Laksa

Last Friday, Jane suggested we go for Assam Laksa at Kafe Aberdeen in Ipoh Garden East which I never been though it has been opened for business two years ago.
Once seated, the waitress showed us the menu, all the dishes look very attractive and mouth watering too. Because its was only two of us, we can afford to order only two dishes, small eater then.  Of course the first choice was assam laksa and the next was crispy fried bee hoon with smoothed egg sauce (recommended by the waitress).
Within five minutes, came the assam laksa, before it is laid in front of us, we can smell the sourly assam laksa taste from far away. When placed it in front on me, wow! Let's take the picture to show you.

Just with the look at it, once will know the taste would be good. The mint leaves, the colour of the soup and the fish flakes.... taste the soup , yummy.... as good as those famous assam laksa in Penang, in fact taste better. Both of us love it very much.
While eating the assam laksa, the bee hoon was served .

With a look at this crispy bee hoon, I immediately stop eating assam laksa, tried the bee hoon ,the crispiness of it, then the sauce and the ingredients, best!!

Both of the dishes were so good , unfortunately we can't finish all of them. because we were small eaters and the servings were big too.  It was worth the while to have lunch or dinner here because the charges are reasonable and with good environment as well.

Kafe Aberdeen is located at

16 & 18, Jalan Medan Ipoh 3,

Bandar Baru Medan, 31400, Ipoh.

Tel: 05 5468264

Daily business from 11.00am to 12.00 midnight.

Arrow Heads

Alfred love arrow head crackers, in fact all of us love these crackers. My sister came to visit us. We went for shopping in Tesco and found that the arrow heads were very cheap.  We bought two kilograms and my sister will teach me how to prepare the crackers.

We peeled the skin of the arrow heads but keep the shoots intact, soak the whole roots into prepared salt water for at least one hour. Remove form salted water and stand dry, if possible dry under the sun.

Heat up three quarter full of cooking oil in a wok, hold the slider on top the hot oil and slide the arrow heads into the boiling oil to fry.

Fry till light brown, scoop out and drain off the oil.  Let cool and place into air-tight containers.

Arrow crackers in containers.  Its so easy and cheap to make the crackers.

Green peas cookies

Last Chinese New Year, my friend gave me some green peas cookies, I fell in love with it. I promised myself I will make the cookies this year.
Co-incidentally when I went for wedding dinner in Butterworth, my cousin sister gave me a packet of ready mixed green peas cookies mixture. I tried to bake it just by adding suitable amount of cooking oil, make into shapes and bake.  I did not like it because taste more flour then green peas.
Being not satisfied, I then searched in the Internet for green peas cookies recipe, finally I got hold of one from the site,www.malaysiabest.net.
I bought the green peas flour, wheat flour and icing sugar and follow the recipe.

The green peas flour

The ingredients

1cup green peas flour,(50 g almond nibbles)optional,

1 cup flour,

3/4 cup icing sugar,

1/2 cup cooking oil

1 egg yolk for brushing the top of the cookies.

Pour all the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl, mix well, then pour in the cooking oil bit by bit, rub till the ingredients form a dough that is stick enough . If the dough is too dry, oil can be added a little more.

The lovely jade-like dough. I rolled the dough into marble sized  balls. I used my finger to press the centre of the balls so there were a den on them.

I preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius while egg wash the round balls.

The green peas cookies were ready in seventeen minutes baking at 170 degrees Celsius.

Cameron Highlands

My friend, Evelyn brought a Vietnamese friend  to visit me, we decided to take her for a day trip to Cameron Highlands.  At the same time, we invited Agnes to come along.  We set off at about 9.30am from Ipoh, of course I was the driver, slow driver. We had our first stop at 88 Holiday Fun Garden, actually to visit our friend, Mr. Khor Thiam Peng who work there. Unfortunately he went for holiday. While wondering around the shop, I saw some of the beautiful cactus.

We stayed there for about half an hour wondering around , to see what we can get from there. Finally , Evelyn and Agnes bought some fresh corns.

We took about ten minutes to reach Kg Raja, we dropped into Ngew Kee Restaurant for our lunch.(friend recommended)

Before we can order any dishes, the waiter recommended us to try their Rozak, since all of us agree, we ordered a small plate of it.

Surprisingly the sauce was good, but too little ground groundnuts, anyway we requested for more nuts later. We were also recommended to try their steam chicken. The chicken was served with bean sprouts and vegetable.  The meats were tough and sweet, real kampong chicken.

We ordered the vegetable called dragon whisker, fried with samble belachan, the veges was very fresh and tender, we all like it very much.

The last dish the man recommended to us was ikan Kelah, we were so surprise to have the chance to taste this fish again, I remembered the last time we ate this fish was three years ago in one of the restaurant in Slim River. Actually this is a ban fish and  is near extinct.  We were lucky then.  We had half of the fish and the chef had it steamed in ginger and garlic, the flesh really sweet and tender, the scales can be eaten too!!

