The recently concluded Sugar High Friday hosted by Kate of A Merrier World have been compiled and rounded up. Check Kate's round up here on the desserts that you turn to for comfort.
I've submitted an Apple and Persimmon Crumble for this event.
I got this pack of Ina Sambal Udang Pan Mee Goreng by Yugatrade at Jusco. I like Ina's pan meen and yee meen so decided to try this sambal udang version. I can't remember how much but it's a mixed pack of 5 different flavours.
Inside the packet, it contained the dried noodles, a packet of dehydrated vegetables, a pack of dark soy sauce, a pack of seasoning and a pack of sambal udang.
Cooked the noodles according to instructions and poured in all the ingredients.
Mixed them up and voila... dinner!
Easy peasy. This tasted ok only, perhaps not enough sambal udang. I shall stick with the soupy pan meen which tasted like the real thing especially the ikan bilis soup. The yee meen soup tasted exactly like claypot yee meen, just remember to crack in an egg!
I've been to all Alexis outlets but I'm liking it here at The Gardens. The place is spacious with high ceiling, food is good and best of all service is at its best on the day I was there. I also noticed they have tapas here in the menu.
So we have one serving of button mushroom (RM15) from the tapas menu. The mushrooms were halved swimming in a creamy garlicky gravy. Toasted french loaves rounds that came with it were great in mopping up the tasty gravy.
BoiBoi loved his Club Sandwich (RM20) but who doesn't when there are thick layer of chicken slices, ham (I can't remember of which kind but definitely not pork since this place is pork free), fried egg, and green salad leaves in between 2 slices of fresh toasts. The portion is rather huge as it came with a side salad and tonnes of fries. Thank goodness I did not order any mains since I have to perform my *ahem* Alam Flora duty that evening by picking up the salad and bits and pieces of his sandwich but he wallopped quite a fair bit though.
Capt'n Hook who is not a fan of pasta asked for a Penne Carbonara (RM32). He gave a rare full praise for his carbonara that have pieces of ham and mushrooms. I took a bite and I guess I know why... the sauce is not sickly rich which is great as it doesn't make one feel "jelak" quickly.
We were rather full but as usual BoiBoi would loved to have dessert to end his meal. What more when he had already spied the cake display as he went "browsing" around. I had to manipulate and control his ordering so that we won't end up with something rich. Since he loved pavlova, I managed to convinced him into having a Chocolate Nutty Meringue (RM15). It's our first time trying this as we'll usually stuck at Tiramisu :p This is a brilliant dessert with light marshmallowy chocolate meringue in between light chocolate cream and chopped pecans and macadamia, lots of them oh yum! There are a lot of nuts on top as well! I'm sooooo gonna make this one day!!!
Ahhh another good food option at The Gardens ;-) other than The Yogitree, Yuzu, Gelatissimo, I Love Yoo, Nyonya Colors, Belanga, Fong Lye, sbread, Shihlin...
Alexis Bistro and Wine Bar
Lot f209 1st Floor
The Gardens
Mid Valley City
Lingkaran Syed Putra
59200 Kuala Lumpur
Tel: (603) 2287 2281
**Non-Halal**
This recipe appeared in Yum Yum magazine issue 63 and seems very appealing. Kinda special since we usually have baked beans on its own or cooked with eggs or with some mince meat. Very easy to prepare and would become a firm favourite if one love baked beans.
Braised Spare Ribs With Baked Beans
1 tbsp oil
1 onion, cut into pieces
2 tomatoes, cut into wedges
2 red chillies, cut into pieces (I omitted)
600g spare ribs, cut into pieces
1 tin baked beans
(A)
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp tomato sauce
600ml water
1 tsp sugar
1. Heat oil and saute onion until aromatic. Add tomatoes, red chillies, spare ribs and stir-fry until well mixed.
2. Add (A) and bring to boil. Lower the heat and simmer for 40 mins or until rins are tender.
3. Lastly add in baked beans and bring to boil. Dish and serve with rice.
Ref: Yum Yum issue 63
10 things you did not know about baked beans
By Karen Inge
They're a staple quick meal in many houses, but just how nutritious are they for you and your family?
