rice out there are....'fake'?

 The place was fully occupied during lunch that day, so THAT was a good sign, i suppose.

 First, the chicken (roasted kind) was not as tender as i had hoped it would be. Eating any tough piece of chicken meat always brings me back to Low Yau Kee's (Jln Tun H.S. Lee) amazingly out-of-this-world super tender chicken pieces.

 Their balls (pork and fish) are notably tasty and rightly-textured. I guess you can tell it's good stuff from the picture.

 Since i wasn't quite planning to return to this place anytime soon, i thought watdaheck, since i was here, might as well try out all their signature meats...hence, the steamed (white) chicken and the honey bbq pork (char siew). Once again, the chicken's nothing to shout about, but one look at the thick juicy sweet pork slices below, and i'm sure you're wishing you can sink your teeth into them now. lol. damn, non-porkie lovers, you don't know what you're missing!

 This next side dish i loved to the max, simply because i can't seem to find these big fat short juicy bean sprouts anywhere else other than Ipoh itself! So refreshing, i could eat 10 plates of them!

 Another side dish which i found rather different was their deep-fried battered broccoli. A unique twist which i would definitely want to try out at home. One day.

 The biggest let-down came towards the end of my lunch, when i was presented this unappealing-looking smallest bowl of black jelly (tasted nothing like the 'gui ling gao' that they claimed). Seriously guys? This looked like the kind of dessert that comes free with a fast-food kid's meal. I'd be happier to settle for a bowl of iced canned longan with nata de coco/ sea coconut. =.=

 OK, the bill came and my set came to RM 18.80 for everything you saw above, minus the plate of roasted chicken. But then , this is just a one person set - prices become more reasonable for sets meant for more pax.

Glad that i tried out this place. Perhaps this is a more suitable place for business lunches or when introducing your foreign counterparts to Malaysian's chicken and char siew rice, all in a comfortable elegant dining ambience. Aah, maybe that's why the place was packed for lunch that day.

malones in pavi

 I'm constantly on the look out for those 'high standard' restaurants that have set lunches on weekdays, just to see how good their food is, without burning a big hole in my pocket... =D  And also just so that i can then brag to people.. 'oh, i've eaten here before'..or "wat, dat place? been there before lorrr'

One fine lunch, besties and i decided to try the set lunch at Malones in Pavilion, KL.

 The set lunch menu - not a very promising start as we were only given 3 choice of entrees to choose from (with the other being a vegetarian dish). Basically, like food served on an airplane, it was 'chi-ken or fis?'

 So, technically, my lunch SET meant i was  paying the full price for my main, while the soup or salad was complimentary.......and that makes up a set?? They should reword it to 'complementary' instead.
And just when we started to wonder about the non-existent mention of 'drinks' on the menu, our waiter quickly poured us 3 glasses of iced lemon tea.

Frankly, when our 'on-the-house' salad and soup came, my only thoughts were....
Salad........so plain, for sure i could toss a better one myself
and the soup ... the surface looked like a piece of parched land during a drought.

 This was our main - Lemon Baked White Fish.......Can i just say that the slaw, rice and fish itself was beyond our expectation.........the negative side of it.

Most original part of this dish - the lemon.

The Colonial Chicken Chop turned out to be our only saviour. Not bad and at least it was served warm.
But whatever happened to the coleslaw that was supposed to come with it?
Sigh, let's just say we sort of 'gave up' at that point of time.

Reminder to self - if the mains are not up to the mark, it's only wise to skip the dessert.

This reminder came a little too late when we made a rash decision to try their Caramelized Apple Tatin. I guess we were thinking "with only ONE choice of dessert on the menu, it HAS to be pretty good if not an awesome dessert, right?"  WROOONGGG...

And it wasn't cheap too....RM 11.90 for this amateurish-looking apple-lacking soggy tart.
It helped to pretend that the ice cream was of a very expensive brand, hence its hefty price. lol.

One thing about eating a lousy lunch with good friends - sure is fun as we have lots to talk and comment about....the food. lol.

 together pics....

The food may not get my thumbs up, but the great company i had surely deserved it...

...as you can see from this smiley face that was imprinted on the table at the end of our meal.

Nevertheless, I'll still give credit where credit is due....I think this restaurant functions better as a pub/ drinking arena, as i can always find huge flocks of customers hanging out here with just drinks in their hands.
That figures. ^^



Oh, one last thing.....Urban Dictionary actually has a meaning of the word 'Malone' ......