We really enjoyed our lunch.

We took our slow drive down to Bringchang and Tanah Rata without any stop until we reach the Bharat tea shop.  Wow!  The greenery of the tea plantations and the cool wind, so nice compare with the hot wave in low land.

We had teh tarik and tea and spent about an hour there. We drove all the way back from the way we came and dropped by to buy some flowers.

Some of the wild flowers outside the shop.

A bush of Rose Mary

Agnes and the beautiful Orchid

Ann from Vietnam with Lavender with vegetable farm at the background

Full load of flowers.

This full booth of flowers belong to Agnes, she really a very good shopper!!

We reached home at about 5p.m.  It was a very relax and enjoyable trip and it was the first time for Ann to go up Cameron Highlands,  she really love the highlands and all the beautiful flowers and not forgetting the cool breeze too.

Bayu Timor

My friend, Evelyn was requested to send some fresh fishes and Chinese New Year gifts to a distance relatives in Taman Megah,Petaling Jaya from Teluk Intan. Judy and me accompanied her to look for the suppose so called restaurant. We made a few mistakes , finally we managed to get  to the right place with the restaurant owner , Dee Tan's direction on the cell phones.

We really opened our eyes big, Bayu Timor was actually a Nyonya Restaurant cum antique shop. We had a warm welcome and the lady boss, Dee Tan wanted to us sit down while she tell us how she fell in  love and had the passion of the antiques.

Some of the antiques on ground floor.

Dee Tan with some of the antiques on the first floor.

After touring the ground and first floor admiring the antiques, we were seated at a round table laid with beautiful batik table cloth.

We  were served the popular dishes of Bayu Timor, Siam Laksa, rozak, ice kacang and nyonya kuih.

Lemak Siam Laksa. Real lemak, the sourness and taste just nice, yum.....

Rozak or Chinese salad, see the amount of ground groundnuts, the sauce and the prawn crackers. The crackers were real prawn crackers not like those sold in other places.  Good!!

Nyonya kuih, nine layers kuih, kuih talam and tapioca kuih. I like tapioca kuih the most. The texture was so smooth without any mixture of flour in it, pure tapioca, finger liking good.

Ice-kacang, full of ingredients; chengdul, maize, red beans and the sauce, real good.

Three of us really had a very interesting afternoon, learnt the story of Dee Tan and stomachs packed full with her nyonya food.

Bayu Timor Galery Sdn Bhd is located in 13, Jalan SS24/8, Taman Megah

                                                               47300, PJ 03-78406436

                                                               0123116853.

                                                               email:mymuffin@streamyx.com

The restaurant open for business daily from 10 am to 6pm only.

Fried Porridge

Last weekend, 23rd Jan,2010 went to Butterworth for a cousin's wedding dinner.  Few of us were not satisfied with the food that were served.  My cousin decided to take us; my mother, brother and sister-in-law for something special, fried porridge! Heh....what was that,? All of us were curious to hear that word (fried porridge) can we fry porridge?

She took us to Alma hawker centre in Bukit Mertajam, Jalan Rozana.  There was a big crowd when we arrive at the centre. There were many varieties for hawker food but we just wanted to try the fried porridge.
My cousin walked me to the stall to order, the boss was so kind, he allowed me  to  snap some photographs while he prepare the porridge.

He scooped up  the suitable amount of cooked porridge into a bowl.

He heat up the work, put in some cooking oil, fried some chopped onion and ginger.  Next, he poured in the prepared porridge, have a quick stir. While frying, he added some pre-fried minced pork and prawns.

Quickly he added some black soy sauce and some Chinese  chives.

Wow!  Delicious fried porridge was ready in just a few minutes. He sprinkled some pre-fried minced squid that made the porridge more fragrant.  It was really good, that was our first time ever tasted Fried Porridge.  Unforgettable!

Christmas Eve dinner

Its been a long time, we were very busy to entertain relatives and friends during Christmas season. The first visitor was sister-in-law from Johore Bahru, followed by friends from Medan, KL and my daughter and her husband flew back from Melbourne from 4th to 30th Dec. We have been eating too much from restaurant, we decided to have a change for Christmas reunion dinner.  We had home cook steamboat at home.
It was very easy then, just have to prepare the soup and all the raw materials for cooking when eating.

Ingredients for the soup.

2 lt water
10 pce of red dates
1 big onion
1 Chinese yam
2 carrots
5 tomatoes
200 g chicken bones
300 g prot cones
4 dried mushroom
Boil the water, then add in all the ingredients use slow fire boil for one hour, add salt to taste.
We bought fish and meat balls, few types of vegetables, prawns, deep sea crabs, fishes, noodles, eggs, chicken and pork slices and others.




















See the table is full of food.

We really enjoyed our steamboat rather then every year the turkey dinner.
My children were so sweet , they bought me a new hand phone as my Christmas gift.