- Baked beans contain energy giving, low glycaemic index carbohydrates.
- A cup of baked beans is a great source of protein with more than 10 grams of protein equal to 50 gram steak or 11/2 eggs.
- The fibre in a cup of baked beans is 12 grams equal to more than 8 large sandwich slices multigrain bread, or 11/4 cups toasted muesli or 4 medium unpeeled green apples.
- Baked Beans are international. Versions of baked beans are found in many countries from France home of the cassoulet through to the USA with Boston (Navy) Baked Beans.
- A cup of baked beans is about 900 kilojoules or just less than 10% daily intake energy requirement for the average person.
- Baked beans are low in fat (less than 1%) with less than 2 grams of fat per cup. They are super low in saturated fats and as a vegetable contain no cholesterol.
- Most baked beans are also an excellent source of tomato containing the antioxidant lycopene.
- Baked beans contain folate a vitamin essential to release the energy in our food. One cup of Baked Beans provides more than 25% of the daily requirement (RDI 400 micrograms/day adults and teenagers).
- We do not have digestive enzymes for all carbohydrates including raffinose found in dried beans and legumes. Gut micro-flora break down this carbohydrate and a byproduct is gas. Raffinose can be reduced in beans that are soaked first and the water discarded.
Source: The Australian Women's Weekly
I have some egg yolks after making a pavlova. Most times, I will time it as such I can use the yolks by adding more eggs and turn them into omelette but since I've gotten an ice-cream maker, I use the yolks to make gelato :p instead!
This Lemon and Passionfruit Gelato was created as I go along with the fruits I have in my fridge. I made the base using the basic gelato recipe.
I've chilled the custard mixture in the fridge which helped churning faster! I removed the chilled custard from the fridge and added in the pulp of 3 crinkled passionfruits which is actually not enough to make a full passionfruit gelato. I reckon 7 - 8 passionfruits are needed. I tasted the custard and it's wayyy tooo heavy. The cream taste is too strong. I rummaged in the fridge and found one last lemon and decided to use this. Grated in the zest and pour in the juice of half the lemon. Hmmm still tasted very heavy... see never ever make anything unplanned :p
So I squeezed in the other half lemon and tasted with my fingers crossed. Woohoo finally over came the creaminess taste. Thank goodness the half lemon did save the day, otherwise I'll be stumped! Can't possibily go out and grab anything since it was already way past 10pm when I made this LOL!
Pour custard into ice-cream maker and churn till a thick consistency before chucking into the freezer. The gelato turned out to be fabulous! Tested with the Persimmon and Apple Crumble and surprise surpise they actually went well together ;-)
Geezz, I can't believe it that the last time I participated in Sugar High Fridays was in July 2007... wow that's so long ago sighh 2.5 years! That was SHF#33 and now it has reaches #61! Anyway, it's time to pick up the pieces. This round is hosted by Kate of A Merrier World. This round she picked desserts that you turn to for comfort.
For us in Malaysia, we're so blessed with so many local sweet desserts that we can turn to. From ice cold cendol, air batu campur, the various kuih-muih, tong shui (sweet soups), gulab jamun, kulfi and so forth; well on top of other foreign desserts that are available. We're never short of them! However, for comfort sweet... nothing beat a warm apple crumble topped with cold cold vanilla ice-cream! As the vanilla ice-cream melts and meld into the crispy crumble and soft fruits... it's just soooo Heavenly!
Since persimmon is abundant at the moment, I added some to my apple crumble, hence making it a Apple and Persimmon Crumble. Making a crumble is the simplest and the recipe... well just throw in what you have or fancy as one does not need to follow the recipe. I've based the crumble recipe on Donna Hay's Modern Classics Book 2's Apple and Blueberry Crumble. The fillings were roughly based on her Apple Pie recipe.
