We had the buffet at The Islander, Traders Hotel. The buffet was for RM45 nett per head and the nice part was The Islander was giving a buy 1 get 1 free promotion, therefore, we only paid RM 22.50 nett per head. Cool eh

Before I went ahead to enjoy the meal, I managed to take some shots on the dishes available there.

As a starter, we have soup. The soup of the day was the Herbal Chicken Soup. It was sweet and best of all, not salty. Simply sweet to start the meal with a bowl of the Herbal Chicken Soup.

After the soup, here comes the main dishes. Among all the main dishes, I loved the mutton, beef and the curry salmon head the most.

There was a teppanyaki counter available.  There were fish fillet as well as calamari served at the teppanyaki counter.

Also, not forgetting, there was a counter that served chicken and duck meats. The roast duck was the nicest among all those available at the counter.

Once done with the main dishes, it’s always nice to complete the meal with some nice desserts. They have ice-creams, fruits as well as mousse and pastries available. Last but not least, you can also request for a bowl or two of the local favorite, ice kacang.

On the overall, everybody had a great lunch with the lunch buffet. Most importantly, we had a good time getting together … away from work.

Technorati Tags: The Islander, Traders Hotel, buffet

What you need:

• 200 – 300 gms of chicken meat
• 2 tablespoons of oyster sauce
• 1 clove of garlic (sliced into small pieces)
• 1/4 bowl of water (small bowl)
• Basil leaves

Method of preparation:

First of all, cut the chicken meat into small chunks and put them in a bowl. Marinate the chicken meat with oyster sauce. Add a few pieces of the basil leaves into the chicken as well. Mix the chicken and sauce evenly and leave it marinate for about 15-20 minutes.

Next, heat up the wok / frying pan with some oil over a medium flame. Put in the garlic and stir fry till they develop a light shade of brown. After that, put in the marinated chicken meat and stir fry the chicken meat evenly.

Once the chicken meat is cooked, put in the basil leaves and stir fry the chicken and leaves for a short while till they are evenly mixed.

Lift the chicken and basil leaves of the wok / frying pan and serve.

This is how the dish looked like when it’s served:

Technorati Tags: basil leaves, basil, chicken, oyster sauce, stir fry dish

Kampachi is located on the LG floor of the Equatorial Hotel Penang at Bukit Jambul. Kampachi is popular for it’s weekend buffets. You’ll get to enjoy a selections of various Japanese dishes freshly prepared by the in-house chefs.

Have fun with the pictures I took during the lunch buffet then

There will be more varieties available for the dinner buffet as compared to the lunch. That, of course will come with a different price tag. The time and price for the buffet lunch and dinner are as below:

Buffet Lunch (Available on Saturday and Sunday)
11:30 am – 2:30 pm
RM62.00++ (Adult), RM34.00++ (Child)

Buffet Dinner (Available on Saturday only)
6:30 pm – 10:00 pm
RM86.00++ (Adult), RM46.00++ (Child)

Rates are subject to 10% service charge and 5% Government tax. The price above are accurate at the time of posting. For the updated details, kindly refer to the hotel’s website here: Equatorial Hotel Penang.

Technorati Tags: kampachi, japanese buffet, japanese+cuisine, Equatorial Hotel

What you need:

• 60-80 gms of anchovies
• 3-4 tablespoons of sambal
• 200 gms of prawns
• 1/4 bowl of water (small bowl)
• 1 pinch of salt

Method of preparation:

First of all, soak the anchovies in some water to clean them. Next, once that is done, oil your wok / frying pan. Once the oil starts to heat up, put in the anchovies and deep fry the anchovies. Continue to stir fry the anchovies till the color turns golden brown. After that, lift the fried anchovies up from the wok / frying pan.

Next, put in the sambal and stir fry it over a medium flame. Continue to stir fry the sambal till you can smell the fragrance coming out from them. At this point, put in the prawns and stir fry the sambal / prawns until the both items are evenly mixed. After, add in the water and stir fry the mixture till it boils.

Lastly, put in the fried anchovies into the mixtures and add in the pinch of salt to taste. Stir fry the mixture to have them mixed well. Once they are properly mixed, lift them up from the wok / frying pan and serve. This step need to be done in the shortest time possible to ensure the crispiness of the anchovies.

Check out the dish when it’s done and served:

Technorati Tags: spicy dish, anchovies, sambal, prawns

A couple of days back, after a few recommendations from friends, we decided to visit this little Geylang in Penang. It’s located along Macalister Road directly opposite the Red Rock Hotel. The name of the place? It’s called Sin Geylang (literally translated to be “New Geylang”).

So, do you know what is Geylang popular with? Geylang is popular for it’s Frog Porridge. What else do would you expect me to be mentioning in this post besides Frog Porridge, eh?

