Corns with Soft Pork Ribs Soup

Posted on May 17, 2009
Filed Under Do It Yourself, Food | 3 Comments

This week I decided to cook soup. We had Corns with Soft Pork Ribs Soup. It’s something pretty easy to prepare. Just a matter of getting everything ready and toss em’ all in.

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

Trip to Malacca – Going around Malacca town

Posted on May 12, 2009
Filed Under Food, Holidays | 3 Comments

While we were at Malacca, we took a stroll along Jonker Street in the afternoon. Jonker Street is very much more livelier in the evening as there will be stalls set up along the street selling all sorts of things.

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

Trip Down to Malacca – Detour into Ipoh

Posted on May 8, 2009
Filed Under Food, Holidays | 2 Comments

We’re current on a family trip to Malacca. I’m blogging this post from Malacca right now, hehehe. Haven’t been going around Malacca yet at this point. Will update my blog with more posts later.

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

Spicy Stuffed Hard-Tail Scad Fish

Posted on May 3, 2009
Filed Under Do It Yourself, Food | 4 Comments

This is another one of the more favourite dish in Malaysia. The most important ingredient of this dish is the spice.

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

Are You Game for an Exotic Satay Ride ?

Posted on April 29, 2009
Filed Under Authenticly Penang, Food | 2 Comments

What was the most exotic satay have you taken so far ? Before this, the most exotic satay that I’ve taken before was snail satay Anyway, we went to try out a new satay stall recently to check out what we can get from there. The stall is located along the Sg Ara main road.

We weren’t expecting anything fancy except for the usual stuff like chicken, beef and lamb. As we got there, we were rather surprised of what they got to offer when the waitress came to serve us.

Beside the usual stuff mentioned above, we were offered satay varities of rabbit meat, deer meat, ostrich meat, calamari and the most interesting among all … horse meat … yeehaaw !!!

Well, we haven’t taken horse meat before, at least up to that point of time. It was totally new to us hahaha. We were pretty sure that the waitress knew we’re pretty curious on the horse meat as we kinda asked a series of questions related to the horse meat LOL. After politely answering our questions, she added that if we wanted to just try it out, we can even order 2 sticks (one for each) of the horse meat satay and so we did.

We ordered the usual stuff plus some deer meat, ostrich and of course not forgetting the **ahem** horse meat. The horse meat felt a bit hard and has a kinda salty taste. Am pretty sure it’s not due to salt. The beef was really soft and tender. The rest were equally great.

For the price, it’s a little pricey to pay for satay but it’s a worthwhile experience. Well, some horsey experience you can’t find anywhere in Penang, LOL.

Are you game for it ? Which was the most exotic satay you had ?

Technorati Tags: Malaysian dish, food, satay, exotic, exotic satay

Stir Fry Chicken with Mushrooms and Eggs

Posted on April 26, 2009
Filed Under Do It Yourself, Food | 2 Comments

I decided to cook chicken this weekend. At the same time, I felt like trying out something different. So, this is another bright idea of mine

What do you need:

300 gms of chicken fillet
2 cloves of garlic (sliced)
4-5 pcs of raw mushroom
2 table spoons of light soya sauce
1 table spoon of flour
1 table spoon of water
1 egg
1/4 teaspoon of salt

Method of preparation:

Cut the chicken fillet into small pieces. After that, add the flour, light soya sauce and water to the chicken. Have the chicken marinated and leave it for 30 minutes or more if you have more time.

Next, de-shell egg, add in the salt and have the egg whisked. Have the raw mushrooms sliced to your preferred thickness.

Once the chicken is ready, proceed to oil and heat the wok / frying pan. Put in the whisked egg and stir fry the egg till it’s half-way set. At this point, get it removed from the wok / frying pan and put it aside.

Oil and heat up the wok / frying pan again. Put in the garlic and stir fry those till they develop a light shade of brown. Add in the chicken and stir fry those for a while. After that, add in the sliced mushrooms and stir fry those together with the chicken. Lastly, put the egg back in to the mixture in the wok / frying pan and continue to stir fry those till they are done. After that, lift those off from the wok / frying pan and serve.

Check it out:

What do you think? Pretty neat, right? Even though it’s a first try, the taste was pretty good. I certainly would want to go for more rounds of this in the future

Technorati Tags: Malaysia dish, stir fry, chicken, mushroom, egg

How To Identify a Smart Spam Comment

Posted on April 21, 2009
Filed Under Uncategorized | 8 Comments

Spams. Everyone hates one. But the fact is that spams are everywhere. As I have mentioned previously, I got spammed pretty badly on my browser post. So, today is not an exception. I got another list of spam comments in my spam queue after they got filtered by Mr. Akismet. There was one spam that caught my attention which gave me the idea to write this post. It’s a smarter spam. I’ll share with you how to identify and catch one.

Let’s have a look at the more common comment spam first.

As you can see, usually a common spam comment will contain lots of thrashy words and links to all sorts of sites. That can be easily identified by anyone and have that spam comment deleted right away, right?

Next, the smarter spam. Check it out:

As you can see above, the spammer is pretty smart. He made the message like a normal message with just a single link. He tried to convince the unsuspecting reader that it’s not a spam by saying “PS. Dont be an ass, this is NOT spam”. So, how do you confirm that it’s a spam? Simple. Just take the highlighted sentence and do a search with Mr. Google.

You can see above in the search results that there are a lot of identical comment phrases in other blogs. You can also get lots of identical results if you do an advanced search with Mr. Google. Could it be just sheer coincidence? Of course not … unless the spam message speaks Hokkien (a Chinese dialect). When that happens I might have to look further LOL.

With that, you can safely confirm that this is a spam comment and have it deleted.

After catching this kind of spams a few times, you’ll be able to identify a spam comment better and have it deleted faster by just looking at them.

Technorati Tags: spam, spam tactic, spam comment, identify spam

Stir Fry Capsicum with Baby Corn

Posted on April 19, 2009
Filed Under Do It Yourself, Food | 3 Comments

I noticed that the dishes that I’ve blogged so far are mostly meaty in nature. LOL. Made me feeling rather carnivorous when looking at them. Ok, I’ll repent .. Hahahaha. I’ll use this post to balance things up a bit .. hehehe. Therefore, I’m gonna do a vege dish blog post.

By the way, I do cook vege all the time. Just that the meaty dishes are more interesting to blog about. Anyway, back to the dish.

What you need:

1 piece of capsicum
2 cloves of garlic (sliced)
4-5 pieces of baby corn
5 pieces of raw mushroom (sliced)
4-5 small calamaris (cut into rings)
1/2 bowl of water (small bowl)
2 pinches of salt

Method of preparation:

Cut the capsicum into small pieces. You can cut into slices too if you prefer it that way. For me, I prefer smaller pieces as it’s easier to eat. The same goes for the baby corn. You can cut those in halves or into your preferred size.

Have the garlic sliced into thin slices.

For the mushrooms, I usually use the raw mushrooms as shown below. Have them sliced into your prefered thickness.

Once all the ingredients are ready, start by oiling the wok/frying pan. Once it’s hot, stir fry the garlic till they develop a light shade of brown. After that, put in the calamaris and have those stir fried till they are cooked (texture hardened). At this point, put in the capsicums, baby corns and mushrooms. Stir fry the content for a short while between 2-3 minutes.

Add in the water and sprinkle the salt onto the mixture and give it a good stir. Let the water boils. After that, continue to stir fry the content for another 2-3 minutes. After this, you can have the vege lifted up from the wok/frying pan and they are ready to be served. Check it out: