Greg & Nee & Baby Kay on the Go!

Osmanthus in the Wind

2011-10-29T19:40:00.004+08:00

Osmanthus in the Wind

Meeting up with Aunty Terri in KK has been great. She was very hospitable and kind to bring us to various food places. But most importantly, when seeing her passion in the food, she has inspired me to write and blog about food, recipes and eating again. Having baby Kay is a joy but she is a little tornado that completely changed our priorities and lives. As most of you know, her arrival has been full of drama and the first 4 months has been torturous for first time parents like Greg and I. I would rather hit the bed or watch tv drama if I have the time what more to say cook, bake and take photos and blog.

So meeting up with Aunty Terri and the trip has reminded me of the things we had loved doing ~ baking, eating, cooking, travelling and now with Baby Kay in tow, it is still fun even though in a different way. So here I am back on my feet, i think. I had a sudden urge to clean up my house, get some new furniture, patch up anything that is not working, rearrange the photos, and most of all to cook and bake (other than for Nee's), come out with new recipes and blog about them. Anyway, Christmas is hitting straight in my face and Mommy needs to think also about Baby Kay's first Christmas ~ decoration, presents and menu.

Well, to come back to this blog, I wanted to do jellies (as inspired by Terri at hungerhunger.blogspot.com. I really enjoyed talking about jellies and recipes with Terri during the trip. You can check out all Terri's creative and beautiful recipes here. Check out the Sakura Jelly, Summer Jelly, Kinabalu Jelly, Mt Purple especially as they are my favourites!).

Terri and along with 9 other bloggers are competing in the Royal Selangor Jelliriffic! Challenge, which is to to raise funds for the Breast Cancer Welfare Association of Malaysia. This association is a non-profit organisation set up by medical specialists to help women with breast cancer. The bloggers were given the jelly moulds designed by Nick Munro for RSP and were to come out with recipes using the moulds for 30 days in the month of October. Others like me (Yes! I bought these shiny gorgeous babies and they have just arrived on Thursday) and you can purchase these lovely and highly versatile moulds from RSP and proceeds will go to the Association. I bought the moulds thinking of those pretty gorgeous items I can do for my Baby's future parties. And to give our absolute support to Terri (I hope you win this and you should) and the Royal Selangor Jelliriffic! Challenge.

The first jelly I did was Osmanthus in the Wind. Osmanthus flower (Gui Hua) comes in tiny pieces, light, gold to yellow in colour and has a beautiful scent, not overly flowery with a fruity apricot like scent. Commonly used in China and Hong Kong as tea and desserts. Commonly seen the Guilin China.

This flower reminded me of Women. I thought of Women in the older days, especially Asian Women, who do not have status, rights or identity even. There is a famous Chinese saying that goes "Women follow their fathers at home, when they are married, they follow their husbands, and when they grow old, they follow their sons" See the word FOLLOW here. These women were like Osmanthus in the Wind. They were not allowed to have opinions, dreams and ambitions, they were not even allowed to go out from their home, and in some culture deemed as worthless. Basically they had no control over their lives! Just like the Osmanthus, blown and dropped onto wherever the wind shall bring them.

But little Osmanthus is beautiful, and they are resilient. They survived! Just like those beautiful, strong, resilient fore-mothers of ours. They had supported their husbands, raised their children and with little acknowledgement, they had held up half of the sky. Osmanthus in the Wind is a tribute to these women who had walked the journey of pain, abuse and put downs quietly to allow us(the women) to enjoy many rights and privileges today. I hope those women suffering from Breast Cancer can also draw their strengths from these women.

Osmanthus in the Wind Jelly is a combination of
Osmanthus flower and dried and canned longan.

For one 200 ml mould:

Osmanthus Layer:

1/2 tsp of Konnyaku powder

200ml of water and Osmanthus liquid ( infusing 1/2 tsp of Osmanthus flower with 1/2 cup of warm water)

20gm of castor sugar

1 tsp of Osmanthus Flower

1) Osmanthus tea is yellowish, depending on how yellow you want your jelly to be, use some of the Osmanthus tea with the addition of water.

2) Mix Konnyaku powder with castor sugar in a pot, stir to mix them. Add Osmanthus liquid.

3) Bring to a boil, stirring all the time. Turn to low fire and keep the mixture warm, that is why i used 200ml as evaporation will reduce the liquid.

4) Rinse the mould and sit it in a glass. Drop a few pieces of the Osmanthus flower into the mould. Add a tiny teaspoon of the mixture. Osmanthus flower is very light and will sit on the jelly mixture. For the swirling effects, I drop a tiny pinch of the flower on top of the jelly siding to one side of the mould (say 3pm position). Scoop some more jelly mixture onto the other side(9pm position) of the mould first and finally covering the flowers to as much as possible push in down. Do this to 1/4 of the mould. Let it cool a little.

5) Continue the above by the dropping the flower at the 6 pm position up to 1/2 of the mould. Please try to push the flower down with the jelly mixture.

6) The final layer will cover the 3rd quarter of the mould, dropping the flowers more on the 6 to 9 pm position. When you reach the 3rd quarter top, sprinkle the flower over the entire base lightly. Wait til semi set to place the pieces of canned longans.

Longan Jelly

10-12 pcs of dried longans

3-4 pcs of canned longans

some warm water to soaked the dried longans

1/4 tsp of Konnyaku Powder

10 gm of castor sugar

Some more water

1) Soften the dried longans with warm water. Blend it in a blender.

2) Add some more water to make it to 120gm

3) In a pot, mix konnyaku powder with sugar. Stir. Add the longan blend. Bring it to a boil and stirring all the time.

4) Pour over the canned longan and Osmanthus Jelly.

5) Chill for 2 hour to set.

Have fun! The difficult bit is dropping the flowers and pushing them down to the jelly. See what I say about resilient.

Nee's Durian Fiesta

2011-09-12T01:01:00.000+08:00

The whole Kuching town is going mad with durians or so it seems. There's a durian seller at every roundabout in Kuching, and they line up all the way to Kota Samarahan. And I've just heard that the imported Mao Shan Wang are back in town.

Being a durian lover, I thought hey, I should join in the fun. And it has been fun spending two afternoons dabbling in the kitchen mixing and concocting new durian recipes. It felt good to get my baking engine started again after such a long post-pregnancy break.

But this also meant that poor Baby Kay had to be passed around between the grandmas. Every time she comes near the kitchen, mommy can only say hi and kisses and see you later, baby. I think she misses mommy especially today.

LAdies & Gentlemen, these were the new recipes that I came up with. All of them are available at Nee's from 6.30 pm onwards today. If you missed it today, fret not, we are open again on Tuesday 2pm to 11 pm (Nee's is closed on Mondays). I promise you there will be more to come.

Durian Cheese Cake

The rich king of fruits blended into cream cheese making it a super yummy combination. A must for cheese and durian lovers.

Durian Delight

Light sponge layered with special rich durian mousse making it a delightful combination. One piece may not be enough.

Durian Swiss Roll

Nee's Special Durian Cream gives traditional swiss rolls a delightful twist.

Cream Puffs with Durian Cream. Ehmmm...need I say anymore?! Slurping yet?!

Greg & Nee Do Durians

2011-08-25T13:10:00.000+08:00

Nee & I don't usually take the trouble to go out to buy durians as this would be one of those things on our lazy-to-do list. Normally, someone else like our parents would buy them in a bunch from somewhere and we'd sneakily get our share as well.

But this year, I don't really know what had hit us both. We've become pro-active durian hunters. Maybe it's the new baby or something else, although I can't see how the logic works.

I didn't fare too badly with the hunt. The stall beside BSN bank at Tabuan Jaya had a good selection of kampong durians selling from RM10-14. Being not able to tell a good durian from a bad one, I usually go straight up to the guy & ask for yellow ones, and yellow ones I'll get. He sold me two small ones with short thorns and they were as yellow as Big Bird. And I thought I was already in heaven.

But then came along these which were at the top of the game.

Do you see how yellow they are? Can you almost feel the texture in your mouth?

These were the original Cat Mountain King (Mao Shan Wang) aka Musang King aka D197 aka Butter Durian aka Raja Kunyit originally from Gua Musang, Pahang (some say Kelantan), and they cost RM35 per kg here in Kuching.

We got these babies through Jo, who placed special orders with the people that brought them into Kuching from Pahang. Apparently they were selling them somewhere next to Yow Kee cafe at 101 Premiere. We got two batches, and these were the last of the season (to come into Kuching), or so we heard.

Mao Shan Wang is known for its sweetness with a tinge of bitterness, and its small flattened seeds. When you bite into it, it's soft enough to melt in your mouth without becoming too mushy, and it's tender enough without being too chewy.

Now how can you ever resist this? Stanley Ho couldn't.

Baby Report: Baby Kay @ 5 Months 3 Weeks

2011-08-16T23:22:00.000+08:00

Sorry we haven't been able to update as much as we want to. With the arrival of this little firecracker, our lives have been turned upside down, sometimes driven up the wall, and most of the time been plagued by backaches.

We've actually been taking tons of photos and videos (in HD mind you!) of Baby Kay and her development since Day 1. I think we have enough to build a library and to start a new blog. But of course we're not going to do that. We couldn't even find the time to post anything for the past 4 months or so.

Anyway, we will try our best to get back on track cos the blogging bug is biting again. No doubt most of our posts will be on Baby Kay for now but we're itching to travel and eat again.

This was Baby Kay on the first day of her delivery, fighting for her right to breathe then.

And this is Baby Kay now at 5 months 3 weeks.

The first 3.5 months was an intense battle with colic and crying in the middle of the night. But when she hit 4 months, her sleeping pattern stabilised and she was able to do longer sleeping hours without waking up in the God-forsaken wee hours in the mornings for feedings.

Baby Kay is now able to smile, chuckle, babble and squeal in delight and of course, when things do not go her way, she whinges and whimpers and registers a long list of complaints through booing and wooing (deciphered by mommy and daddy as I WANT MILK NOW, PICK ME UP NOW, I WANT SLEEP NOW, fill in the blanks NOW).

She's a determined flipper with a short temper, working at it when she was just slightly before 4 months. Now besides flipping, she does a lateral 360 degree rotation, usually when we are not looking. She had just turned turtle last Sunday but fortunately she was on the floor mat and ended up on the tiled floor.

Physically she is about 7.2 kg in weight and 67cm in length at 5 months, which means that she's over the 50 percentile on the normal baby girl growth chart. Based on the corrected age she is WAY too big.

She loves her baths and can do two a day, sitting up in her tub with some support, but sometimes insisting to stand in the water. Her baths are now accompanied by a few rubber duckies plus two wind-up splashing Mr. froggy & goldfish.

We have finally joined the ranks of many parents, bringing baby out to the usual family-infested leisure parks, shopping malls, Sunday service, bible study, kopitiams and restaurants. The next impending challenge will be to bring her on a plane trip and hotel stays.

From a humble 1.85kg, she has come a long way in a short time. Mommy and Daddy are really proud of you, Baby! We can only thank God for this huge miracle that comes in a little package.

Baby Gifts

2011-05-28T14:32:00.005+08:00

The gifts started coming in early 3 months ago but we hadn't had time to record our words of thanks until now. So here's a BIG THANK YOU to all who had generously showered baby Kay with your blessings (all the phone calls and messages; we can't thank you enough), gifts & ang pows. We think she is such a lucky baby just by looking at the amount of gifts and ang pows she gets and some sent specially all the way from Australia, Canada, Singapore, Sibu, KK and KL.

Uncle Raymond had thoughtfully bought us an Amway water filter five months before Kay's arrival, which in his words, good for his little niece and she will need it. Uncle Roger had showered her with a MacLaren XLR stroller in which he claimed that he only have one niece at the moment, so no expense is too much. Aunty Winnie and Uncle Felix got her her latex mattress with a whole set of cot bedding set, which they insisted, as it was safer and cooler for her to sleep in.

These beautiful creations were knitted by Greg's mom.

Baby Kay's collection of shoes has started. I hope she doesn't go down the same path as Imelda Marcos.

Beautiful gift packages with gifts of clothings and knick knacks such as photo albums, frames and even a clip fan, teething ring and rubber ducky.

And she has clothings that will probably last her till one year old at least. And they come in sets.

Greg: I hope this doesn't become a habit. "Daddy, I want the whole collection, now."

Initially we thought Baby Kay had too few toys as we had not bought her any. I think now we can rival Toys R Us. She has all sorts, probably the whole collection from wrists and feet rattler to play gym, courtesy of our many good friends and collegues. Special thank you to FS who specially send the toy over from KL.

Loved these, from Caryn. Look at the hot pants! And such beautiful hand sewn blanket you bought.

And finally, this has got to be the ultimate. Baby Dior pacifier.

Made in Germany. Thank you Leonard & Claudia!

Greg's hair is turning white. He's thinking what have we gotten her into? Flash forward 16 years into the future - super spoilt brat covered in branded attire from head to toe, and still wanting more. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

P/S We did not manage to thank every single one. Your love and kindness for baby Kay is so very deeply felt by us. And most importantly, Thank You so much for sharing our joy and giving us the support that we both needed during the pregnancy through Kay's birth and her time in hospital, and now the whole new journey of parenthood.

Bay Kay at 3 Months

2011-05-21T21:12:00.001+08:00

Baby Kay is 3 months old today. From a little scrawny baby, she has miraculously transformed into an overfed monster.

I want more of what I had just now, and I want it now!

Although she is still smaller compared to other full-term babies, we could now feel the difference in her weight & robustness when we hold her in our arms.

She's been really packing it in and if this doesn't look like a full-fed, satisfied, happy baby, I don't know what does.

Both Nee & I are beginning to believe that she's a bottomless pit. She's just taking in however much we give her. It's senseless binging.

At this point, she mumble-complaints when we give her water, cos there's no milk in there. She doesn't do pacifiers (which is a good thing) cos there's no milk coming out of it & she knows it's not the real deal.

The words on her T-shirt is a misprint. It should say I LOVE MY TUMMY instead cos Mummy is just a means to an end.

But this also means that she's growing (but not hair). We're not sure if she's developing at a normal pace as she's just beginning to give clear smiling responses, having more tendencies to flip now & able now to hold up her head like a chicken.

At her young age, she also amazes us with her agility & propensity for martial arts, namely Wing Chun...

and also kickboxing...

Boxing

Kicking

To our horror, she has been transforming into a horrible nocturnal creature; sleep by day, awake at night to torment innocent souls.

We have to remind ourselves again & again not to be fooled by her innocence.

But each time we see her looking like this, we have lost the battle entirely.

Baby Kay PAPA-razzi Photos

2011-04-18T21:03:00.001+08:00

These photos go out especially to Uncle Roger & Auntie Jaclyn. Hope you'll both come back to see me soon!

The Adventure Begins!

2011-04-04T20:24:00.001+08:00

Despite our pleas & bibery, our confinement lady left us yesterday evening. So last night both of us were left alone with Baby Kay. She's on a 3-hour feeding interval and we thought we could outpace her by getting things ready even before she wakes. Well, we thought we could. That's as far as we got cos we were flat after every feed.

I think both of us are looking like pandas now. And the news is that it's only the first night. A friend told me that by the 3rd night, we'd be goners.

There is no Greg & Nee. Greg & Nee do not exist anyore. It's only Baby Kay & everything is about Baby Kay. Pretty soon this blog is just going to be Baby Kay on the Go! cos Greg & Nee is not going anywhere.

Much Ado About Poo

2011-04-02T12:42:00.001+08:00

After 3 days of constipation, Baby Kay finally poo-ed yesterday. I don't think it was as much an ordeal for her as it was for us. Baby Kay was probably thinking what's the fuss while her mommy & daddy and the omnipresent grandparents shouldered the worry. The grandfather was hovering on the phone the whole day about the matter, and the grandmother couldn't get over why she wasn't informed when the little yogurt-like thing finally came out. We thought we should have published the news in Borneo Post.

This is not normally something that we'd write about, and definitely we're not keen to continue this trend of keeping up with every one of Baby Kay's poos, pees, burps & farts. If we did that, it wouldn't do her well. Imagine one day when she's all grown & she finds this blog. Or worst, when her friends find it. With that in mind, we'd skip the visual description of the you-know-what.

Apparently, we were told, when we brought Baby Kay to the doctor, the digestive system of babies in the second month after birth go through a period of haywired-ness. And this has got nothing to do with the formula, but more because of the intake of breast milk. Interesting isn't it?

Well, we're trying to understand that as well. We're thinking maybe breast milk contains a lot of water and that makes the digestion easier as more of it comes out in the pee, rather than the poo. But that's just our own rationale and we may make more sense to ourselves rather than to someone else. Please don't laugh at us as we are still at parenting 101.

Baby Superkay Day 28

2011-03-22T11:55:00.006+08:00

Baby Kay started showing off some head turning stunts while still in the incubator, 7 days after birth. I don't really know where that came from. Maybe it's from all the ginseng Nee had been taking.It can be quite scary seeing a little thing like that attempting a head lift and a head turn.

Baby Kay's now Day 28 and I think she's already learning how to sky-dive.

Quote of the Day

2011-03-13T12:19:00.000+08:00

"Finally, I feel like a real cow."

- Nee (March 12, 2011)

Baby Kay on the [You]Tube

2011-03-12T20:25:00.001+08:00

Baby Kay finally came home yesterday afternoon. This tiny little 4-pounder fought for 18 days & finally graduated from the Neo-natal ICU (NICU). It was a long journey where she had to learn how to breathe, and then swallow, and then suck, and finally to maintain her own body temperature. In between all that, she had to deal with lung infection, low hemoglobin, some blood top up, jaundice and a small, open heart vessel.

For us as new parents, walking through NICU is a horror. Dont get me wrong. It is probably the most modern, brightly lit, sanitised and clean ward with a bunch of casual looking yet diligent doctors and very very kind and friendly nurses in the whole of Sarawak General Hospital (GH) (Dont quote me cos I have not been to other wards except the OBGyn and have no wish to go back there). It is no wonder they say GH has the best NICU unit in the state and possibly the whole Borneo Island, which is why Dr CM Wong strongly advised us to get prepared and go GH should baby comes before term.

But nothing could prepare us for the horror of seeing our baby all hooked up with tubes in the incubator backed by gadgets with millions of buttons (& probably costs millions) and a computer screen that definitely looked like it could do much more than your usual blogging and microsoft programs.

In the first few days we really could not fathom how she could ever pull through; especially for me as a mother. I had so much negative thoughts about giving up. And it didn't help initially when we could hardly get any satisfactory answer from anyone. The doctors managed to mumble something about lung infection and so on and on in a language we could not understand, at least to me. All I could see and hear was her very recessed chest as she laboured away for every little bit of breath she could get. Was my baby in pain? Was she too hot or too cold? Why was it that I couldn't hear her cry? She looked like she was crying. Did she miss me? How could I sleep upstairs in the maternity ward while she was down there, crying for and missing her mummy? I missed her so much then. How could I not? We were together for 32 weeks. I knew when her active and down time were, every kick, every tickle, every punch, every hiccup.

And on top of those negative thoughts, every time I saw her, there were sure some not-so-good news. Intubated? I thought she was already in the incubator, wasn't that serious enough? Oh no, wait a min, this is different; Rubber tube into her little mouth, down through her throat, to send oxygen straight to the lungs. The oxygen was not enough because she couldn't breath well and the little oxygen mask was not sufficient. She's getting tired because of lung infection; what lung infection?! Where did that come from? Then the blood deficiency's delaying the bone marrow from kick starting. 10 days of antibiotics and something else for 7 days for closing her heart's blood vessel (in full term babies, they close 1-2 days after birth). You've got to be kidding. How can one so tiny take so much medicine? And watching her labouring for her every breath, I could only feel pain and guilt, and that I was an absolute letdown as a mother. Besides peeping at her through the incubator potholes and stroking her and letting her know that mummy and daddy were there for her, there wasn't a single other thing we could do.

So much guilt because she had to be born early. I had placenta previa type 3 covering a major part of my opening and on the 22nd February, 2011, at 2am on a Tuesday morning, the bleeding was torrential. Greg and I thought we were losing our baby, and Greg thought he was losing his wife as well. But that's another story.

Kayleigh was delivered through an emergency C sect in Sarawak General Hospital. The team who took care of us was absolutely professional and compassionate. Unfortunately that same standard does not apply to the entire OBGyn department of SGH (especially the old school nurses). So we praise the Lord for this particular team.

We'd like to share a few videos of Baby Kay while she was still at the NICU. These videos are really mild compared to her first 7 days. We would not want anyone to see the earlier ones as they can be disturbing.

So there you go, our little miracle baby's journey through NICU; from the ICU to Special Care, and graduating from the nursery as of yesterday 11th March, 2011.

Baby Kay at Day 7

Her intubated rubber tube was finally taken out on Day 7. She managed to swim above the more serious problems - her breathing and infection clearing; and she opened her eyes for the first time.

On day 9, she made her way out from ICU to Special Care. Still in the incubator but most of the wiring and tubes were off except for the heart rate, oxygen level, & temperature monitors, and the feeding tube.

Baby Kay at Day 13

We were wondering when the feeding tube would be taken off cos it looked like it was irritating her. Doctors told us it'd be off when she could swallow and suck.

Baby Kay at Day 14

And sucked she did on Day 14. And she did that right in front of all the doctors who were doing their rounds including the specialist. And it was loud, coming from a little thing like this. The smart little gal knew when to take her cue. The tube was taken out that afternoon.

Baby Kay at Day 15

From Day 15 onwards, she was on cup feeding, sucking and swallowing away. Baby Kay has not fully grasped breastfeeding yet cos she gets tired after trying. But she tries hard, and because she could also maintain her body temperature, she graduated on Day 18.

Welcome home Baby Kay!

The Arrival of Baby Kay

2011-03-10T01:11:00.000+08:00

Look what the stork brought us.

Kayleigh-Anne Wee Ern Hui
Delivered at 32 weeks on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @ 5:59AM
Birth Weight: 1.85 kg
Current Weight: 2.05kg

Stay tuned for the videos.

Power Puff Babies & Other Stuff

2011-02-06T08:00:00.000+08:00

Nee started letting me play with fondant quite sometime ago. While it is definitely much more manageable compared to marzipan (in terms of its durability), I am still lunging myself at it like an amateur.

Like photography, my attempts have been mostly intuitive, lacking the technical superiority of other sugarcraft artists.

These were a few of my attempts for Nee's customers who wanted something a bit more on top of their cakes.

This fairy cake was a bit tough cos to make fairies, you have to feel like one, to become one with them; and for a guy, that's not easy.

I used to love these girls until I had to sculpt them in 3D. These Power Puff Babies were tough. It took me 4 hours & cracks started appearing.

In between all these were also a pumpkin for Halloween & a 3D sports car (no photos unfortunately) which made me work my butt off.

A word of warning though. If you're looking for aesthetics above the quality of the actual cakes, you can do better if you try places like Mita or Taka cakehouses (I don't think they would hire me in a million years).

However if the quality of the cakes is more important to you & the decor is just a bonus distraction, then Nee has got the right stuff for you.

Happy Chinese New Year 2011

2011-02-03T12:34:00.001+08:00

This is for those who have not seen us for quite some time (7 months to be exact).

Due to her special condition, Nee will be mostly resting at home this festive season. We'll do the ocassional necessary visits to our relatives (during meal times).

Happy Chinese New Year to all our readers & patrons of Nee's.

P/s Despite what's on my Polo-T, I am not 100 years old.

p/p/s Nee's will be closed for the Chinese New Year celebrations & will open again on Feb 9 onwards.

Taipei Day 3: Ximending

2011-01-15T23:25:00.001+08:00

The rain did not stop on our third day in Taipei. In fact, it kept pushing into the night. We left the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall for a place called Ximending which had more people than the rain.

Ximending is one of the older & therefore better known hangouts, being the earliest & the biggest pedestrian centre in Taipei. This place was probably where your parents went to in one of those huge tour buses full of Malaysian tourists in the 70s or 80s (that gives you only one hour to shop).

This is the place to come for fashion & to experience the subculture.

Gramps doing the subculture thing, probably doing a bit of shopping for his grandaughter.

'Dang! You ate my coin!'

Doraemon aghast at the menacing robotic hand which had probed him before
in unspeakable areas.

Right at the heart of this place is the historical Red Theatre.