Apple and Persimmon Crumble
Crumble:
75g butter, soften
1 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
handful of chopped walnuts
Place all ingredients except walnuts in a bowl and mix to combine.
Fillings:
(A)
3 medium sized persimmon - skinned, deseed and slice into thin wedges
(B)
7 apples - skinned and slice, Granny Smith would be the best since I've a lot of Fuji apples, I've used those
1 tbsp water
1/3 cup sugar, I've used brown
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp ground cinnamon, use less if you're not a fan
To make the filling, place the apples and water in a pan over medium heat. Cover and simmer, shaking the pan occasionally, for 5 minutes or until just tender. Drain and cool completely. Stir in the sugar, lemon juice and cinnamon.
Once cool, add in the persimmon and mix thoroughly. Place in heatproof dish.
To assemble, place the crumble all over the apple and persimmon. Bake in preheated over at 180C until the crumble became dark golden and crisp which is about 30 - 45 mins (recipe mentioned 55 mins but I think it's a tad too long) depending on your oven.
**Non-Halal**
One afternoon, I made late reservation at both Finnegan's Irish Pubs & Restaurants and twentyone kitchen+bar which are located side-by-side along Changkat Bukit Bintang via theQguides. That got Lisa scrambling to contact me thinking that I made the wrong dates since both were reserved on the same date but she missed out the time factor :p What to do, we're procastinators anyway. Capt'n Hook and I planned to have a drink at Finnegan's before proceeding to twentyone for dinner.
Whilst we were both enjoying our drinks, we decided to have a small bite here, so we opted a Pork Snackers (RM22) platter has bacon, ham and sausage served with a dollop of mustard. I can't say much about the bacon and ham since well, they're bacon and ham on the saltish side, great with beer but the sausage is really terrible. They're just too floury.
Once done, we hopped over to twentyone. Lucky the rain had drizzled out, otherwise we would be clambering over the fence or rather brick barrier in between the two places kekeke. Since we were a little stuffed with the pork platter, we just opted for their Y mains platter... yeah 'twas platters night that evening! We can picked 3 items from a selected choices in the Y section. No Xes for us. I can't recall how much but I think it's around RM50plus which we thought it was value for money for being able to try 3 main courses in one go, heh the tham jiakness (greedy) in us!
His platter consist of Bangers and Mashs (RM40 for full course) + Wild Mushroom Risotto (RM36) + Marinated Duck Breast (RM42). Bangers and Mashs are just ordinary but twentyone nailed the risotto perfectly. I urged Capt'n Hook to try the wild mushroom risotto as I've tasted before and it was still great! The grains are separated but yet creamy and not mushy nor lumpy. Fantastic! We both opted for the duck breast. I loved the tender meat which went very well with the leek!
I picked Crispy Skin Salmon (38) + Basil and Asparagus Risotto (RM36) + Marinated Duck Breast (RM42) for my platter. Was surprised that the salmon turn out to be quite sizeable which is perfectly done and the skin remained crispy throughout my course :p. The only thing is I'm not used to the slightly sweetish honeydew melon salsa. Loved the risotto that have bits of feta in it, they nailed it again here!
Bursting to the brim, we declined dessert and head home with a bubbly buzz in our stomach knowing that it was a great dinner indeed.
Finnegan's Irish Pubs & Restaurants
20, Jalan Changkat Bukit Bintang,
50250 Kuala Lumpur
Tel: (603) 2145 1930
twentyone kitchen+bar
20-1, Jalan Changkat Bukit Bintang,
50250 Kuala Lumpur
Tel: (603) 2142 0021
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Note: twentyone kitchen+bar will be closing Sunday for some freshening, 24th Jan till Thursday, 28th Jan. Reopening on Friday, 29th Jan at 6pm!
