Red Beans & Lotus Seeds Tong Shui (Sweet Soup)

Red Bean Soup (hoong dau shui) forms a part of Chinese's snack or dessert staple. Every Chinese household would have their mothers or grandmothers cooking a big pot of this to be enjoyed as snack or dessert especially when they're frying a batch of bee hoon (zhau mai fun, rice vermicelli). They also tend to appear in parties and yes, you would see the big tray of zhau mai fun on the table too!

Red Bean Soup is Capt'n Hook's favourite tong shui (sweet), simple but yet yummilicious. I've done Red & Kidney Beans Sweet Soup and Cream of Red Bean (hoong dau sar). Here's another version of Red Bean Soup. This version contains lotus seeds.

To make this, prepare dried lotus seeds by soaking them in warm water until the seeds got rehydrated. Proceed to split the seeds and remove the yellowish greenish stems as these stems will caused the seeds to taste bitter. Once done, you can boil or steam them till soften and set aside.

In the meantime, wash the red beans until water runs clear, remember to rub them in between your two palms as the beans can be rather dirty. You can soak the beans in warm water for about 20 mins but it's fine if you don't.

Boil the red beans in a large pot, uncovered (unless your pot is very tall else the content will spill), with about 2 times water of the height of the beans with low heat. Keep checking, add more hot water if it dries out too much. Once the red bean turned soft, add more hot water until your desired consistency, we liked ours half water, half beans proportion. Proceed to add in some brown rock sugar (or you can use normal sugar) and some washed and drained sago pearls. I loved my Red Bean Soup with sago pearls as it thicken and smooten the soup texture. Add in the lotus seeds. Let it come to a slow boil and cook until the sago pearls turn clear. Turn off the heat and serve Red Bean Soup hot or chilled.

We loved this soup by dunking in yau char kwai (Chinese crullers) or soak the yau char kwai pieces inside the hot sweet soup. Good enough as an afternoon snack or at times for our breakie.

BTW, anyone tried making this using a pressure cooker? I tried a couple of times but both times I have the beans spilling out of the errrr watchacalldatthingamagik (valve??) and I could see reddish smoke coming out there too!


Technorati Tags: malaysian food + red bean soup

Review: Tokyo Seafood Restaurant

**Non-Halal**


My uncle and family whom have migrated to Canada came back for a visit. He tried to come to this Tokyo Seafood Restaurant but couldn't find his way here. After asking my another uncle, he decided to bring him here, of course I got invited along as well :p

We used to come here for their signature fresh water prawn dish and their oh so huge frogs (the body alone is bigger than my palm)!!! Somehow with the amount of new places popped up, Tokyo somehow sunked into our forgotten radar. I was really looking forward to this visit!

When we arrived there on a weekday, I was very surprised to see it empty! I remember this place usually packed to the brim. My uncle was wondering too cos he said usually it's packed. He said lunch time is super packed.

Since my uncle was hosting, he sort of like ordered almost all their signature dishes. Too much dishes and the portion was way too much. They should have proportion them according to the number of dishes ordered. Anyway, we still dugged in with gusto.

Salad Tofu (if not mistaken this is the right name) is deep fried white tofu, topped with julienned turnips and cucumber drizzled with a sweet sticky chili sauce ermm almost like the Thai sweet chili sauce. The final sprinkling of chopped peanuts finished the dish. The tofu is absolutely crispy on the outside but soft and smooth on the inside. The sauce and vegetables strips complimented well.



This simple deep fried fish with soy sauce was nice but the fish is a little over fried.



Next we have clams (lala) done kum hiong style. I wasn't impressed with this but the lala that came was rather big in size.



This kangkungsweet potato shoots (thanks to Mimi hahaha my bad) fried with belachan doesn't pack a punch at all and the kangkung were kinda limp.



We have this plate of brinjals which is one of the signature dish. It was good but by the time this came I was quite stuffed so didn't eat much.



Pork is a must for big family feast, hence we have the pork knuckle ala German. No doubt the skin is crispy but I feel its a bit over fried that the meat part is a little dry. The sauce that came was pretty tasty.



Next we have this dao bao (made of soy bean sheets) cooked with yue piew (fish maw). The dao bao absorbed the flavour of the sauce which made this dish rather good.



Now the star of the dishes is this signature fresh water prawns. The prawns were huge and meaty, very fresh too! There were something like crispy nai yau (buttery) bits but it doesn't taste like butter. I tasted something Chinese herby on them but I can't pinpoint so I asked the boss when he came by. Ohh so the secret ingredient was superior quality dong kwai (angelica)!!! These powdered dong kwai are sprinkled over during cooking, no wonder it tasted kinda special. This is a must order dish in Tokyo, if you don't believe, check what Julian had here.