It was originally designed & built by the Japanese Occupation as a market; which thenn strangely turned into a live performance house. Today, it houses designer/artist boutique stores on the ground floor & a performance stage upstairs. I'm sure once upon a time this place holds much romantic charm.

Today, it's an interesting place to shop for designer souveniers; not the usual run-of-the-mill Taiwan keychains or fridge magnets.

These are DIY sew-yourself dolls.

Postcards with people that pop-up at the back.

Old Taipei pop up cards.

And of course there's always food anywhere you go in Taipei, with long lines of people. I would have gone for this with both eyes closed & my mouth open but Nee was looking for something soupily-steamboaty.

Till today, I regreted not finding out what that rice flour thing was.

When a restaurant doesn't need to provide chairs & tables, it must be selling something really good.

By day 3 in Taipei, it became natural that my reflexes were re-programmed to gravitate towards anything that had a long line of people, including this.

But as it turned out, this shop was selling innards, and I quickly gravitated to the exit.

Then there was another bunch of crowd around this stall; a different one, mostly women, both single young ones & also aunties, obviously gawking at Tom Cruise doing the cocktail thing.

But those were not cocktails. They were white bitter gourd drinks (about RM4.00). I wasn't sure whether these ladies were there for the drinks but they tasted good. Note: the man on the right probably had dubious gender preference.

Potato balls! You can see this in every night market. It's a very Taiwanese thing.

For RM5, you'd get a big bag, RM3 for small. I don't want to go back to inflation-fested Malaysia.

The whole Ximending place was like a maze & the multiple alleys did not help. We kept plodding on hoping to come across something really nice. Nee wanted something hot & soupy like steamboat but we weren't sure where the good ones were.

Out of extreme hunger & famine, we dropped into this place that actually looked like a chain restaurant. I didn't have a good feeling about this place but we were losing our sugar level fast.

Nee looked happy. I think the food hadn't really reached her tastebuds yet.

I don't think these were any more special than any other place.

The set came with some smelly tofu plus smelly innards stuff but it didn't work for us.

Nee came out so so but I was extremely disappointed, and now I stunk of stinky tofu. Not entirely satisfied with the evening, we decided to pursue further even though our bloated stomachs were screaming in agony. But the god of gluttony was smiling down on us that night. So was this store owner.

The standard Taipei oyster pancakes which still amazes me. The prices are always up there on the signboard.

This felt like Kuching fest & we were feeding ourselves silly. There is NOTHING like Taipei stewed minced pork rice (Lu Rou Fan). I can have this ten times & I'd still want another ten more.

Children in impoverished Africa probably will never know the feeling of being full. Here, we were beyond their imagination, way beyond what their minds can fathom. We were extremely & disgustingly beyond full.

FREE CNY Kittens!

2011-01-13T23:52:00.004+08:00

It's that time of the year again. It's strange but somehow kittens always come around this time. Maybe it's a good time cos in every house, there's sure to be an abundance of food. I've said it before & I'll say it again. The mom really knows family planning.

Kitties imprisoned for illegal free-loading.

Anyone wants one, or the whole bunch? Seriously. We're giving them away for free. You can let them wear head bands with fake pink ears & pretend they're bunnies.

Photo copyright by Raymond Ting.

Happy New Year!

2011-01-01T10:50:00.000+08:00

I bet you were out partying last nite, or wining & dining at a classy restaurant somewhere overlooking the panaromic city landscape, & by midnight, watching the fireworks display.

I bet you wouldn't be able to guess where we were last night.

We were having an 8-course (I think) dinner at a dilapidated Foochow restaurant which got stuck in the 70s, with walls that smell of lard accumulated over a span of 4 decades. Adding salt to the injury, the food came late (the management insisted on 8pm when we inquired).

And there we were, not fitting in at all with the 7-8 tables of Foochow aunties & uncles who seemed to be having the greatest time of their lives, karaoke-ing away the whole night with speakers blasting, and even sharing poetry in hokkien (which I found amusing). I saw 3 bags of party hats on the next table from the corner of my eye. Do we have to stay till midnight?

At one point, a particular uncle at our table (who got louder once they started serving him red wine in a liquor glass & he asked for ice) started dipping his used chopsticks into the shared platter. There was obviously a common ladle there but he didn't seem accustomed to it. So we shared more than the meal that night.

After that event, we had to be at the cafe to close down (cos Nee's brother was away in Singapore & probably partying & countdowning away). But maybe that saved the night, cos it was drizzling, the air was cool & both of us sat out there with a hot chocolate in hand & a smoothie in hers. At least it still felt like a date.

That night I slept like a log before the fireworks came out, not even aware of the sms-es that came pouring in. Another year has passed & we're really getting older.

Happy New Year Everyone!

p/s Kuching Mandarin Restaurant is officially my most hated place to be but I have no means to avoid it since it's my mom-in-law's absolute favourite. We hope that God forbids the baby's full month to be held there. Just the thought of it is traumatising enough.

Taipei Day 3: Cultural Learnings of Taipei Make Benefit of Malaysian Bloggers

2010-12-22T19:35:00.003+08:00

Much to our embarassment, we have not finished blogging about our Taipei trip which happened during the CNY this year. So without anymore self-pity-wallowing, we're gonna get down to it. This was Day3:

We were surprised that we could find art in Taipei underground MRT, particularly at the Chiang-Kai Shek Memorial Hall station. Excellent use of existing public space.

This was an exhibition that featured beautiful ethnic women in their costumes, some referring to historical & legendary figures. You can read more about it here.

And then there were wierd installations like this which could be quite petrifying to Nee. I don't encourage exposing her to displays like this anyway lest it disrupts her cooking & baking.

Killer blowup dolls which pretend to be cute. They will electrocute you if you come too close.

This was our destination on our 3rd day in Taipei - The Chiang-Kai Shek Memorial Hall. We thought we shouldn't miss this since Taiwan was founded by this guy after all.

The 3rd day was still as rainy, as wet & as cold, & we were already thinking of hot food.

Sorry to disappoint keen fish hobbyists, the activity in the water is not fish-related. It's raining.

Much like the Lincoln Memorial, the giant statue of Chiang Kai Shek sits gallantly in the great hall.

This was the bugger that was mainland China's biggest thorn in the butt for a long time. I bet that smile was for Chairman Mao.

You could actually witness the change of guards here but we missed it that day.

The guy in the suit is in charge of checking the guard's uniform, straightening out what needs to be straightened.

In the other part of the building is the man himself. This used to be his administrative office where he stragetised on how to be a bigger & more painful thorn in China's butt. Here he looked like he hasn't aged one bit. I wonder what he thinks of Ah Bien.

The same building also housed a collection of all things that once belonged to the General; like his letters, documents, photographs, clothes & even his bullet-proof car. I didn't bother to take any photos of those though.

These were some kind of lantern exhibition on display.

The building also holds a few art galleries exhibiting the more traditional Chinese paintings which weren't very impressive unfortunately. We LOVED these carvings though.

You can view some of the woodwork here.

The Memorial Hall faces a huge courtyard right down below; something much like the courtyard in the Forbidden City. Normally that is the place where the masses converge to celebrate the National Day but for now, there was a long row of tents selling food & fun fair going on.

I can tell you that in the cold weather like this everything that is steaming & hot feels good. We stopped at this stall selling various soup and fried noodles cos they had reasonable crowd size.

The fried noodles were nothing to shout about, but they definitely gave us the carb we need. If we remember correctly, this is like NTD 50-60 (RM 5-6).

However the bowl of soup is definitely what we wanted. Piping hot dumpling soup, with meatballs, bamboo shoots and strips of carrots. They called this the Flower Stem Soup (Hua Zi Gen). NTD60-70 (RM6-7)

I think this the Ping Tang Hu Lu, a Chinese style kinda fruit lolly. We didn't try this cos we couldn't help imagining what it'd taste like in our mouths.

These were some potato snacks. They sell them by the whole stick I reckon. Now looking back, I regret not trying them out but at that time, we were really full & had to prioritise.

These fried sweet potato ball snacks were in every night market, every where you turn your head. Yummy stuff. Anyone has the recipe for this?

There were also high-cholesterol quail eggs.

We forgot what these were cos we didn't try them.

And just before we left the place, we found that the best cream puff in the world was in Taipei.

Day 3 was supposed to be more of a cultural trip & it was, but somehow it ended up with food again.

Something Nice from Nee's

2010-12-19T18:43:00.000+08:00

Saw these two delightful cakes coming out from the kitchen today. Just thought that I'd share the ~~cakes~~ photos with you.

This is a Chocolate Cheesecake with Almond Toppings.

There's one mom out there that's a very lucky mom today!

Nee hasn't made this one for quite some time now but she's quite happy that someone ordered it. It's a Blackforest Cheesecake & it turned out quite well.

And out of the many Terry's out there, there's also one lucky one!

Nee's Birthday at Raintree Restaurant BCCK

2010-12-18T15:07:00.001+08:00

Kuching is really running out of good places to dine in.

"Western Cuisines" in Kuching revolve around Aussie and/or American-influenced, huge chunky plates of typical BBQ, roast, deep fried meat, sausages, fish with mash potatos and garden salad. And it is always ceasar salad, and they can't even do one properly (Ceasar sauce suddenly becomes thousand island or worse; plain mayo). Once in a while, we would get a place with a slight fusion of Japanese or Thai or Vietnamese-infused western cuisine.

Every year, at this time of the year (I don't mean Christmas), when my birthday is just around the corner, Greg gets very nervous. This year there's no more Sarah from Magenta to depend on, nor is there a romantic island getaway (which makes the food part inconsequential). This year there's only Kuching & Greg can do Junk & Blablabla only so many times & it doesn't work anymore. Four Points & Pullman feel the same.

But guess what, the last-minute Greg managed to pull another rabbit out of the hat. If this one wasn't good, he would have been in trouble but it was good. Either God really loves him, or maybe it's just a case of good timing; happened to be looking at the right page of the newspaper when Raintree happened to do a press release on its Christmas promotions, and atoms subsequently collide.

This is Raintree Restaurant at the new Borneo Convention Centre in Kuching. The modern building structure itself is a sight to behold on its own, not to mention the interior. Greg didn't take a photo of the building exterior, so this is what you'd have to contend with.

Excellent use of the Orang Ulu Design on the ceiling. This completes a whole 360 degree environment that envelopes you as soon as you sit down.

Nice use of moving projection. Somehow it worked here. I think normally this is a risky thing to do in a classy restaurant cos it may backfire & the whole place can turn into a seedy karaoke lounge. But those guys did it well.

It's always a pleasant surprise to find a musical trio. There's another female pianist hidden somewhere behind the wall off-frame. And the best thing was this wasn't a group of old musicians playing cob-webbed John Denver or Cliff Richards. And the guy with the guitar sings.

The restaurant takes the shape of a semi-circular stucture, with panoramic windows that look out onto the courtyard & the wide river below. In fact, the BCCK sits on an island-peninsula-like plot of land in the middle of the huge Santubong River.

Although it may look like Tiger Beer Garden at night, but I'm sure you can see the vast expanse of the mighty river & be in awe during the day. I can imagine a Western outdoor wedding out here.

So with the music playing & our stomachs drumming, we began to do what we came here to do.

Sesame bun ~ served warm and soft.

Our appertisers: juicy scallops pan seared to the just-right tenderness. Topped with tapenade and water crest salad. Presentation is delicate and pretty.

Cream of asparagus soup with chicken potato quenelles (dumplings). Served piping hot which is what it is supposed to be. Maybe being Chinese, I don't have a thing for lukewarm soup. The soup was a little runny though. Then again, thicker, creamier ones would probably be an overkill. Quenelle was yummy in the soup.

I had the turkey gallantine. This is excellent stuff because it is always hard to cook edible turkey. The chef, Virginia Kedit (whom we had an opportunity to chat with later), had done a excellent job by doing a roulade with thinly sliced apple, chestnut and sage stuffings. Very tasty, tender, definitely not the usual tough and bland turkey meat that needs lots of cranberry and brown sauce to cover up what's lacking. The cranberry sauce and pumpkin potato puree add to the layering of flavours. I didn't know I could do it but I walloped the whole thing to a knockout.

Greg had the roast rack of lamb with the potato hash and spinach, instead of the cod fish which I advised against (otherwise he would have to make very good friends with the toilet when we get home).

