Review: CANTON-i at 1 Utama

**Non-Halal**

Tucked near TGIF/Burger King, Canton-i can be easily missed out if not for those yummilicious looking roast meats that hung up on the rack right beside the entrance. You can see the chef chopping up plates and plates of roast meat like char siu, siew yuk, roast duck etc. Canton-i is the Cantonese sister of Dragon-i which is of Shanghainese cuisine in nature.

Looking narrow on the outside, I was surprised to be brought to the back of the restaurant where it opens up. However, the tables were placed very very close to one and another. It can be rather uncomfortable, plus it's not so convenient to snap photos in secret hahaha luckily I was just using my mobile for that. Well, in actual fact, not only that, I can virtually hear the conversation next table!

Anyway, here was what hubby ordered... fresh noodles (sang meen or usually known as wantan noodles) with char siu and siew yuk. I had a slice of the siew yuk and it was really yummy. Crunching on the crispy skin was delectable indeed.



I asked for the usual char siu and wantan (meat dumplings) with fresh noodles. I loved the bouncy noodles and the gravy for the dry version, just the way wantan mee should be like. The char siu was nice but since I'm greedy, I would say there are too few slices served hehe..



I ordered siew mai and egg tarts for my boiboi to snack on. The siew mai is packed with solid meat and fresh crunchy prawns which my boiboi ate 3 up!



Now, I have to say that these egg tarts are absolutely gorgeous! The pastry is flaky and crispy whilst the egg custard is wobbly, creamy and eggy. They're simply out of this world!



This is one place that we will definitely return for more... which I'm sure my boiboi would love too.




CANTON-i
G-208 Ground Floor
1 Utama Shopping Mall
No. 1 Lebuh Bandar Utama
Bandar Utama, Damansara
Tel: 603-7729 7888

Technorati Tags: cantonese food + 1 utama

Mui Choy Chue Yuk

**Non-Halal**

Mui Choy Chue Yuk (braised mui choy with pork slices) is a favourite dish amongst many of us. Most times they're cooked with pork belly or at times chicken. There are two types of mui choy (a type of preserved vegetable) - salty or sweet. We usually use the sweet one cos they're not exactly sweet per se as the salty one tends to be overly salty.

To prepare the mui choy, one need to rinse the mui choy carefully, going thru the leaves as there may be sands tucked in there. Next soak them for say 30 minutes or more to get rid of the saltiness before chopping them up for usage.

Cooking Mui Choy Chue Yuk is pretty simple. Marinade lean pork strips with some soy sauce, sesame oil and some cornflour. Heat some oil in a wok and fry the pork strips a bit till they're cooked. Add in the mui choy and stir. Pour in some water and adjust seasonings by adding dark soy sauce or abalone sauce (usually it's oyster sauce but since it's confinement food, oyster sauce is omitted). Place the lid on and braise on low heat for 20 mins or until pork and mui choy are tender. Alternatively, this dish can be cooked with chicken meat. For a healthier dish, you can steam them instead.



This is usually how my meal looked like at my parents', very simple. One dish, in this case Mui Choy Chue Yuk; blanched vegetables mixed with some sesame oil and soy sauce; and rice (pictured was 10 grains rice) plus the standard soup.


Technorati Tags: confinement food

Homemade Chicken Essence

One of the nourishing soup I had is Chicken Essence after the nasty episode. Nope, not those straight from the bottle. The homemade style. I drank this during my confinement after giving birth to my boiboi. This soup made me super alert and kept me awake at most times hahaha that I totally banned it!

The process is pretty tedious to me, as usually one have to smash up one whole kampung (free-range) chicken with a pestle, bones and all. Then these are placed on top of an over-turned porcelain bowl inside a double-boiler. Put on the lid and double-boil the smashed chicken for 3 hours. The essence of the chicken will drip under the bowl. Remove the chicken and the bowl gently and drink up the essence.

Note: When you first open the double-boiler lid, you won't see much liquid inside as shown on the left pic. Don't fret, the essense hid underneath the bowl!



Well, that was the usual way of making chicken essence but this method produces a fair bit of oil. What my mom did was to use lean breast meat from 3 (yes THREE!!! That's a freaking whole lot of chickens that we have been eating every other day!) kampung chickens instead. For a bit of variation, a few slices of dong guai (angelica) can be added underneath the bowl.

My colleague had taught me some years back to make this Chicken Essence. He also told me to reserve the cooked chicken and use it the next day to boil soup. We tried that and the soup turned out tasting sweet as he had mentioned.

Technorati Tags: confinement food

Penang Makan Discoveries in June 2008 Part 2

We brunched at Kek Seng Kopitiam which is located along Penang Road, just across from Komtar. I remember having ice-cream here when I was really young like perhaps 7 years old? Geee... been so long since I last stepped into this kopitiam. I still remember the booth seats haha... and they're still there.