No frog dish that night as there is no stock. Overall, I felt there were hits and misses, perhaps they were cooking bigger portions to be separated into two tables of about 16 people. Not sure how much the bill came up too since uncle paid for it.

This place is nearby Restoran Satu Ikan Tiga Rasa. From Kepong/FRIM just go straight on until the traffic light junction of the bridge/flyover from Selayang, or from Jalan Ipoh, turn right at the bridge/flyover. Continue straight until roundabout and take 9 o'clock. It's a industrial area, just go on straight and you should be able to see the shophouses. Tokyo Seafood Restaurant is right at the corner lot.

Tokyo Seafood Restaurant
7456 Jalan 1,
Taman Selayang Baru,
68100 Batu Caves,
Selangor
Tel: (603) 6138 99312
Map here.


Technorati Tags: malaysian food

A Very Simple Fish Paste Noodles

There were times when I'm so lazy to put up something for my boiboi's meal, I would resort to simple Vit's dried noodles. A plain fragrant noodle served with fried egg and some vegetables that I could rummage in the fridge would make him quite happy. When I'm not so lazy, he would have something lavish with prawns and mushrooms.

There was this time I had some fish paste which I bought from the wet market (it's so convenient these days huh?) in the freezer, so I just devised a really simple fish paste noodles which I could cook up very quickly but of course I had to defrost the fish paste way in advance.

Into the fish paste, I added some white pepper and mix them well. No salt is needed as they're already salty to begin with. Boil some water in a saucepan, this would be the soup stock. Once it's boiled, shape the fish paste into rounds or ovals using a spoon or two and add them into the saucepan. Let it come to a boil and season it with salt and white pepper. You may add some soy sauce if you wish. I find that I don't have to use ikan bilis nor chicken stock for this as the fish paste is enough to flavour the stock with some natural sweetness. Add in vegetables, in this occassion, I have carrots and french beans. Drizzle in some garlic or shallots oil. Turn off fire once the vegetables are cooked.

In a separate saucepan, cook the Vit's dried noodles. Drain and dish up the noodles when done. Pour the soup base into the noodles together with fish paste and vegetables. Serve hot.



Easy peasy but I guess still packed with some nutrients.


Technorati Tags: malaysian food + noodles

Whirlwind Durian Makan Trip to Penang

It's durian season and a few weeks back, we followed a car club convoy to Penang for a durian buffet on a Sat and came back the next day. Well, it's not really so much for the durians but it was fun to join the fabulous people in the club in a well managed convoy complete with all the GPS coordinates for all the intended stops.

There was a stomach pit stop in Pun Chun at Bidor mid morning which I still find the food really over-rated. I shouldn't have eaten here, really spoilt my appetite for my Penang lunch... grrrr! BTW, if you intended to stop over here and park near the market, please do go find a place to buy the scratch and park tickets cos almost the whole jing gang got a lovely piece of surprise from the Majlis Daerah Tapah on their wind windscreen!



We stopped by at Batu Lanchang market to have lunch but I was still full from the breakie so only Capt'n Hook and boiboi have their lunch. Penang is soooo hot and hazy that weekend, it's no fun when I was under the weather. We stopped by Ghee Hiang and followed by Him Heang for those who wanted to grab the local confectioneries.



Checked into the hotel and refreshed ourselves before our trip to Bukit Genting Hill Leisure Park & Restaurant for a sunset dinner. This is one long drive, almost an hour from Tanjung Bungah snaking up the hill. We were like country pumpkins (sua koos) ooos and ahhhings over the amount of durians and rambutans from the foothill till hilltop which is owned by the same management. Some of the boys slowed their car to steal pluck the rambutans.

The road up is rather narrow and kinda steep at some places but once we reached the top, it's totally an entire world altogether. There were a lot of cars parked around the restaurant area already and the whole place is abuzz with activities. Lots of structures and platforms were built around the restaurant for you to enjoy the view out towards Straits of Malacca. There's only one thing though, a lot of animals and trunk shaped statues and fountains were made out of cement and fiberglass which kinda make it rather gawky but what the heck, the children loves them to the bits posing around them. Well, not only children actually, adults too were busy having their photos taken.



Everyone were captivated by the view and sunset but it was very hazy that day hence the pics didn't turn out great, actually more like this noob doesn't know how to set the camera properly :p Anyway, we ordered the set dinner that was worth RM248 (I think) for 10 that came with rice and drinks of air mata kuching. We waited very very long for our food to arrive, almost an hour and everyone were very restless as the place we sat (under the dome roof) is very very hot. It's better to sit out in the open air if it's not raining. The dome roof contained the heat and there isn't any fan to ease the flow, plus with this kinda roof, we were practically listening to conversation from the next table hehe.