We had the meat done medium rare, which came as nicely juicy with a crispy outer layer, probably from the honey, and served with a dollop of your choice of English, French mustard or mint sauce. See, this is what I'm saying. There's none of that need for the usual pepper or mushroom or brown gravy as cover-ups. Serving a dish as it is tells you a lot about the skills of a good chef in the kitchen. Virginia is one chef who knows how to bring out the original flavour in her meat. Oh, the hash is really good.

Ok. I should have expected this since it's done before but I was surprised again. Greg must have put something in my drink.

Raintree arranged a special treat of ice cream cake coated with meringue for this occasion. We find the staff attentive, polite and generally friendly. No As for the singing though, but they did try. TQ Raintree for making the effort.

I've always been intrigued by this thing. I've seen it in restaurants several times now. Apparently it's called gooseberries & they're imported. Anyone knows where we can get this in Kuching?

And finally, the dessert: Christmas pudding with cinnamon ice cream. Thumbs-up for this. The pudding was coated with chocolate. It had the right sweetness and very rich, and it went really well with the cinnamon ice cream.

The Raintree Restaurant is the definitely the place to go when you have functions. It has the right environment, the right space, the right music & most importantly the right food. We'll definitely recommend this place to friends & family & we'll be back for more. We also hope that the quality stays consistent.

Thank God there's one more place to go to in Kuching. That should help us pull through the next year.

Nee’s Christmas Series

2010-12-16T00:51:00.072+08:00

It’s only about 9 more days till Christmas so we thought we’d post this before it’s too late. We’ve been meaning to blog for a long time but so many things have been happening; but just to let you know that we really miss blogging & we hope to find a way to do this more often!

This is Christmas at Nee’s.

There’s usually some kind of promo going on at the café even on normal days, everyday of the week. The promos change quite often but you can keep up by checking out Nee’s Facebook Group here to see what’s the latest up for offer.

The cake display fridge is now highly populated. Honestly, I wouldn’t mind being in there with them at all.

The infamous CocoNana; Easily the tallest cake in the café & one of the best sellers. But thanks to people like Marvin, the Rocher has also entered the Hall of Fame.

The Christmas Series #1: Nee’s Fruit cakes

I didn’t take any close ups of Nee’s Fruit cakes (I presume you already know what they look like), but those are the packaging that comes with them.

The Christmas Series #2: Nee’s Christmas log.

This one just drifted in from Baleh. Soft & immaculately made swiss roll with fresh fruits & covered with good quality imported chocolate. Makes a presentable gift without spending a bomb!

The Christmas Series #3: Drunk on Chocolate.

Rich Chocolate Cake mixed with Rum & Rum raisins. Can be taken warm or cold. Find out what rum & choc tastes like together.

The Christmas Series #4: Blueberry Creamcheese Brownies.

This is a wonderful mix of rich chocolate brownies, rich cream cheese & blueberries, with a zest of orange.

The Christmas Series #5: Sticky Date Pudding with Butter Scotch Sauce.

A perfect combination between rich pudding made with dates drizzled with warm butterscotch sauce. A beautiful dessert to end a hearty Christmas dinner with family & friends.

Look at the Butterscotch sauce dripping like that onto the plate. That’s what my saliva looks like now.

The Christmas Series #6: Apple Pecan cake with Butter Scotch Sauce.

This is a very addictive cake filled with loads of red apple & Pecan nuts served with Nee's Butter Scotch sauce. The nuts were flown in from Melbourne but we only have 1kg of the Pecan. I don't know how many cakes 1kg of Pecan can do but you'd better hurry!

I had a poor first impression of the cake. I thought it probably would taste like any other normal grandma cakes. But when I tried it, I couldn't stop. Seriously. And you know what? I actually had it without the Butter Scotch sauce! Wait till the sauce comes, I can eat the plate as well.

I believe it’s going to be difficult to find these cakes anywhere else in Kuching (except for fruit cake & the log). That is why they make the perfect gift to share with family & friends this Christmas! (You like my marketing line? ;P)

Now here’s the thing: The Christmas Series is only available during the Christmas season. So Nee will only be taking orders for these cakes from now until Dec 31st. So if you think you want to try something really new, do it PRONTO.

Sorry if this post sounds commercial. We just had to get this out of the way. Will be back to posting the usual stuff soon.

In the meantime, have a Blessed Christmas!

Love, Greg & Nee

KFC Sucks!

2010-09-12T14:29:00.004+08:00

I got Nee a KFC Chicken Fillet Burger yesterday. Just to reassure you, we haven't been having KFCs for quite some time now. Apart from the email rumours that we've read concerning the way they rear their chickens, we've always felt that Chicago 7 has much better broasted chickens.

Well, Nee has been having a craving for chicken sandwiches with fresh tomatoes, lettuce & cucumbers. Unfortunately we couldn't find any really good ones at a time like this & so we thought this pretty much looked like a good substitute.

And so I went hunting, clubbed this chicken & dragged it home like a caveman.

But what was behind the wrappings shocked me to near death. This burger was sickly off colour & it didn't look like the one we saw in the picture. The lettuce died & the chicken fillet was shy.

KFC, I really don't know what's wrong here. I mean, this thing could fit into the palm of my hand. An I bet I could finish this off with just two manly bites.

I wonder what happened to the good old days when you could hold a burger with two hands? Well look how much it has shrunk. For your information, the green apple next to it is not a giant Fuji apple. It's a Granny Smith & it's small.

I was mad of course. I thought I bought a burger but got a pastry instead.

There is probably a small print on the KFC advert somewhere that tells you that the picture is not necessarily reflecting the real product. And these are usually in small print because they hope you don't see it. But come to think of it, that's like saying ok, we may be lying but we told you, so don't sue us.

I found out that in other places, the Fillet burger is called a mini burger. Read this article here.

Lunch @ Nee's

2010-08-25T23:06:00.000+08:00

Just in case you're wondering, Nee's still busy juggling a full-time job with a cafe & she's baking like it's Chinese New Year everyday.

That explains why our blog has been quitely dormant for quite some time now. Don't get us wrong, we still love blogging & we miss it. And we want to come back more consistently when things settle down a little bit more. Right now, our blog feels like an overturned turtle trying to get back on its feet.

Oh by the way, she whipped up these lunches & they're now available at her cafe. They're supposed to be healthy & simple lunches which you could grab & go, if you've run out of ideas what to eat for lunch, or if you're just plain sick of the lard & recycled cooking oil out there.

This is one of her better known signature savouries. Nee's Chicken Mushroom Quiche - Chicken & Mushrooms in Soft Creamy Custard baked with Pie Crust.

There was a 7-8 year old kid who chanced upon the cafe & he dragged his grandpa in. He ordered 2 of this & he walloped them all. Then he asked if he could wash his hands. A couple of days later, he came back with his mom & swallowed another 2 of this & asked to wash his hands again. Later we found out from the mom that he doesn't usually like anything. But she was happy cos at least this was healthy! Oh, by the way, she makes this to order as well.

Cottage Pie - Saucy Beef dish with Mashed Potatoes on top grilled with Mozzarella Cheese.

Chicken Avacado Sandwich - Smoked Chicken with Avocado slices in rye bread.

All lunch is served with Nee's home made Olive Oil & Balsamic Vinegar Salad.

In her own words, these are supposed to be simple & healthy lunches that fills you up but not put you to sleep! Now available at Nee's!

Nee's Cakes & Desserts

2010-08-01T18:23:00.001+08:00

Nee's cafe basically consists of two main display sections, if I can describe it in that way. At the front of the shop, she calls it the Angel section, for reasons which may or may not be so obvious.

Is it obvious yet?

I guess it's now very in-your-face obvious.

This is for Hello Kittys, Care Bears & Barbies. The magic is not in the fruits. It's in the crust and the cream. I've tried these & I would eat these even though they're on the floor.

Strawberry fruit tarts.

Kiwi fruit tarts.

Killer Apple Crumble. The pastries kill and these come with ice-cream.

Banana Crumble. My favourite simply because I'm a banana kinda guy.

Do not miss these creme brulee. They come with strawberries, and a fire show. And next to it was supposed to be panna cotta but the photos didn't turn out well so I didn't put them up.

Strawberry Cream Cake is one of those cakes where everyone seems to like, the young & especially the old. Maybe because the sponge is as soft as cotton & that's friendly to the old folks' dentures.

The traditional cheesecake series.

These will be served with strawberries.

Banana Crumble cheesecake and they are selling like a Michael Jackson concert.

Now this is another hit with old folks & all the health freaks out there if they conveniently forget about the cream cheese frosting. Butterless carrot cake! Doesn't it look angelic!

Also missing from the photos were the caramel walnut cakes which was also a hit.

And as you walk into the shop, to the other inner part of the counter, you'd find the very sinfully rich devil section, for chocolate addicts. All cakes here are made of high-quality Belgium chocolate and Nee only uses good quality cream cheese and only Mascarpone cheese for tiramisu. From left to right, top to bottom: Coco Nana, Chocolate Royale, Rocher, Double choc fudge, White chocolate macadamia cheese, choc hazelnut cheese, fruits for pure fruit juices and tiramisu.

This is a very excellently well-balanced cake.

White Chocolate Macademia would be very rich & just nicely sweet. If you can take two pieces in a row then my hats off to you!

This has always been one of my favourites. A lot of places misinterpret what an original fudge is supposed to be. When Nee leaves this in the fridge over a period of time, I can finish all this off on my own. Sometimes I don't know what impresses me the most. The cake, or myself.

CocoNana. One of my other favourites. I can do 4 pieces in a stretch. This is a very light cake but the chocolate's just as rich & there's layers & layers of fresh bananas inside. This cake sold out so fast that it felt like it just walked out of the door.

This is Nee's latest creation. It's called Chocolate Royale for a reason.

This is the only cake that uses 70% Dark Belgium chocolate and thus the name.

And of course, Nee's chunky cookies:

Nee's also carry Bundaberg, including Sarsaparilla.

Nee's OPENING HOURS:

Tuesdays-Saturdays 8.45am - 10pm
Sundays 10am-10pm
Mondays CLOSED

Nee's is open until 10pm tonite. Tomorrow it's closed for recuperation. :) If you're heading there tonight, do it quickly cos the latest report is that the cakes and the tarts are going fast. Coffee & tea will always be there.

BTW there's lots of parking in the basement. YES, THERE IS BASEMENT PARKING!

Nee's Cafe Soft Opening on August 1, 2010

2010-08-01T17:09:00.000+08:00

This is Greg reporting from Nee's cafe. At this moment Nee is at the cafe (duh) handling the cakes & customers. People that we've put out invitations to are pouring in since 10am this morning. Of course there are walk-ins as well. Everyone's welcome! Please help put the word out.

Here are some photos of the shop front & interior to give you an idea of what the whole atmosphere feels like for those who couldn't be there today. These were taken last night before the launch.

Kudos goes to our interior designer Sim, and his wonderfully patient team Gwen & Eric. Special thanks to all who came in to support us today. I'll be there again tonite and hope to see you then.

Will be posting more pics of the cakes & displays following this post within the next hour.

NEE's

2010-07-31T16:46:00.001+08:00

Some people can give you 10 good reasons why they haven't been able to post as often as they'd like to. However, in this case, we only have one very good reason.

Nee has been working very hard for the whole of this month on a secret project. And let me tell you that it's amazing that she's still alive. Well, the secret is now out.

Check out Nee's Facebook Group here for more information. More will come tomorrow.

Taipei Day 3: Our First Original Taiwanese Beef Noodles

2010-06-05T23:05:00.001+08:00

We woke up to rain again on our third day in Taipei. The temperature hovered around 12-14 degrees Celcius thereabouts. It was the kind of temperature that made any hot meal taste like the very last meal on planet earth.

We had a good start at this place which had very solid Taiwanese beef noodles (winner of some kind of best Taipei noodles under NTD100).

Again, this was one of the places which we chanced upon which turned out to be one of the notable ones in Taipei. And the good news was that the shop was super-near our hotel.

It was so near that it felt like having breakfast in bed. Click on the map above to see a larger version.

There was a very old man (whom we imagined was the originator of the place) who invited us to sit & he spoke in pure original Taiwanese Hokkien which was unintelligible to us. This was supposedly his son who took over the business.