I got myself fried mee jawa (RM2.50), yeah FRIED. First time I came across a fried one. It came dry, like normal fried mee but this one tasted a bit tangy. Not bad at all and luckily the portion is not too much cos my hubby went overboard and ordered so much stuff.



Hubby got a plate of char koay teow which is nothing to shout about since there were better ones.



We ordered 3 pieces of popiah basah and 4 pie tees (RM5.80) from a stall, opted to have some broth over the popiah. Sighhh after the Padang Brown's version, this really pales in comparison but its really not that bad. We loved the pie tee though with my boiboi finishing two. Topping the turnips fillings were strips of omelette. The chilli sauce went very well with the whole combi.





We also have a plate of loh bak (RM6.80) which consisted of 2 items ie. ngoh hiang and something like cucur udang.



My boiboi got a bowl of koay teow tng (RM2.50) which he can't finish. Not that it wasn't good, just that there were too many other distractions like pie tee and popiah on the table haha. Moreover, he was eyeing the ice-cream and jelly at our next table. Most prolly saving space for that later, smart boy there.



Thank goodness the portion were quite small, else there would have been wastage. Anyhow, we packed up those stuff that we can't finish. We need to leave room for these yummy homemade durian ice-cream!!!! They're so fragrant and smooth. They were served on an old school plate and came in the tiniest scoops ever! Darn... lucky thing we were quite stuffed, otherwise, not sure how many scoops we could down in one go.



Since my boiboi doesn't take durian, it was rather funny to see him telling the ahpek in his angmoh slang Cantonese (yeah yeah they understood Cantonese here haha) that he doesn't want durian ice-cream in his ice-kacang with jelly. Kekeke the ahpek ask him what flavour and he replied strawberry. There were a few options of ice-kacang here, the one here is red bean and corn that came with one piece of jelly and 2 scoops of ice-cream. Other than the strawberry, the other given is a peanut which if I'm not mistaken is another of their famous homemade ice-cream. The ice-cream plus ice-kacang costed RM5.20.



Hubby was craving for durians after all these and ask the ahpek where to get durians hahaha... Luckily they told him not to go Balik Pulau as they may be too expensive and gave him directions to get them else where. However, it's too bad we were too early for durians. There weren't any and told us to come back the next week for them! Sighhh... I missed all those thick, bitter sweetish ones from Balik Pulau.

On our way back to KL, we got caught in a massive jam for more than 2 freaking hours, well just to pass thru Jelapang toll! The next time we're going to skip PLUS! @$%&

Penang Makan Discoveries in June 2008 Part 1


Technorati tags: malaysian food + penang food

Penang Makan Discoveries in June 2008 Part 1

We took a short trip up to Penang during the June school holidays. We arrived way passed lunch hour since there was this crawl at the start of the Penang Bridge right till the end of it! Since it was kinda late, hubby took a chance and drove to Pulau Tikus. Now, for the 3rd time in 5 years, he had wanted me to try the siamese laksa at Swee Kong but each time either we were too early or they were closed for reasons known to themselves. We got lucky after getting a parking space with 30 minutes left in the meter to boost. Second time lucky when we walked into Swee Kong and found that the Siamese laksa stall is opened! Hubby quickly secured two bowls and I got something else for boiboi.

Here was the bowl of the elusive Siamese laksa!!! 5 freaking years before I can get a taste... bah. Maybe the long wait had cooked up a high expectation of this laksa, I think it was just all right. Nevertheless it was still good enough for us to lap up every single drop of soup from the bowl. It's quite similar to the assam laksa variety, just that this has santan in it but not a lot. My aunt used to make a killer Siamese laksa which explained why huh?



Needless to mentioned, we rushed to the back of this shop to get our bubur cha cha fix. Goodness, it still tasted sooo good... lots of sweet potatoes and yam.

That evening, we went out fairly early in search for dinner since my boiboi didn't ate much of his lunch. We checked with the concierge on how to get to New World Park after hearing so much of this place from the Penang bloggers. The Pak Cik took out a map and showed us. Whilst he was pointing, I saw the words Padang Brown and asked him about it. He was surprised that I've heard about it. I didn't tell him I got to know it via Lilian's blog haha... He said that place has got lots of hawker stalls where the locals would go. However, he said most of the Chinese stalls are open during the afternoons and the Malays would be open in the evenings.

With me being the navigator, we went thru the roads but somehow we missed New World Park. The next thing I knew, I saw the sign Padang Brown hahaha... Malaysia is really hopeless with the kinda signage they put up! Hubby swerved in and park, well, just to try our luck. Noticed over at the Chinese stalls side, there were only very few stalls remained opened. The rest were either closed or in the midst of cleaning up. You know, I was extremely happy to note the man selling popiah was sitting there lepaking. Hubby asked if he still has got any left and he nodded. Woooo, his face just like the one Lilian had posted haha.



Hubby ordered 4 popiahs (RM5.20) and guess what??? My boiboi whacked 2 on his own and I just knew why... cause this popiah IS the best that I've ever tasted!!! It has lots of crabmeats on top of the usual turnips fillings. Also, a first for us to have a clear broth ladle over the popiahs. The broth tasted of seafood, most likely from the crabs. Superb!



Hubby ordered the Pasembur (RM2.50) next to this popiah stall and some satay (RM4.00 for 10 sticks chicken satay) from a Malay stall. Sad to say, these two paled in comparison.

Not satisfied, we shoot off in search of New World Park. After taking some u-turns and we were back to the start of our hotel hehehe... this time, with the map in my mind, I look around and suddenly I saw this teeny weeny signage with arrow pointing to New World Park, apaler! Sighh we managed to locate the place finally. The moment we went inside the hawker stalls, hubby just have to choose to sit right in front of the drinks and dessert stall in the middle of the huge place. He was so tempted with the varieties of ice-kacangs and ice-creams. As we were quite full from our quick stop at Padang Brown, hubby just ordered a small plate of orh jien (oyster omelette). I tell you, for the price of RM5, you could never ever get such a huge plate of orh jien with fat juicy oyster in KL. Best of all, it tasted fantabulous. Next time, we will just zoom in here to grab our food hahaha cos there were quite a number of well patronised stalls.





I have seen and heard of Tee Nya kuih but it was my first time seeing it at this drink stall. So I packed one container back (RM2.00). Inside has a bag of gula melaka syrup to go with them. I tried them later that night. They're kuih like texture but not mushy though, however when I put them in my mouth, it's kinda like jelly. I just can't describe it. My hubby said out loud if only I can make this kuih since he never like the kuih I've made.

I've tried searching for this Tee Nya recipe in the net but there were none. Any Penangites have this recipe to share??


Technorati tags: malaysian food + penang food

Review: Fong Lye Restaurant @ The Gardens

Taking a break from all the cookings, let's venture to Fong Lye Restaurant. This Taiwanese restaurant have 3 outlets in Kuala Lumpur - Jalan Imbi, Desa Sri Hartamas and The Gardens. The first two are more formal, serving ala carte dishes where else The Gardens' outlet have mostly set options.

Since I was sharing with my boiboi, I opted for the Fresh Tomato Fried Egg with Fish Fillet set where else hubby ordered 3 Variety Supreme Diced Chicken set. Our sets came with the standard rice topped with some minced meat sauce which was good on its own; 3 side dishes which were braised peanuts and tofu, french beans and a deep fried fish paste; and a soup.



Hubby took a sip of the soup and asked me how come the soup is bitter. I lifted my spoon and dug into the soup and ladle out pieces of bittergourd. I look at them then I stared at him "Of course it's bitter lorrr... need more explanation?" LOL

When my set arrives, me and boiboi were excited cos the dish was bubbling away in the little wok and stove. Smelt so good, even my hubby was enticed. My boiboi enjoyed this a lot since it's his favourite tomato sauce base. It's basically like any sweet and sour fish dish but I personally liked it a lot with the addition of the egg which jazzes up the dish. Gave me a great idea on what to cook the next time.



Hubby's chicken pieces came in a very dark dry and sticky gravy. It has a fragrant cooking wine taste and the additional local basil leaves perked up the dish. Wished there were more gravy though.



The total bill of that two sets plus a glass of papaya milk came to about RM52.00 after 10% service charge and 5% Government tax.


Fong Lye Restaurant
Lot T208 3rd Floor The Gardens
Mid Valley City
Kuala Lumpur
Tel: 603- 2282 8699


Technorati Tags: the gardens + taiwanese food

Shallots and Lemongrass Soup

During my recovery period, I was sort of on a confinement basis, not overly strict but I was fed with lots of hot soup and tonics to boost my health and keep my body warm. Since I have a heaty body, too much of these goodies landed me in "hot soup" literally a couple of days back. Some how I caught a viral fever then came the cough and sore throat. As if not enough, I'm getting a cold now!

Anyway, I will post up some of the food and soups that I have taken during my recovery, well, just for the records and for those who are interested to know what kinda of food people on confinement take.

One of the soup I drank was this Shallots and Lemongrass Soup. Simply boil a big handful of smashed shallots, a couple sticks of lemongrass, chicken carcass and some white peppercorns for a couple of hours. Drink whilst its hot. This soup induces lots of heat and it's not pleasant in the hot weather. I was perspiring buckets after drinking this!



Technorati Tags: confinement food