We were famished by the time the food arrived! I lost count of the food serve but we have seafood tom yum (super hot), claypot glass noodle prawns (this is good), mixed vegetables, cucumber salad, green curry (good), thai style fish, fried rice, hot plate prawns and squid (very very good) etc. There were only few good items, the rest were mediocre only and majority of them were very hot. Our main grouses were the food came too slow!

We went back straight to the hotel, knocked out almost immediately after our shower but some of the guys went off for more food for supper!

The next morning we headed to Balik Pulau which is almost another hour drive up and down the hills. We reached Bao Sheng Durian Farm. The whole gang went into a frenzy savouring the durians that Mr Chang (owner) opens. The buffet was not RM25 as stated in the website but I think it was around RM45 which you can have the red prawns, holo (gourd), eu bak (pork lard) etc but as usual we suspect there's a tactic cos they kept opening the I dunno what variety, make you fill up first before opening their best. Since I was coughing and having a bad throat, I did not partake in this buffet. Sighhhh the sight and smell...



However, I was urged to try the eu bak as one of them said it left a numbing sensation in his mouth, so I tried a couple and beneath the pale colour of the fat layer of a good siew yuk lies a very creamy, slight bitterish flesh. Oh yummsss and it did left a slight numbing sensation. Later on we found out that only very very fresh durians that dropped less than an hour will cause this sensation. Mr Chang said this is the kinda taste they would look for when eating durians.



We lingered quite many hours here and even went on a insightful tour of the farm. I learnt a lot about durians that day. We went back to the hotel to refreshed ourselves before getting home. It was a tiresome trip but we all have loads of fun. Interestingly we didn't really get to enjoy the real Penang food, perhaps next time. Looking forward to more trips to come ;-)


Technorati Tags: malaysian food + penang food + durian

Happy 11th Anniversary

Make a Smilebox greeting

Love is all the little things that make a moment special and a lifetime happy.

Happy Anniversary, Guys!

Dedicated to Mr & Mrs Tengster, Cyrene & Matt and Dr Chen and sweetheart:

Wishing you many more

happy years to share

when each day
finds you closer together

and even more in love.

Happy Anniversary!

Review: Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen

**Halal**


I must be the last of the floggers to blog about this place :p in Taman Tun Dr Ismail. Together with Miss Sweet 16, we went to check out Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen some time back, yeah I know very back cos in between, we have been to Shang Palace and Rama V already and I've yet to write about this one :p

Anyway, we decided to try the fried chicken and fish even though they have various other stuff like fried shrimp, rice and sandwiches. We've gotten the set that came with a biscuit, coleslaw and mash potatoes.



We asked for both mild and spicy for our 2 pieces chicken set. We both decided that the spicy one tasted better even though well, it's not that spicy. The mild was kinda disappointing as the flavours were concentrated on the outer skin.



I loved the fried catfish though. The fish were fresh and tender amist the crispy coating surrounding it. Funny I have to ask them for the tartare sauce. Don't these fish automatically to be served with tartare sauce?



The coleslaw is pretty normal but I kinda like the mash as it came with Cajun style gravy which tasted almost like a chili. However, the biscuit is really smashing! It's fluffy almost like my scones except this is savoury. Miss Sweet 16 and I loved the crumbly and buttery biscuits a lot.

My verdict is, for fast food fried chicken... I'll stick to KFC but I'll definitely come here for the fried fish and biscuits. Hmmm I think would be great to bring my boiboi here for some fish since he's not a big fan of fish, wonder what's his reaction and comment would be :p

Oh yeah, whilst I was washing my hands at the sink, there were some plastic drawers on the console next to it. One of them was labelled "spork". I was telling Miss Sweet 16 and we were both wondering was there a typo or what until our food was brought to our table. Amist our food, there's this utensil...



Spork or no spork??? Hahahaha... spoon + fork = spork!

Sorry no prices since Miss Sweet 16 paid for the meal. Thank you Miss Sweet 16 :D

Noticed we did not have any desserts? We went off to Namaste which is located on the row just behind of Popeyes to have some Chai. I liked the Chai here as it's not sickly sweet with a hint of spices. Thinking of trying the food here some day, well, have to wait till I say bye bye to my cough.


Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen
Jalan Tun Mohd Fuad 1
Taman Tun Dr. Ismail
Kuala Lumpur
Tel: (603) 7710 1198


Technorati Tags: poultry + fish