Taiwanese beef noodles came into Kuching in the 80s (probably came with the Taiwanese wives) & were quite popular then. Then somehow it degenerated to a lesser standard & today it is something of a forgotten taste.

But on that one cold freezing morning, it all came back & it was ten times better.

The noodles here come in clearer beef soup and well marinaded beef cubes which were really juicy & tender. The noodles were freshly made ones, broad and al dente.

There was also a slightly spicy version. Both were equally good but a word of warning, the serving per bowl is quite huge. Do not attempt to finish the whole thing yourself, otherwise you won't have enough room for anything else for the next two days.

We also ordered some fried shui jiao and this was good every time anywhere we went in Taipei. Here it cost somewhere between NTD40 or 50 for this portion.

This was the day that I learned to trust in Taiwanese beef noodles again.

After that, we took quite a long walk after breakfast in search of the Museum of Contemporary Arts but when we got there, it was still closed for the holiday. That meant we had a bit of time on our side so we decided to drop into a shopping mall with a strange name - Palais de Chine.

There was some commotion going on. It looked like some Japanese Taiko drumming fusion of some sort. The fusion of culture is obvious since Taiwan was colonised by Japan for 50 years.

The walls of the mall were lined with real life plants from floor to ceiling. My first initial thought was that it was an idea but maintenance would be a handful. If you had something like this in the house, you'd also be living with creepy crawlies & bacterias, & everything else in between.

The mall was basically crowded with people. From mainland China.

Though not as impressive as Japan's large departmental stores, their desserts were equally alluring.

Hmm. The more you look at it, the more it feels like staring at edible art pieces.

Taipei Day 2: Greg & Nee Eat Their Way Into Taipei

2010-05-16T15:47:00.000+08:00

The weather wasn't very happy on our second day (our actual day one) in Taipei. Stubborn grey clouds held up the sky & it pretty much drizzled for the whole day.

But that shalt not dampen the spirits of two hungry travellers. In fact hot food tastes even better on a cold hungry day. This was the view from our hotel window. You can see that it's right in the centre of everything, surrounded by shops just downstairs.

I can't remember where this shop was exactly, but it was a little road before Chongqing South Road where See You Hotel is. Most of the shops that we went to for morning breakfast were located in the vicinity of the same area. And when I say in the vicinity, it really means very, very near & very, very easy to find.

How do you know whether the food's good? Taipei shops will usually put up some sort of signs indicating their specialty, business running for 30 years, winner of some annual food competition 3 times in a row. You get the idea. In this case, it was a shop selling station food for 20 years.

Sweet & sour soup which did not taste much like our local ones in Malaysia. The spicy touch in the soup was a bit different. But it was good.

OMG Excellent Steamed Shui Jiao.

Equally excellent Xiao Loong Bao. Everything for an excellent price of NT185 (RM18.50).

And immediately after breakfast, on our way towards the MRT main station, Nee spotted food again. I can't remember whether we got anything for the road but you kinda get a sense of what we do on our holiday trips.

At Taipei Main Station, we bought a NT500 (RM50) travel card each. We didn't know at the time that NT500 would last us the whole 7 days, with some leftover money for refund at the end of it. We concluded that Taipei MRT is one of the cheapest in the world compared to HongKong, UK, Paris, Malaysia & Singapore,

We took an MRT to Jiantan station for NT16 (RM1.60) each, & when you get out, you'l see the infamous Shilin Night Market.

At 12:12pm that day, the temperature was 12 degrees. We kept thinking of hot food.

But the Shilin Night Market could wait. It only opens in the evening & we'd be back for it later. But now, we were heading towards the National Palace Museum & the only way to get there is by bus 304 or Red 30 for NT16 (RM1.60) each.

In Taipei, the Vistor's Information Centre is at almost every major MRT station. So usually we'd find out about how to get to a certain place at the Main Station before we depart or when we arrive. So that really reduces the homework.

This is the National Palace Museum, the world's greatest repository of Chinese artifacts.

This museum holds a whopping 650,000 artifacts which span 5,000 years of China's history.

Despite the gawdy outlook of the buildings, they really hold an amazing collection with state-of-the-art displays. You cannot finish this place in one day.

What we did was to sign up for the free English tour (which came with headsets) which gave us an overview of the whole place focusing on only the important collections. That helped a lot & we'd suggest that for you as well.

Photography was not allowed but we saw the Jadeite Cabbage with Insects. This was definitely the Mona Lisa of this museum.

The Mao Gong Ding, an important artifact with the longest inscription of Chinese characters in the world.

And the Qing dynasty Emperor's Curio boxes or 'serious toys for serious adults'.

We also went for the Gold & Glory: The Wonders of Khitan from the Inner Mongolia Museum Collection. Thank God Nee didn't try to buy the collection.

Chiang Kai Shek really had the foresight to haul all these artifacts from mainland China once upon a time ago.

Today, you see the repercussions from the actions of one man. The buildings are now packed with mainlanders from China who had to come all the way to Taipei to see their own history.

I've seen how a can of sardine looks like but now, I also know how a can of Mainlanders look like. It's like a can of sardines who do not understand what lining up, personal space & respect for silence mean.

The museum also came with food. There was a restaurant & food court on the lower ground floor, accessible from a side entrance outside the museum building. And it was also full of mainlanders.

NEE: This was where Greg had his first encounter with Lu Rou Fan (Stew Minced Pork Rice). Now the thing with Greg is that if he likes something, he'll stick to it for as long as he can. (He's still wearing the same running shoes he had from 16 years ago). So for the next 6 days, he'd be asking for the same thing at every other shop, unless I give him the WTF (What The Fish) look.

This noodle is called Dan Dan Mien. It was nice but apparently Dan Dan Mien is not a Taipei local specialty. It's more like a Tainan dish.

Presenting Greg's first inaugural bowl of Lu Rou Fan. There's something magical about it, something simple, tangible & very basic. You know what you're getting, nothing more, nothing less. It's one of those meals that you could just wallop everything down in one minute, & still want more. Greg had an uncle who used to eat every meal like it's the best meal in the world, even though it's just plain rice with kangkung belacan. This was like that.

And the whole ka-bang cost us only less than NT100 (RM10).

Queueing up with the mainlanders for the bus trip back to Shillin was a bit nerve wrecking. We had to always keep our guards up. One blink of the eye & you'll find someone new placing themselves conveniently in front of you.

But we managed to race into an incoming bus & squeeze ourselves in. However, the bus somehow dropped a whole lot of us off too early wihout telling us. Upon realising that we're still not in Shillin, we had to walk a few blocks there. It would have been a nice walk had it not been for the rain cos the streets were lined with food shops like this.

This shop was selling a kind of traditional pastry baked in traditional coal-fired oven. There was a huge queue which was always an indication of good food.

The pastries came with different prices ranging from RM1.20 - RM4.00 each.

We really didn't know the names of these hot little delicacies. Some were of the sweet kind, some were more salty and others had spring onions.

They were really good, with the right level of crispiness & fragrance - essential requirements for good pastry.

Further down the streets, we found pure 100% papaya blended milk juice for RM3-4. This was the real deal & they do not hold back any punches.

This was the almighty Shilin Night Market packed with shoulder-rubbing hungry crowds that would stare you out of your long awaited seats and always ready to sit on you if you take your meal too slow. Did someone say who'd go to Taipei during Chinese New Year?

Although it was quite difficult to identify the stalls with the long queue (cos the crowds were everywhere) but it wasn't an impossible task. We spotted a reasonably busy stall selling oyster omelettes & squid soup, & there were two seats available for us.

This was real yummy stuff if you like your oyster omelette wet. Lots of generous oysters for only NT 50 (RM5). We love Taipei!

Assorted Squid Soup. Heavenly. NT40 (RM4) only. Are you in Taipei already?

We realised that food in Taipei usually come in small bowls. These would usually cost in the range of RM5 & perfect for variety sampling. Anything more than RM10 would be big bowls which required more focus.

Then there's something strangely called Taipei's famous Coffin Board. These were not overly impressive but they were worth a try. They're actually fried bread with a hole cut in the middle with choice of sauce.

These were Taipei's assorted sausages, big ones, small ones, & 'big-wrap-small' ones. They come with garlic, black pepper, hot and spicy, & whatever else you can think of.

At this point, we were on the verge of exploding but we had to bring something back to the hotel especially when we were big fans of big sausages.

What we thought was a really big meaty sausage wrapping a small one turned out to be a big fake sausage made of glutinous rice wrapping a smaller real one. Nevertheless, all was good.

By the end of the day, Taipei met our expectations as a fabulous food place & we were happy that good food was generally easy to locate. In terms of the number of night markets, Taipei probably had about 10 of them. And this was just the very beginning of our journey.

Taipei Trip

2010-05-09T23:49:00.009+08:00

We've never been to Taipei before this & the only things we knew about Taipei were these.

And not as pleasantly, this, as well.

So we didn't really know where to start plus it was going to be a Chinese New Year trip, & that felt like a scary experience. But I was fortunate enough to bump into this blog by Kampung Boy & City Gal who gave pretty good advice about where to go & where to stay.

Contrary to what some people may tell you about Taipei during Chinese New Year, we'd like to set the record straight:

1) All shops are closed. NOT ENTIRELY TRUE.

We got there on the second day of CNY, some were open, even more opened from the 3rd day onwards. The night markets were opened throughout. We had no problem finding food at all . And we're talking about GOOD FOOD.

2) Everything is expensive during CNY. NOT TRUE.

In fact, you might be able to find better deals during that time, even with hotels. I don't know why that happens but I think businesses think differently over there. It probably has something to do the significance of ensuring brisk business in the first few crucial days of business in the new year.

3) The whole place is empty. NOT ENTIRELY TRUE. The night markets & museums are CRAZY PACKED with people, mostly mainland Chinese, some from Hong Kong.

But when we were there, there was some kind of typhoon somewhere in Asia, & that came with a rainy spell. That brought down the temperature to about 11 degrees plus rain the whole time we were there, which made sitting down for hot food a heavenly experience.

Unlike our Korean trip, I did a lot of research for this one. The hotel rates were surprisingly reasonable during this gargantuan Chinese holiday period. However, a lot of the good hotels including City Inn were fully booked. These were hotels near the Taipei Main Station. You'd want to stay near the main station cos it makes all your travels easier.

Now the great thing with the internet nowadays is the availability of Google Maps & Street View.

I found a hotel called See You Hotel, which was about 4 blocks away from the Main Station (Click on the map & you'll see what I mean). I didn't realise how close it was, cos it wasn't really possible to imagine from the map, until I went down into the Street View.

It was amazing. It felt like being there without really being there. And that helped a lot with the navigation once I got to the actual place.

See You Hotel was even closer to the Bus Station where you could take a bus ride straight to/from the airport for only RM15, luggage & all. Alright. You can pick up your jaw now.

One thing I learnt about picking hotels. It's not about the number of stars. It's about how new the hotel is.

An international 5-star hotel with big, dark-lit rooms, smelly old beds & expensive old furniture cannot compare with a small inn with a squeeky clean, minimally furnished, spanking new room.

This baby only cost us about RM267 per night during the Chinese New Year, & it comes with a mini bar, daily complimetary bottled water & cookie.

Even the bathroom passed Nee's almost impossible approval standards.

See You Hotel is located right amongst convenience stores & 3 of Taipei's top 5 beef noodle shops are just downstairs within shouting distance.

We didn't really have much time to look for food on our first night in Taipei cos when we got into our hotel, it was almost 10pm already, and we didn't want to go anywhere else, and the closest thing was this Family Mart/7-Eleven store (I can't remember which) which served hot soupy meat balls & stuff.

And noodles & meat buns.

Next to the hotel, like immediately next door, was a dessert place which opens late into the night.

Little did we know that this was going to be our usual stop to cap the night off for the next few days. Our days would soon start off by eating our way to the MRT, to get to some other place to eat, & then eating our way back to the hotel.

Hot tofu fa with yam balls.

Sweet potato with yam balls.

And these were really good, for a franchise store like this that probably started from a grandpa & grandma's recipe.

Singapore Day 5: Banyan Tree Bintan Island

2010-05-01T11:47:00.001+08:00

We stayed at Banyan Tree resort Bintan Island for 2 nights. Anymore than that & you'll find Greg & Nee washing plates & slave-waitering on the island for 14 years. Hmmm, interesting thought though.

This was the restaurant that we went to for our daily breakfast.

