Porridge & Claypot Rice @ Restoran Makanan Teow Chew

We have just come back from holidaying in KL. In this trip, nasi kandar is a must because we didn't have enough time for it in previous trips. But this time round, we made it a point to just go there and we never regret it. :)

The weather was killing us in KL, so my sister said:" Let's try the Teow Chew Porridge in Taman Desa Aman, Cheras." In less than 30 mins, we zoomed in.

Address: 19 & 21, Jalan Desa Aman 2, Block C, Cheras 56100, KL. Tel: 03-91331339.

It was one of the best dining experience for me, so far.

The spread is not comparable to Singapore ones, as you can see here, just a few traditional dishes such as salted vegetables, peanuts, sour vegetables, Chinese sausage, braised egg & duck, fried long bean. But every dish goes well with porridge that one bowl of porridge is definitely not enough. Dishes here tend to be salty. Unlike in Singapore, due to oyster sauce and sugar being added during cooking, dishes tend to be sweet. Different people have different likings; however, I prefer the salty ones.
The porridge is the key. It’s sticky and yet smooth. We suspect some starch is added to make its unique texture. It can also be soaked in water for a long time to get its smoothness.

So each of us ordered 2 bowls, costs RM1 for each bowl.

Do you always find claypot chicken rice in Teow Chew porridge outlets? Not really. But here, there is a section selling claypot chicken rice. I believe that is because the boss is confident that his claypot rice will go well with the porridge dishes and that customers would like this tried-and-tested claypot rice.

He is correct. The claypot rice is a sure-win dish. I will give him a score of 9.5 out of 10. To be fair, I was telling CY that the Clementi charcoal claypot rice is nice too, even the up and coming Uncle Sam outlets are not bad. We normally have to add in the dark soy sauce ourselves before eating. This makes the dish a tad too sweet on overall. There will be an occasional bite into a piece of salted fish; the saltiness would overwhelm your taste out of the sudden.
But for this particular claypot rice, just a spoonful of rice goes into your mouth, you know what a proper claypot rice should be. I can’t help but taste every grain of flavourful rice. The dark soy sauce has all but caramalised, mainly at the crisp toasted rice at the bottom, quite similar to the socarrat in Spanish paella. You can’t find a place in Singapore where even kids would dig into the bottom just for a bit toasted rice on their servings! Simply delish! The salted fish simply melted into the rice. We believe the trick to achieving this taste is to cook the rice with the black soy sauce upfront, and keep the salted fish soft and flaky for diners to stir in before eating. It is also pleasant to chew into a piece or two of crisp ikan bilis (deep fried anchovies).

If the boss is farsighted enough, I think Singapore would be the place for him to make a big fortune. Of course, this is another story altogether. To think again, maybe I should be the one who ask him over? Haha!

All together, we paid RM63.50 for 3 adults and 2 kids. We will be coming back here next time, for sure!

KL Nasi Kandar Pelita

Nasi kandar is a popular dish of rice and curry from West Malaysia. It literally means “balancing pole rice”. Originated from Penang 50 years ago, it was first sold by Indian Muslim hawkers selling curry rice with two wooden containers hanging from their shoulders with a wooden pole, i.e. the “kandar”. There are even unproven rumours that the dish is addictive, as poppy seeds are used in the curries, which explains its immense following.
The place we visited is Nasi Kandar Pelita, an outlet famous near KLCC in Kuala Lumpur. Ministers are believed to order take-aways from here.
We were greeted with a bright display of exotic dishes and curries, from chicken and beef to crab and squid! The procedure is simple. Make your choice of main and side dishes to go along with steamed rice. The moment you end your orders with the word “curry”, the stall assistant goes into a string of lucid actions, skillfully concocting a cocktail of curries and sauces on the rice. They seem to have a corresponding mix of curries to go along with different meats and vegetables, so always leave the mixing in the hands of the specialists.

We went for the ayam madu, a form of honey roasted chicken. It looks burnt, but on closer look, there is actually a crispy layer of caramalisation on the fried skin. The meat is a little dry, not incredibly soft and juicy, but flavourful. Popped into your mouth, the sweet, sour and spiciness are a perfect match. Every chew is a new discovery of taste. Try chewing the chicken wing tip, a part normally discarded, but in this case, prepare for the feast of the taste buds!

The lamb in curry is succulent. Meats and vegetables are best eaten after being left in curry for at least a few hours, or better, until the next day in the fridge. In our case, the lamb must have been heated in curry long enough for the spice flavours to infuse in. My favourite is the part around the soft edible tendons. Savour the taste made in heaven the moment your teeth sinks in. Simply delish.

Service is good. There is a restaurant staff to guide parking cars. Even the plates have a surprise message beneath, which means “thank you; please come again”. There is always someone around to attending to your needs and to take orders for other dishes, e.g. tandoori chicken, Singaporean rojak and roti canai/prata. We are not cows with multiple stomachs, and could only eat so much. A return visit is definite to try out other dishes!