As mentioned earlier, the name of the shop is Sin Geylang. This shop specialises in Frog Porridge. They have a few methods of preparation for the frog eg. stir fry frogs with onions and gingers, frogs steamed with soya sauce and chinese wine, stir fry frogs with thick soya sauce and dried chillies or more fondly known as the ‘Kung Pao’ / ‘Kung Po’ method.

Anyway, we ordered 2 frogs to be steamed with soya sauce / chinese wine and another 2 to be cooked using the ‘Kung Pao’ method. We also ordered a plate of their “Yun Nan Tofu”.

The porridge and the ‘Kung Pao’ frogs arrived in clay pots. The clay pots will further keep the dishes hot and fresh as they arrive as well as help enhance the taste.

On the overall, the tastes of the frog dishes were ok. The frogs steamed with Chinese wine was somewhat below my expectation as the taste and fragrance were not felt in the dish. The ‘Kung Pao’ frogs dish was nice and up to expectation. The ‘Yun Nan Tofu’ managed to compliment the taste of the frog dishes.

If you haven’t try this place out, you can check it out yourself if you are in Penang or planning to come to Penang. One important thing to note, it’s opened for business daily except Wednesday. The map to the place is as below:

Technorati Tags: food, Penang food, Geylang, porridge, frog, frog porridge

I was toying around with the mustard leaves I got from the wet market. I shall name this dish “Boiled Mustard Leaves with Calamari and Prawn Sauce”.

What you need:

• 300 – 400 gms of mustard leaves
• 1 piece of calamari (squid)
• Some prawns
• 5 pcs of shallots (sliced)
• 1 tablespoon of flour / tapioca flour
• 1/2 bowl of water (small bowl)
• 2-3 tablespoons of light soya sauce

Method of preparation:

First of all, for the mustard leaves, I used those smaller Hongkies’ stalks. Anyway, just cut each of the leaves off the stalks as shown below.

Boil the mustard leaves in hot water. Once the texture for all the leaves got soften, lift those off the water and arrange them nicely on a serving plate.

To make the sauce, mix the flour, water and light soya sauce with a bowl. Stir well and ensure all the flour get dissolved in the water. Cut the calamari and prawns into small pieces.

Next, oil the wok / frying pan. Once it’s hot, start by stir frying the shallots over a medium flame. Stir fry those till they begin to develop shades of brown. After that, toss in the calamari and prawns and continue to stir fry those with the shallots for a few minutes. Those will get cooked fast because of the size. Then pour in the flour, water & soya sauce mixture into the wok / frying pan. Stir fry the mixture and allow it to boil. Once it boils, lift the sauce off the wok / fryin pan, pour that over the mustard leaves and serve.

The dish looked nice, isn’t it? It’s something different from the usual stir fry vegetable dishes. Have fun trying.

Technorati Tags: Malaysian dish, mustard leaves, prawns, calamari, stir fry, home cooked

What do you need:

• 400 – 500 gms of soft pork ribs
• 2 pcs of corns
• 1 carrot
• Some raw peanuts
• 2 1/2 bowls of water (standard soup bowls)

Method of preparation:

Start by boiling the water. When the water boils, toss in the peanuts.

Next, boil the soft pork ribs in some hot water for a couple of minutes. This is to wash away the blood from the ribs.

Cut the carrots into your desired size. It can be small pieces or slices.

For the corns, cut those into smaller pieces as shown below.

Once the ingredients are ready, put all those into the water with the peanuts. Boil those over a big flame for about 15 minutes. After that, boil the soup over a small flame for about 1 hour. Once it’s ready, then serve. Check in out:

Very simple, right?

Technorati Tags: Malaysian dish, soup, corn, pork ribs

When one is in Malacca, one should get the authentic nyonya pineapple tarts. It’s one of the authentic Malacca delicacy.

There is this shop named LW which specialised in the pineapple tarts. The shop is located along Jonker Street.

When you reach the shop, you’ll be greeted by a giant pineapple tart placed right in front of the shop.

Personally, I prefer the tarts from this shop as the taste is much better compared to others. But again, when it comes to taste, it’s very much depending on personal preference

After that we proceeded to shop in Dataran Pahlawan. It’s one of the shopping complexes in Malacca. Later in the evening, we wanted to go to Jonker Street again but the roads around Malacca town were jammed with cars as there were road closures due to the Wesak Day’s procession.

So, we ended up cancelling the plan to get to Jonker Street. We changed plan to have Satay Celup instead. Satay celup is a Malacca’s signature dish.

It consist of things like fish balls, vegetables, meat balls, mushrooms and other things on satay sticks.

The items are to be dipped into a boiling satay sauce and eaten later when cooked.

Satay celup in widely available around Malacca town. For certain shops that are more popular, there are even long queues of customers waiting for their turns to have the satay celup.

That’s all folks. Hope you enjoyed reading the post above. If you haven’t been to Malacca, hope the above gives you a start-up tips of where you can go and what you can eat in Malacca

Last but not least, if you are looking for a great selection of places to stay with discount prices, you can check out Melaka Hotels for more information.

Technorati Tags: Malacca, pineapple tarts, Jonker Street, satay celup, Malacca delicacy

Anyway, on our way here, we decided to take a short break and took a detour into Ipoh. For the short time we have there, what better to do than going to look for food

We dropped by a shop that specialized in soya bean’s products. According to wife, the ‘tao foo fa’ (soya bean curd) in the shop is very nice. The only direction to the place I have from her is that it’s around the ‘Lou Wong’ Bean Sprout Chicken restaurant. So, we went round the area a couple of times till we finally found the shop located in one of the rows of shop houses there. The name of the shop is ‘Lai Kei Soya’ / ‘Kacang Soya Lai Kee’.

I was wondering what is so nice about that shop that she recommended the shop in the first place. As we got there, the first thing I noticed was that the ‘tao foo fa’ they prepared are free from gymsum powder (a common ingredient in making ‘tao foo fa’). That’s something not so common among soya bean curd sellers.

For the ‘tao foo fa’ sweetener, they have choices between white sugar, gula Melaka (a type of brown sugar made from coconut juice) and ginger sugar.

We ordered the ‘tao foo fa’ with ginger/sugar sweetener.

The first impression I have when the ‘tao foo fa’ were served was they were soft and smooth. And after taking the first taste, it was indeed very soft and smooth. For the sweetener, it was just moderately sweet. Just nice to bring enough flavor to the dessert. Most probably the taste of the sugar was partly neutralized by the ginger, making the sweetener not overly sweet. The ‘tao foo fa’ was really good to the last drop

We continued our journey after we’re done with the ‘tao foo fa’. Before we hit the highway, we decided to have a ‘take-away’ from Ipoh. What’s nicer to take away other than the signature ‘Ipoh Salted Chicken’, right?

We drove to our favourite ‘red shop’. The shop name is ‘Aun Kheng Lim ayam garam’. This shop is located at the corner of one of Ipoh’s main road. There isn’t any nice parking lot available around this shop. I think that’s the reason the shop owner came out with the ‘take-away’ idea. The salted chicken costs RM16 each. Tips for travelers: as you are nearing the shop, turn on your car’s signal light. The workers of the shop will come out to greet you as they spot your car nearing. You just need to tell them the number of chicken you need and they’ll get those packed and delivered to you without the need of you to get down from your car.

Good and convenient service, right? Well, that’s all folks. That’s our short detour to Ipoh. More updates to come later.

Technorati Tags: soya bean curd, tao foo fa, salted chicken, Ipoh delicacy

For the fish, it’s advisable to use the hard-tail scad fish. The fish can be easily recognised by the silver body and hard-tail as shown in the picture below:

What you need:

• 150 gms of blended mixed spices (consist of yellow ginger, red chillies, lemon grass, shallots)
• Hard-tail scad fish (medium size preferred)
• 1 pc of onion
• 3-4 cloves of garlic
• 1 teaspoon of salt

Method of preparation:

Have the scad fish washed and cleaned. Ensure all the gills and intestinal parts are completely removed from the fish.

Next, have the onion and garlics cut and finely chopped.

When this is done, oil the wok / frying pan. Once it heats up, put in the chopped onion and garlic. Stir fry the onion and garlic till you can smell the fragrance of the onion-garlic combo. After that, put in the blended mixed spices and stir fry all of those together. Continue stir frying the spices till the water in them dry up and you can smell it’s spicy fragrance. The smell can be pretty strong as the mixture contain red chillies. Anyway, once it’s done, remove the fried spices from the wok / frying pan and let it cool down.

Once the spices has cooled down, you can proceed to do the stuffing part. In order to do that, cut a long opening from the head to the tail of the fish on each side of the fish back that’s parallel to the fish bone. Cut as deep as possible so that both pockets can be stuffed with more spices. When that is done, rub the flesh of the fish with salt. Leave it for about 10 – 15 minutes. Later, stuff the spices into both the pockets on the fish back.

After that, oil and heat up the wok / frying pan again. Deep fry the fish till it’s cooked on both sides. Once the fish is cooked, lift it up and serve. Check it out:

The dish above might sound a little complicated to prepare but it is really worth all the trouble. Have fun trying.

Technorati Tags: Malaysian dish, spicy dish, fish, scad fish