Breakfast was included in our package & we'd take our time so that by the time we finish, it'd last us the whole afternoon. If you didn't know what that was, it's a Malaysian thing.

The spread here was excellent. Obviously they do not scrimp. I can't imagine them scrimping cos we paid top US Dollars for these.

Though a lot of it are not in the pictures, there were fresh juices for breakfast. And we're not talking about the bottled or syrupy ones that you'd get for hotel breakfast. These were freshly squeezed papayas, oranges, grapefruits and so on. And the amazing thing was the free flow champagne for breakfast. We didn't try. Can't imagine getting tipsy at 9am in the morning.

Eggs are their specialty on the menu item. Usually you'd get them cooked in three different ways, daily, straight from the kitchen to the table. Really something to enjoy.

After packing it in, we went exploring the surroundings & the beach.

This was the infinity pool.

As I've mentioned it before, Banyan Tree doesn't have much of a beach, at least from this vantage point. It was more like a short stretch of sand.

There's a power point which stood up from the rocks on the upper left section of this photo. That's where we almost had a romantic candlelit outdoor dinner for two on the rocks with the crashing waves. For USD99/person, they could make it a really romantic experience I suppose. But for USD99/person, they'd better make sure that it is.

We decided against it cos as romantic as it sounded, it depended on how windy/rainy the night was. Can't equate wet hair & hair-in-the-face to romance. But highly recommendable if you go during the non-moonsoon season. Especially if you're just married!

After conquering the beach, we took a shuttle down to a small 'market' called Pasar Oleh-Oleh. It wasn't much & it certainly wasn't authentic, more like a commercial pit stop/trap with shops catering to tourists selling food, spa-massage & Polo T-shirts. Yes, Polo T-shirts were everywhere on this island somehow. In this little market itself, it had 2-3 shops selling the same Polo Ts, and they're like almost opposite each other.

It's at this little market that we begin to feel the pressure of being in Indonesia, 'agents' bombarded us with tour packages, taxi rides & spa-massage packages. And you couldn't tell if you were about to be conned. And if you decline, they'd stare at you from the tip of your hair down to your toe nails. It felt like we were back in Johor Wild Wild West.

But we had time to kill cos we sort of missed the bus & decided to try out one of the foot massage packages. The 'agent' walked us through the back of the market, & through the resorts staff quarters, & we emerged into another commercial 'centre' with about two blocks of commercial shoplots & a food court. And there we experienced our very first foot reflexology.

No polished smiles, just sincere ones & super-duper hands-of-steel foot massage. I screamed & Nee screamed & we both felt like crying & laughing at the same time. And this place was cheap, about S$20 each for one hour of pain.

Dinner back at the resort was at another one of their restaurants. This was more Thai fushion.

Banyan Tree's complimentary birthday cake for Nee which was an excellent double chocolate.

That night I didn't have to pay for the singing. The waiters came out in full force & belted an Indonesian-accented Happy Birthday song.

That night Nee got her birthday wish, & I, got the double chocolate delight. It was an excellent cake. And believe me, when I say it's excellent, it's excellent.

This was our very first 5-star & beyond resort holiday. It came with a price, but with the price also came great service. In the end, it left us with a memorable experience of what being grossly rich felt like. It also left me with empty pockets & a realisation of how small our Ringgit was.

Next post: Our Taiwan trip!

Singapore Day 4: Banyan Tree Bintan Island

2010-04-17T14:30:00.003+08:00

This was the day. This was the big day when we would be going for our very first do-nothing, all-relaxing sleeping, eating & spa-ing 5-star holiday.

But wait. I could be wrong. We did something like that before on the Star Cruise last time. And the last time we did that, we almost became human pigs like the ones in Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away.

But that morning before we set off, Sarah brought us to a food court almost next to her apartment. In Singapore, food courts conveniently go together with the apartments. That's how good their town planning is. In Kuching, you'd be happy if you can find a tiny children's playground in a housing estate.

The food there was surprisingly good. We didn't expect that cos we were used to the proliferation of bad hawker stalls & food court in Kuching. The mushrooming of 1001 food centres in Kuching gave us the impression that everyone who can cook Maggi instant noodles & fry an egg want to get into the food business. You don't see as much passion anymore in this craft.

These were what we had:

Vinegar Pork noodles which I can still taste in my mouth ~ Fresh noodles with lots of minced meat ~ S2.50 or 3.00, I think.

Wanton noodles that you'll never find in Kuching. Springy noodles with nice big wanton ~ S2.50 or 3.00

Fish bee hoon ~ S5.oo with real fresh fish slices. Seriously good.

And after that, we carried that bit of Singapore over to Bintan Island, Indonesia. We took a cab to Tanah Merah ferry station. The one-way ferry ride cost about S$24.00 & I think it took about an hour. It was a very new & modern vessel, much like the ones in Macau-Hong Kong, with relatively comfy seats, Singapore TV drama series & food-drinks concessionary.

When we got off at Bintan Island, we were greeted by by a welcoming committee from Banyan Tree.

They even had a waiting area at the ferry point. I was wondering if they'd start the foot massage at that point but they didn't.

The hotel van then zipped us to Banyan Tree which was unexpectedly only 15 mins away (I heard 50). When we alighted, we were welcomed by the gong (here in Kuching only YBs get gongs), cold towels & cool ginger honey tea while they prepared our check in.

A friendly Korean staff, who spoke English & Indonesian, personally attended to us. She actually knelt/sat down on the floor next to Nee while she explained the rooms & services to us, & that felt like a 5-star treatment. I think if she had prostrated herself on the floor, it'll bump up the stars beyond 5 to a 10. But we're glad she didn't cos we can't imagine what that would cost us.

The Banyan Tree resort is built on the contours of the island & therefore the pathways snake up & down the hilly slopes connecting the individual private chalets. Walking is obviously possible from chalets to restaurants & the small beach, but a trip from the lobby to the chalets would require a buggy ride.

Anyway, the rides were many and the buggies were everywhere. If you don't see them, you can pick up the phone & they'll zoom right up to the front of your doorsteps.

All rooms here are in the form of villas ~ garden or jungle view, ocean view, villa on the rocks and those with your very own private pools too.

This was the first chalet that we stayed in, the Ocean View Villa. Yes, I said 'first chalet'. You'll know why soon enough.

Most of the architectural designs here are Balinese in nature. with high slanting roofings. The bed sits right in the centre of the room looking out towards the sliding doors & the sea. So you can lay down and watch the sea the whole day.

The sexy bathroom opens up to the front yard. So husbands in Bali are usually pleasantly surprised every time they come home through the main gates.

All villas were equipped with Banyan Tree special aromatheraphy incense and oil.

You can see how the villas maintain their privacy even though they're next to each other. This was the Ocean View Villa & it came with our very own private spa on the balcony. So if you're an exhibitionist, you'll love all this stripping down & skinny dipping in nature.

This is the stretch visible from the verandah. I don't think Banyan Tree is famous for its beaches. It had more of a resort in the jungle feel.

We signed up for a Health Spa package for couples which came with a healthy 5-star price tag of USD$120, foot scrub, body scrub, steam bath, rain shower (where you practical shower lying down) & massage. The masseurs were well trained & extremely polite but I thought the whole thing was too gentle & commercial for me but Nee liked it.

When we got back to our villa, we found that 'something' had bitten through the candle holder & the wax candle was missing. Our first thought was 'things' from another dimension, but then we calmed down to a more rational thought. Maybe it was just rat. But the idea of a rat was reason enough not to stay on in the same villa. It didn't matter if the rat was a 5-star resort rat, we didn't want it with us under our sheets when we're sleeping.

With one phone call, the resort staff teleported to our chalet and we we were then upgraded to another villa. The rat turned out to be Indonesian squirrels which came down through the roof. Now that I can take. Think Alvin & the Chipmunks.

Our 2nd villa is another level up ~ Villa on the Rocks.

Villa on the Rocks was situated on the rocks (hence the name) by the sea. When the tide is up the chalet basically looks like it's on water and when the tide goes out, it's clearly on the rocks.

This room was definitely brighter & seemed to have been refurbished recently. If I remember correctly, we would have paid around USD700 per night for this chalet. Every night the resort staff will come up and put down the mosquitos nettings and light some incense in the room. That's 5-star service, I suppose.

This villa also came with His and Hers vanity top and a sexy shower which overlooks out to the sea plus the usual fruit basket.

And of course, there's the little private spa on the balcony, which is the signature of this place.

There are 3 restaurants at Banyan Tree. This one is called Tree Top which had more of a Western menu.

We didn't know if this was the off-peak season but it felt like the resort staff was more than the guests. But we were not complaining.

We had nothing to complain about the food either but of course they came with a 5-star USD price. Really can't afford this sort of luxury all the time although it's nice to pamper ourselves once in a long while. Guess it is really, really nice to be rich.

Complimentary mayo and butter for the bread.

Ceasar salad

Deluxe Burger

Pizza with nice crispy thin crust

A word of warning & a reminder. Everything here in this resort is in US Dollars. So to have a full experience, it's important not to think about it. Otherwise, it'll feel like you're eating US Dollars for dinner.

Nevertheless, Singaporean dollars still work on another level. I was able to bribe these guys to come over to sing a couple of songs for Nee. Singapore still got power but the Ringgit was nowhere in sight.

Ka-Ca-Ma

2010-04-08T00:03:00.001+08:00

I do not know where kacama originates from, nor does my mum nor my grandaunt. My guess is that since it's a herbal-based dish, it could probably have come from the Hakkas. The Hakkas are well known for their Lui Cha & their tradition of pepper farming (at least in Sarawak).Not quite sure whether the herbs is similar to those of a pepper tree. Anyone?

But kacama has always been a dish to be served after child birth. The kacama herbs are sometimes referred to as Yie Mu Chao (Benefit Mother Grass) and they are harvested and dried before bottling or more commonly nowadays in packets. Along with Chicken Wine Soup and Pig's kidney and liver with lots of ginger, this is a very famous dish in Sarawak with the exception of Sibu to be taken to clean the womb and to rid of any blood clots after child birth. It has a warming effect, which is good for the new mother. Besides that, young girls who has tummyache during period can take this rich broth to improve their womb conditions as it is belived that tummyache is a sign of not so strong womb.

For us like many Sarawakians, we always like kacama for its fragrance & the spicy kick from the wine & the ginger. Kacama nowadays can be found in many fast food stalls just like any normal dish but it is usually very diluted. Cooking kacama is not difficult at all but a good kacama dish is not easy to cook, for it is the product of a perfect simbiosis between the right amount of wine, with the right amount of ginger, with the right amunt of herbs and chicken.

What you will need: 1 packet of kacama herbs.

This is actually the most difficult process of cooking this dish.

The first concern is about buying the herbs, available at most markets in Kuching. This herb is plentiful but choosing a packet that is fresh, which means looking green, not brownish, is important. Check that there are minimum stalks in the packet. If there are too many stalks, then the packet generally will have less leaves and it is the leaves that we want.

Then comes the treating process.

1) Place herbs in a small wok/pan. With low to medium fire, slowly dry stir fry the herbs to brown. If you undercook the herbs, the dish will have a leafy taste. If you use too high a fire, you risk burning the herb and that brings a bitter taste to the dish. The process of stir frying must be slow and would usually take up to 1/2 hour of continued stirring and controlling of fire until the herbs turn dry (it will crackle up upon pressing with two finger) and greenish brown up and release a special fragrance. You should not see fresh green leaves at all.

2) Blend the greenish brown up herbs till fine and sift to rid of any stalks. The stalks if included into the dish is pretty annoying to bite and we want our kacama smooth. Store in airtight container for further usage.

1/2 no of chicken or 2 no of thigh meat, weighing about 1 kg

100-120gm of local ginger (less if you are not a ginger person)

4tbsp of treated kacama herbs

1 cup of chinese white wine

1/2 cup of chinese glutinous rice wine (optional or if you like a wine spicy dish use 1 1/2 cup of white wine in total)

3-4 tbsp of sesame oil

1) Clean and rid the ginger off the skin. Pound till fine with pestle and mortar. Squeeze the juice and set aside.

2) Heat the wok and slowly stir fry the ginger pulps with sesame oil till fragrant. Add chicken and continue stir frying till chicken pieces turn white.

3) Add herbs and coat all meat with herbs.