Eating out - Belacan Fish

Must admit that once in a while, we dine out, especially during this week - our one-week break, we will spend most of our time in shopping centres or parks, rather than in our Foodies' kitchen. It's also a good time whereby we can learn from master chefs all over Singapore rather than from our recipes at home or Internet.

So, this morning, we had our Lor Mee at Old Airport FC, then proceed to Tampines 1 for shopping, later at night came to this outlet famous for its belacan fish along Guillemard Road for dinner.

It is our first time to try this belacan fried fish, an interesting dish where the fish is covered with belacan as you can see here. Surprisingly, the taste was not overwhelming as what I thought it would be. However, this is not everyday food, once in a while, I think you will enjoy it too.

We had watercress soup, herbal chicken and stir-fried Kailan. The soup is really good. As for the herbal chicken, CY enjoyed it very much and I enjoyed the stir-fried Kailan instead as it's not too oily.

Overall, we spent about $65 for 3 pax. I think it's reasonable, but to come all the way from the west next time? I have to think twice. Hehe.

Best Sausage & Mash with Onion Gravy

This is the Jamie Oliver's Pass It On recipe in Delicious magazine, which he reckons would be the best recipe for anyone to pass on to a non-cooking friend. So we were zealous to try it yesterday night.

Well, I must say, this is a brilliant dish that looks funky & presentable, & yet tasty. According to the recipe, it would take about 15 mins to make, 35 mins to cook. However, It took us more than an hour to prepare & cook all together.

Adapted from Jamie's recipe

Serve 2

INGREDIENTS
4 sausages

2 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely sliced

Olive oil

1 tsp of dried sage & rosemary

0.5 potatoes, peeled

¼ cups (roughly 30-50ml) milk

70g butter, plus a knob for the gravy

freshly ground black pepper& salt

3 medium red onions, peeled and finely sliced

5 tbsp balsamic vinegar

3/4 beef stock cube

METHOD

1. Preheat your oven to 200°C/180°C fan-forced. If you’re using normal sausages, place them on an oiled baking tray, drizzle them with olive oil and sprinkle them with garlic, rosemary & sage. Cook in the preheated oven for 20 mins, or until crisp and golden.
2. While the sausages are cooking, chop your potatoes into rough chunks and boil them in salted water until cooked. Drain well, using a colander, then return them to the pan. Mash until smooth, adding the milk, 70g of the butter and the horseradish (use more if needed). Season well to taste, then put the lid on the pan and keep warm at the back of the stove.
3. Making the onion gravy: fry the onions – really slowly in a little oil, covered, for about 20 mins until soft. Remove the lid, turn up the heat and, as soon as the onions become golden brown, pour in the vinegar and boil until it almost disappears. Turn down the heat, add the rest of the butter, crumble in your stock cubes and some water and stir well. Let this simmer until you have a nice gravy consistency.
4. To serve, dollop some oozy potatoes on the plate, put the sausages on top and spoon over the onion gravy.
5. Serve with salad. Yummy.

Lastly, CY scored a record of 269 for Wii Bowling after several goes of muscle-aching training! No pain no gain. We were really excited, so we took this photo as our remembrance!

Mixed Vege & Herbs Pasta

Instant noodle is one of my favourites. Though I like cooking, but I can't resist its saltiness and its familiar taste which has been accompanying me since young and still, has not faded away in my memory.

My favourite is Indo Mee dry noodle, Ramen Char Mee (dry) & Koka mee (any kinds). Cheapskate as it seems, but I love it. Once in a week, I am gonna have it.

Nowadays, however, pasta adds another dimension in my memory of taste .

I like pasta too.

During my school days, I reckoned a handful professionals could cook pasta because they existed only in Italian restaurants and its ingredients could only be found in high-end supermarkets in KL.

Basil? Oregano? Thyme? What the hell. I couldn't even kill my hunger then. Yes, the truth was, no many people had that kind of money to buy those expensive herbs just to cook pasta at home then.
But now, it seems like everyone can afford and cook it. It's cheaper than Wagyu beef and Sushi definitely. I don't have a budget for this but I have calculated the cost, it costs about $4 to cook for 2 people, which the ingredients include mixed vegetables, pasta, tomato puree and dry herbs.

So, what say you?

Method

1. Cook pasta (100g for person) in salted water for a period stated on the package.
2. Prepare the sauce: heat oil, fry mixed vegetables (one whole cup) with sliced garlic (2 cloves) & a few dash of herbs (Basil & oregano) till fragrant.
3. Add half a can of tomato puree. Add water if it's too thick. Add a dash of sugar to balance its taste.
4. Simmer till sauce thicken.
5. When pasta is al dente, pour & mix with the sauce, stir and cook a few seconds.
6. Season with salt & pepper.