4) Add the two wine and ginger juice and transfer the dish to a chinese double boiler and double boil for 40 - 50 mins or till the meat is cooked thoroughly and fully absorbs the wine.

Note:

We do not want meat so soft that it falls apart. That would mean that the soup has absorbed all the chicken flavour and the chicken is basically redundant and tasteless. The dish needs to be eaten meat and soup together. The cross balancing of meat with wine and herbs flavour, with chicken flavour in the soup is very important.

If cooking is done in a normal pot in braising style, add only half of the wine and cook for 30 - 40 mins. Add the other half portion of the wine 10 min before turning off the fire. Braising style tends to boil the dish up a little too much and evaporates the wine much more compared to double boiling. If you want to tone down the wine, then you can follow step 4 in the braising style and cook for roughly 30- 40 mins.

It is a dish you either love or hate. But most Sarawakians like our affection for our Laksa tend to have own respective favourite taste to this dish. Some like it diluted with less wine spike, we like is with a lot of wine spike and a slight sweet notation (hence the glutinous wine step) and others love it so spicy they just really spicy white wine. Adjust the recipe to your liking. Serve with a bowl of nice fragrant jasmine rice. Yum!

Our Johor-Singapore Trip: Day 3

2010-04-01T20:33:00.001+08:00

It's always nice to have very good friends in very different places. That way, where ever you go, you'd be able to access the more inaccessible places, the places only the locals know, the places Lonely Planet knows nuts about.

We started our 3rd day during our Singapore-Johor trip eating roti prata for breakfast. It wasn't just any roti prata. It was roti prata on Bukit Chagar.

This was what the place looked like, sort of like a lone food shelter that popped up from the ground, in the middle of nowhere, on Bukit Chagar. And it looked like it was populated with government civil servants. If you came here often, you could get your IC, passport & police report done, all in one morning.

Bukit Chagar is just behind the new multi-million ringgit immigration building that has probably filled a lot of pockets. You can tell how close the roti place is to the massive blue buildings.

This is Roti Prata. On Bukit Chagar.

We were able to cross over to Singapore in one piece after that. This time there weren't any episodes with those Johor cowboy taxi drivers.

On the other more civilised side which we call Singapore, we caught up with Sarah, Aunty Chua and family. It was a good learning experience to sit down and chat with them as they shared their life experiences in Singapore.

If you guys have not seen them for a while, there you go. Sarah and Alex have two beautiful daughters, the other two older ones were their cousins who came by during the school holidays.

That night, Alex graciously took us to dinner at Dian Xiao Er, which is a Chinese restaurant chain at a mall somewhere at Ang Mo Kio I think. Sarah, please confirm!

No, it wasn't a drive-in restaurant. I just thought you needed to see this picture of how systematic & technologically advanced Singapore is. The red light changes to green if there's a vacant parking lot. So you can actually spot an empty lot from far away. I think Spring needs to learn a few things from here.

For a moment there I thought I was watching Little Nyonya.

The four of us shared a set meal which included these:

Dong Po Meat ~ This is one good dish here. Very moist and tender with all the fat and meat intact, which says good cooking skills.

Steamed garoupa fish, I think ~ nicely done.

Kailan with a tinge of kaffir lime. Something we have not had before. Interesting and pretty addictive actually.

Brocolli with mushrooms ~ nothing to shout about.

Dian Xiao Er soup of the day.

This is supposed to be their signature herbal duck dish.

The herbs came out pretty strong alright.

We definitely think Dian Xioa Er is worth visiting for the few interesting dishes that they have. We of course ate and wiped our mouths while Alex graciously footed the bill. So we're not quite sure how much the food here costs. Thank you, Alex and Sarah for feeding us.

Then as we walked out of the restaurant, we spotted a Singapore kiasu line which snaked all the way to a Durian pancake stall.

Whenever there's a line at a food stall, we knew it had to be something good. So Nee got a bunch of those Durian puffs.

And those puffs were dangerous. They were pure 100% durians and they could kill.

Next post: Banyan Tree Bintan Island

Repost: Pan Mien

2010-03-28T12:45:00.000+08:00

I am doing a repost of this because there is a loving guy out there who wants to do this for his girlfriend. Sweet! Greg doing this for me hmmmm...i cant imagine the mess after. Anyway, "interested", hopefully you get the hang of this before she comes home.

We have this in KL all the time, so I've always thought it as of West Malaysian origins. Then again I had a nice one in KK Sabah and Sabah got Sayur Manis. Maybe it is Sabahan. Anyone?

When I serve this for cell, many of them dont know what exactly is Pan Mien. So it is definitely not a Kuching thingy. There used to be a hawker store at Thompson's Corner (Tabuan Jaya) selling this. Apparently, business was so good that they were always sold out before noon. Now it is completely gone. The guy must have made enough and decide to take out early retirement (my guess).

Greg loves Pan Mien and with no where nice to go, I have to take up the task of figuring how to make some myself in case he starts having withdrawal syndrome. Me too for that matter. A while ago, there was a demonstration class showing how to make the actual Pan Mien noodles. Thank God!

The Soupbase:

3 litre of water

300gm of pork bones, washed and parboiled to rid blood and smell

3-4 no of chicken bones, washed and parboiled with pork bones

20 gm of ikan bilis

300 gm of lean pork (leg meat), seasoning with salt, sugar, pepper, cornstarch and water

1 bunch of mani chai or sayur manis

120gm of pork balls

20 gm of black fungus (soaked in water) or some fresh ones is nice even better

1 tbsp of minced garlic

1 tbsp of oil

The noodles:
200gm of flour (plain or key flour)
1 no of egg
some salt
approx 100 gm of water

The Accompaniment:
20 gm of ikan bilis, cleaned, dried and fried with some oil til light brown and crispy
Chilli padi, mixed with some maggi seasoning and some light soya.
300gm of minced pork, seasoned with light soya, salt, pepper and sugar, cornstarch and water, stir fry with 1 tbsp of garlic and oil til cooked. Scope onto noodle and soup before serving.

1) Boil water. When boiling, add bones and ikan bilis and simmered for 1hour or more. Strain for the soup only. If you are running out of time, 1 to 1 1/2 cube of pork or chicken stock will have to do.

2) Heat oil in wok, add garlic and stir fry lean pork. Add pork balls, black fungus and stir fry til fragrant.

3) Add to soup. Continue simmering for another hour or so. Before serving, add mani chai and boil for a few minutes before adding noodles.

4) For noodles: Mix all ingredients in a bowl and stir until well combined. Knead into a small dough. If too wet, add some flour. The dough should be not be firm but soft when you hold it. Rest for 10 min or so.

5) Cut into four. Sprinkly some flour on working surface and rolling pin, roll into rectangles. If you use a noodle maker, run it through the flat sheet mode and roll from biggest to the third biggest (say if No 1 is your noodle maker biggest gap, 3 will be third). Run through 2 times at each no and sprinkle some flour on dough sheets surface each time. Cut with the fettucine mode. Separate the noodles as they tend to stick together.

Note: A good pan mien dough is soft and it will not shrink during rolling. If you dont have a noodle maker, just roll the dough as flat as you can and cut into 1/2 cm strips or tear your dough with finger and thumb for flat pieces.

6) Fresh Pan Mien noodles goes straight from dough strips into soup mixture. Boil the whole combination until noodles are cooked. The dish is very slightly on the floury side. Add salt and pepper to taste.

7) Serve with Fried Ikan Bilis, Chili padi sauce and Fried mince meat.

Once you get the hang of it, preparation can be quite easy and fast. Yet the dish is so clear and nice and of course not as fattening. The key is fresh noodles!

Japanese Style Chicken Curry

2010-03-15T21:45:00.000+08:00

Greg is a curry lover, so much so that his Uncle John thought that he would marry an Indian girl one day. Obviously that didn't happen. Still, he maintains his unfledging passion for curry of all sorts & spices despite the fact that his stomach gets quite sensitive to it. So we've been cutting down on hot spicy food in general, but from time to time, we'd do a really hot one.
.

I totally forgot about the two packets of Japanese curry mix I had in my pantry (which I got from Melbourne). And they were about to expire in another few months. So that basically solved the problem of what's-for-dinner-tonite. And it was also an opportunity to quieten Greg down & give him his curry fix.

Japanese Curry tends to be slightly spicy sweet rather than hot spicy. It comes in hot, medium and light levels of spiciness. With Greg in mind, I went for medium spicy.

Japanese curry is also one of those dishes which are easy to cook cos it needs minimal culinary skills. Its unlike the local curries which need all the terrifying pounding, blending and stir frying of spices. You'd need an Indian wife to do that.

And the Japanese version is quick to do if its for chicken curry. Try this.

Feeds 4-5

3 pieces of chicken thigh deboned and rid of skin

2 no of med size potatos, large cube

2 no of med size carrots, large cube

2 cups of water

1 no of large onions, chopped

1) Clean and cut chicken into about 2 cm cubes. Seasoned with some salt and pepper for 1/2 hour.

2) With 2 tablespoon of oil, stir fry onion til brown and fragrant. Add chicken and continue to stir fry til slightly brown.

3) Add boiling water to cover the chicken and let it simmer from about 5 min. Add carrots and potatos and simmer for another 15 min.

4) Finally, add the chopped up packet of japanese curry mix. Stir until all mixture dissolve, bring to boil and mixture will thickens as you cook. Salt & pepper when necessary and add more water if too thick for your liking.

Serve with rice.

Singapore Trip 2009: Day 2

2010-03-03T11:36:00.003+08:00

We know you guys can't wait for the Taipei postings, so we'll finish the Singapore ones pronto. Sorry, we just have to get this out of the system before we can start new ones. It's like detoxing.

A Singapore trip is never complete with the Orchard Road experience, especially when it's near/during Christmas. We were there a week before Christmas and the festive decors and lighting were already up.

In Singapore, one can really feel the festivities of Christmas albeit it being rather commercial. But this work of creativity is worth the walk.

This was one of the newest shopping malls on Orchard, The Ion.

We didn't really explore much inside cos we thought it felt like any other typical shopping mall. Plus, Nee wasn't really on a shopping spree this time around. WHEW.

This one's for NEE. I couldn't believe it but somehow I knew, she enjoyed the movie Confessions of a Shopaholic on the plane ride to Taipei recently.

It was a whirlwind tour of Ion, something like a snap-we-were-there kinda thing. (Whoever heard of a mall tour before?) We had to rush off to this place at Suntec City 1 cos it had a Japanese buffet lunch & it ends at 2.30pm. Why does our trip feel like The Amazing Race?

This was Kuishin Bo upon Terri's recommendation. And we trusted Terri's thumbs-up! So we just cannot miss it even though we only have something like 50 min before closing.

This place did not disappoint us. They did not scrimp. It in fact beat any local Kuching hotel buffer in terms of food and price. For S20.90/RM50 not including taxes, there were generous portions of sashimi laid out & waiting for us, even though it was near closing time.

Faced with such time limitation, we piled our table with as much as we can, out-kiasu-ing the Singaporeans. NEE: There were salad and cold cuts counters; sushi counters with assortment of sushis, makis and temakis; teppanyaki section where they cook fresh the ingredients you choose; hot food sections and chawan mushi sections and not to mentioned Greg's favourite desserts counters.

I loved the desserts. You can pick anything with your eyes closed & it's good. Loved the cream puffs. Had double-triple helpings. I love you Kiushin Bo!

We then headed back to Orchard for some lighting views and ended the day with real Singapore Chicken Rice in Singapore. Dinner was with Nee's ex-uni-mates at Boon Tong Kee. Also mentioned in Terri's blog.

I think we ordered to many kinds of side dishes that night. You might not want to do that when you're here cos the other dishes can overpower what's supposed to be the highlight, pure original unadultrated roasted/steamed chicken. NEE: It could well also be we finish the kiasu-stuff-ourselves-silly lunch at 2 30 and started dinner around before 7 pm.

Nee felt that the chicken, especially the skin, was excellently smooth. I couldn't discern much of it cos having too many dishes on the table was confusing.

The secret to having a good Chicken Rice meal is to keep it simple. Just chicken & rice. That's why kids love it. But it does go well with smaller helpings of sides like tofu, kailan & bean sprouts.

NEE: A good place for chicken rice alright but the other dishes are quite average really.