5 mins Soba for Breakfast

To combat the heat lately, we had cold soba for brunch.

Soba is the Japanese word for buckwheat, 荞麦. Unlike pasta, soba are rinsed rather vigorously in cold running water. By doing this, not only it will cool them down but also get rid of excess starch, which in turn adversely affect the flavor of soba. It is easy to prepare and nice to eat. To prepare this meal, you need less than 5 mins.

Method

Just put dry soba into boiling water, cook them for 3 - 5 mins (refer to package instruction for exact cooking time). While waiting, chop some spring onions.

When they are done, wash them under running water, drain and put in a pot of cold water, take out. Sprinkle spring onions on top. Serve with soba sauce.

Other alternatives for garnishing: dry shredded seaweed, sesame seeds, katsuo-bushi (bonito-flakes).

For the soba sauce, I bought the ready-made sauce, which comes in a bottle, cost $5.60 for 8-10 servings, bought in Meidy-ya. Some Cold Storage outlets have it too, nonetheless, Meidi-ya has more varieties. Soba sauce is a mixture of mirin, soy sauce, kombu (dry kelp) & others.

In our case, we added a bit of wasabi into the sauce. You may like it too. Dip soba into sauce and eat.

Stir-fried Wagyu Beef with Onions

We love to eat Wagyu beef . It is said to be one of the best breeds around the world. The other two are Black Angus/Angus from US and Chianina from Italy. Wagyu is graded from 1 to 12, it offers a range of marbling, flavours and tenderness.

My craving for Wagyu beef worsened after watching Korean TV series - SikGaek (食客) , literally means Foodie. In this series, Sung Chan, the main actor, ate raw beef to get its real taste and imagined how it would taste like when it was cooked. He went to extra miles to get food cooked perfectly and we were amused by his creativity in turning normal food into real good food. He could cook anything from fine dining Korean food, emperor food, to simple ones such as fried anchovies and kim chi, you name it. It was such a joy watching him cook as well as tasting the food visually. But we knew we should not be just sitting and watching him over a long time because it became a torture by just looking at him cooking rather we did it ourselves.


For more info, you can also click here (English) or here (Chinese).

Inspired, we did not wait long till Saturday to go to Liang Court, Meidi-ya for Wagyu beef, and to learn to cook like him. After buying, I was a bit unsure since I was a newbie for cooking Wagyu, how to go about cooking it was a good question in my mind, thus, I searched online for info. It seemed that everyone recommended it to be cooked as quickly as possible due to its marbling, less than 2 mins per side. Hmm....I was not thinking about steak recipe though.

The aroma & flavour of my Mum's cooking were still lingering in the air then, it was like yesterday that she just cooked for us a plate of stir-fried wild boar in my Kampung Titi (Yes, we eat wild boar and deer, I don't want to be pretentious to say that I just eat poultry, beef and seafood). Just some spring onions, sliced ginger, onions & wine, did wonders. So, I prefer cooking her way. This is the simplest way to enjoy a good piece of meat like this, simply let its natural flavour shine.

Well, without much help online, I adopted my Mum's way of cooking.

Method

1. Season beef with some salt and pepper.


2. Oil the pan, fry some sliced onions and ginger till fragrant, slightly brown and transparent, take out.


3. Heat pan (very hot), fry and toss the beef still they are slightly charred on the outside, but retain juiciness inside, about 30 seconds.


4. Add in spring onions and item (2), toss a bit with a dash of wine, 30 seconds .


5. Done.

Kobe Beef vs Wagyu beef: What is this, anyway?

Kobe Beef is a legendary delicacy of Japan, a type of beef that is so well marbled that it goes right off the charts for Prime grading in any other country. The meat ends up looking like it has been left out in the snow because of the intensiveness of the white fat marbling, rivals foie gras for richness and caloric content, and costs an obscene amount, often $300 a pound or more for the real thing in Japan. Kobe beef comes from a breed of cattle called Wagyu. In order to earn the designation of "Kobe Beef", the Wagyu beef must come from Kobe, Japan, and meet rigid production standards imposed in that prefecture.

Due to land scarcity in Japan, the beef production houses in Kobe have been contracting out to other producers to custom raise their cattle for them. Most specifically, in the US and Australia.

I bought this piece of beef, grade 7 from Meidi-ya for $31.60. After eating the beef, I think it is worth every cent.

Let's tuck in. Together with wagyu beef, we had radish kim chi and miso soup to go with. Simply delicious! Now, you can see that we are really into Korean food now. ;)

Wonderful Cake, Thanks!

I get to know some wonderful people recently.

One of them, Adeline, she likes to bake cakes and biscuits. Her son reflected to her that I look so skinny, so once in a while, she will send us cakes, puffs and biscuits to make me fatter.

So this post to a tribute to her, Adeline, for being so nice to me.