The Arrival & Departure of the Little Tigers

2010-03-01T21:17:00.003+08:00

As quick as they arrived, they were gone.

The Year of the Tiger brought us these 3 freeloading furballs which appeared out of nowhere. We found them one morning at the back of our house about 2 week sbefore the CNY. I think they somehow knew how to pick the right house. But that's easy. If you're a food blogging hungry homeless tramp, you'd pick our house too.

The mother cat was probably shocked that we took her pictures without her permission, this being her first encounter with papparazzi. But if you saw the look on our faces, we'd probably looked just as shocked.

We didn't really wanted to encourage them but neither did we want to chase the poor little family away, especially when the kittens were so cute. So we didn't really interact with them, neither did we give them any food cos the mother cat was busy bringing little critters like dead lizards to her kitties. We thought that was a good deal cos it was like paying for their rent. Clear our house compound of those critters & you'd get to stay for free.

This is was Sylvester.

On the night before CNY eve, a grouchy looking, puffy-faced, ugly grey male cat came by & bit Sylvester by the neck, puncturing the back & front of his neck, & left him to die. It was a cowardly thing to do, & If I was there at that time, I'd have slapped the dang cat silly, & plucked out all his fur.

Sadly, Sylvester didn't survive the CNY despite our efforts to force-feed him. I think his internal injuries were far more serious than we thought. Thinking back, he might have had a better fighting chance if the vet was opened, but this was CNY. Nothing was opened.

And as quick as it came, it was gone. And we pondered about the cruelty of nature. Truly only the fittest survive.

And that left us with 2-1=1 kitty left. And this one was a girl. So we thought at the very least she won't get killed by another male cat.

And then when I opened the back door one fine morning, she wasn't there any longer. Guess what. I found her on the main road on my way to work. Dead.

So that's zero kittens left. We felt sorry for the mom but there was more to come. That night, our neighbour suddenly popped up & asked about the cat. They complained that she had been hiding in their car engine chasis & puked on their car, & they wanted to discard her away to the housing estate on the other opposite side.

Not really knowing how to defend this guilty-as-can-be feline, I gave her away with a heavy heart, & with full regrets for the rest of the night. We pondered away the whole night on the what-ifs & finally decided that if she came back the next morning, we'd buy her a collar, start feeding her, & keep her.

Guess what. She was back like clockwork the next morning.

And so I bought her a collar with a little bell. And a bag of salmon chicken Whiskas biscuits.

Now we've got another problem. Her heat is on & that means the male cats are on to her as well. But I really can't write anymore. It's either going to sound romantic or X-rated.

So as fast as they came, they went, & only mommy cat stayed. We won't know how long she'll stay for, or the neighbour will abduct her again. We're thinking whatever happens, at least she has a collar on, & that will gain her a more humane treatment.

For now, Nee is caling her Miu Miu, like the Miu Miu from Prada. I roll my eyes.

Oh by the way, this was supposed to be a Happy Year of the Tiger post.

Greg & Nee Back from Taipei

2010-02-22T07:38:00.001+08:00

Hi Everyone! We've just got back from a back-breaking, pound-packing, lard-loading 6-Day Amazing Taipei Holiday trip. And it's hard to tell whether the back is breaking from all that walking, or from the weight gain.

From the museums to the hot springs, the 101 Tower to the night markets, Taipei is such an exciting, vibrant and cultural city with nicey warmy people and Omigosh amount of good food that are super cheap!

We absolutely enjoyed Taipei. In fact, we LOVE Taipei. Taipei is really a techno-socio-politically advanced city yet with all its cultural and historical values very well preserved. I think the photo below basically sums it all up. Either that or it looks more like a Giant Pigeon Destroys Taipei 101 movie.

I love this photo for what it represents. The pigeon is basically perching on one of the traditional gates to the Chiang Kai Shek memorial hall. It has a traditional feel to it & yet it rises together with the modern Taipei 101 behind it.

We shall share about our experience with all of you soon. But we would like to finish blogging a few of our previous trips first before we start on this one. WHIP! Greg, get to work!

Kuih Momo

2010-02-07T15:51:00.000+08:00

This is not so much of a kuih, i suppose. It's a cookie of some sort. Some people call it kuih makmur and I guess somehow that degenerated into momo, which I think is much cuter and more suitable for the flurry looking balls.

Some readers have been asking me for the recipe last year, and I've promised to share it this year. As most of you know by now, I am not so much of a cookie maker. By nature I am a lazy person, and I can't see the joy of putting in so much effort into shaping every single little piece of these cookies which will end up with one bite only.

However, this one is easy, I think. And anyone can do it. What differentiates a good momo from the average ones is that the good ones should burst in your mouth upon eating, with a nice buttery fragrant. That is why I don't use ghee. I just use good old butter. The burst feel comes from frying the flour. I use glucose instead of icing sugar which I find too floury in the already floury cookie. It gives a nice cold feel on your tongue before the burst.

So here is the recipe:

make about 80 or so pieces, plus or minus

250 gm of good quality butter like anchor, golden churn in block

350-370 gm of plain flour

enough glucose, about 300 gm or more to coat

1) Over medium heat, stir fry flour without any oil until fragrant and you can see a light tint of brown. Set aside to cool. Sift into a bowl.

2) Melt butter and slowly pour into the centre of the flour. Mix and knead well.

3) Shape into round balls and bake for 20 min at 160 deg celcius without fan or till the balls are cooked through and the bottom slightly light brown.

4) Cool for a few mins before throwing them into a bowl of glucose to coat thoroughly. Place into small cups and cool to lukewarm before packing in airtight container.

Just a word of warning though, kuih momo is something that either people really like, or really hate. At least that's what I've gathered from the many comments that I've heard before. But nevertheless, I have them every year. They're my must-have Chinese New Year cookies & I hope you'll enjoy them too.

Nee's Proton Saga

2010-02-01T06:44:00.000+08:00

The truth is, she never had one.

The Proton Saga cake was conceived around the time when the national car first came out in 1985. I do not know who invented this recipe. The only Google search results that pair together 'Proton saga' & 'cakes' were 'Proton Saga selling like hot cakes'. So I abandoned the search altogether. Maybe if you know a thing or two about this, leave some comments below.

Here's Nee's attempt a building the national cake.

It's basically a Malay steamed cake. I'll let Nee tell you about it.

Nee:

There are basically two recipes. One for the inner red, green and plain blocks, and the other one for the outer dark layer. The recipe is very rich with kaya, horlick and condensed milk, that one piece will send the weighing scale needle jumping by the kilos. So I am contemplating whether I should blog the recipe or if anyone would even want to eat it.

But the result is seriously good. Soft, yet rich and dense. And highly addictive too.

By the way, I was singing some patriotic national RTM songs when I was doing this. Out of the blue!

Personally I think Nee is crazy to incorporate this into her already packed schedule. Mind you, this was done for fun.

5 Years of Wedded Bliss

2010-01-21T14:36:00.000+08:00

Well, we'd like to think of it that way lah. Of course there's ups & downs, & lots of adjustments in between. But at this point in time, looking back, we can only see the ups...

Greg & Nee is now officially married for 5 years, since yesterday.

The first 5 years were very blessed years, & we look forward to the next 10 with full anticipation.

It feels like we have just only finished the appetizers & are just about to go into the main course. Thank you for being with us & we hope you'll take the journey with us into the next phase of our lives.

Back to Johor: Koay Teow Kia

2010-01-16T23:21:00.000+08:00

Despite what this photo may have looked like to you, Woon Kiang is not a red light district.

We were back in Johor after our Singapore day trip, and night outings in Johor usually means koay teow kia.

Koay teow kia makes very excellent supper, & breakfast too (I can imagine), if they open for breakfast. It's a much smaller version of the usual larger koay teow, much softer too & tastes like koay chap. The small portions with side dishes make it the perfect small meal. But that night, it was more like dinner.

This is definitely one of the must-have things whenever we're in Johor, including the Otak-Otak.

You can also read about the other koay teow kia & Otak-Otak place here.

Singapore 2009 Day 1

2010-01-13T12:13:00.001+08:00

Singapore has never really been one of our to-go places. Maybe it's because of the cultural similarity with Malaysia or because its just too near & within reach geographically. Or maybe it has always given us the impression that it wasn't very authentic, that everything was artificially constructed for the purpose of tourism.

Nevertheless, we've been over to Singapore a couple of times in recent years, more so for flight stopovers, & for meet up with old friends, rather than for an actual holiday. This time around, it was another stopover before we headed for Bintan island.

But this time we had more time on our own & were able to explore the Esplanade for the very FIRST TIME. I know. That is really so very the sua koo (mountain auntie). Some people like you probably have been there like 10 times already & we've never even seen the Merlion before. So very the sad.

We didn't really know what this building was. I just thought it looked good to photograph. By the way, all the photos in this post was taken handheld. So if they're not good enough, please be kind to me.

Oh, I forgot to mention that this was also the very FIRST TIME that we saw the Esplanade Theatres on the Bay a.k.a. The Big Durian.

It definitely looked like an expensive mega project that came out of Malaysia but the only difference was that things like this are always put to good use in Singapore.

Across the Bay, opposite from the Esplanade, were the three towering gargantuans which would soon be the Sands.

Strangely, they reminded me of the Macross alien ship that landed on earth. And at any time, Ultraman can just step into the picture & start fighting giant monsters.

Walking on the esplanade made us realise that Singapore was truly an international city & that Malaysia was 20 years behind time in terms of development (in policies, government, administration, economy & mentality of the people).

Tunku Abdul Rahman probably knew that he could never catch up with Lee Kuan Yew so he kicked Singapore out. And he was right. Right about not being able to catch up that is.

And finally, after more than two decades of growing up, I have come face to face with the Merlion once again, & wished that history could have been different for Malaysia.

Throat Slitting Taxis in Johor

2010-01-03T04:34:00.000+08:00

We haven't had any mishaps before taking taxis from Johor Bahru down to Singapore in our previous trips. But this time it was different. It was unfortunately a Sunday, & that's when taxis are a scarcity. And when that happens, taxi drivers become primal animals out for the kill.

A lot of things in Malaysia are just there for show. For example, the big red letters that say BUDI BAHASA AMALAN HIDUP KITA. When I approached the counter for a ticket, the lady behind the box didn't even want to look at me. I wanted to buy a ticket but she wouldn't sell it to me. BUDI BAHASA my posterior.

You probably can't see the sign below but it says RM15 per person or RM60 per trip to Singapore & that is as clear as broad daylight. It's right in your face.

But when we got into the taxi, they were asking for S$60. That was definitely cut-throat robbery, in clear broad daylight. I was fuming mad. It's ok if they were asking nicely for RM10-15 more on top of the RM60 but this was insulting & offending.

So we got off & joined the rest of the people in the waiting area who were in the same predicament. At that point we felt very lost cos it looked like there was no way we would ever get to Singapore. But we had no intention of feeding these bloodsuckers. Our badly corrupted country needs a major change now more than ever, & we were not about to continue endorsing this criminal activity.

Next to us (a whole bunch of people waiting for taxis) were a whole bunch of taxi drivers sitting there drinking coffee & waiting for suckers & hawking their prices in Sing$ & mocking us - Tak apa. Boleh tunggu. Tunggu lama lama. Mana ada teksi.

I felt like punching them in the face. But they looked bigger than I was, so I let them go.

Then a young couple next to us went up to ask & guess what. The price was now Sing$35 per person. Yes, I know. That was murder. And being principled, the couple didn't yield as well & took us just across to catch a bus.

The bus ride cost RM2.00 to the checkpoint. We got down, went thru the immigration, & went up another bus for S$2.50 which brought us straight to the taxi stand at Bugis Street. No hassle. No waiting. Everything was clockwork.

We were so grateful to the young couple. Apparently the guy was from Johor & the girl was from KK, & both of them were working in Singapore.

That particular experience in Johor reaffirms our belief that there is completely no hope for Malaysia, unless it changes, unless it removes all the corrupted politicians, from the man at the top to the taxi drivers at the bottom, unless it changes its system of administration, enhances & enforces its laws. But meeting a couple like this also reaffirms our faith that there is hope, & there is still really nice & sincere people around in this country of ours.

Coming into Singapore, we felt a huge wave of relief. At last, we were in a safe place where the taxi drivers go by meters, & will take you anywhere you want to go. We were back in civilisation.