Peanut Butter Indomie Goreng - Happy New Year 2013

Wanna crank your Indomie Goreng up a few notches?
Add 1 tbsp peanut butter mixed with 1 tsp hot water, freshly chopped chilli & a touch of lime juice.
My first breakfast in 2013.
Happy new year, everybody!

Ps. Excuse the iPhone photo, my DSLR is in Canon hospital :(

Quick Cheat Laksa for Weekday Dinner

I wanted laksa but couldn't be bothered to go out in this heat.
I wanted laksa but with vermicelli instead of beehon and oil noodle.
I wanted laksa with lighter broth, not as much coconut milk.
I wanted laksa without cockles, or fancy shrimps, just el-cheapo meat balls.

It is confirmed.

I am troublesome (ma q fan!) ^_^'

But the solution is pretty easy.
Just do a cheat laksa at home.

Ingredients
(serves 2)
- 1 pack of vermicelli (soak in hot water)
- 2 packs of Lee Kum Kee laksa for hot pot soup base (or other laksa spice packs)
- 1 box of coconut milk (200ml)
- 1 heaping cup of beansprouts
- various meat/fishballs
- 1 cup of tofu puffs, cut in half
- a bunch of corriander, freshly chopped
- crispy shallot
- hot water

Add laksa spice pack to hot water (according to instructions on the packet), add coconut milk, add meat/fish balls, add tofu puffs, bring everything to boil and keep it hot until you are ready to serve. Blanch beansprouts, blanch vermicelli, arrange in serving bowl, add meat/fishballs and tofu puffs in the bowl, pour laksa soup, garnish with coriander and crispy shallot.

Done and done! ^_^
Now, I need iced coke to counter attack the sodium...and probably some exercise to burn the calories...(oh who am I kidding?)

Mie Ayam Bakso - Indonesian Dry Chicken Noodle with Beef Ball

My all time favorite breakfast in Indonesia.
When I went back home, I have to have mie ayam every single day :D

This is my desperate attempt trying to recreate the noodle in Hong Kong. It's pretty close, but it could never be the same, first and foremost because of the noodles. The Indonesian ones that I love are handmade, the texture, the taste, and the thickness? All perfect!
I've tried using Hong Kong egg noodles, flat egg noodles, instant noodles, pasta...without success.
This time, I tried using fresh ramen :)

These are the no brand ones from the wet market, HK$3 per pack.
Let's see if this worked.


Recipe

Broth
No cheat
- half a chicken with bones and all (shred/mince the meat and use it for topping later)
- hot water
- 2 cloves of shallot, cut into sections
- 1 clove garlic, crushed
- 1 cm ginger, crushed
- salt, white pepper, sugar

Cook chicken in hot water with garlic, ginger and shallot, let cook until you have the chicken flavor you're after, season with salt, pepper, and sugar.

Cheat
- a box of chicken broth (heheh) or a pack of cubed/packed chicken stock with hot water
Simply cook the broth and bring to boil

Accessories to serve with broth
- Meatballs/beef balls/pork balls/fish balls (I used store bought)
- Hairy melon (peel skin, half, and cut into 5mm thick pieces)
- freshly chopped coriander
- crispy shallot

Cook meatballs and hairy melon pieces in the broth, serve with lots of freshly chopped corriander and crispy shallot

Meat Topping
- 1/2 lb minced chicken (or pork)
- 1 small clove of garlic
- a pack/a cup of mushrooms (I used shimeji, so I didn't chop them at all, you can use fresh shiitake, straw mushrooms, button mushrooms, etc)
- vegetable oil, fish sauce, light soy sauce, sweet soy sauce, oyster sauce, white pepper, hot water

Saute garlic in vegetable oil until fragrant, add mushrooms let cook, add meat, add sauces and seasonings, add hot water, let cook and reduce, keep tasting until you reach your preferred balance of sweet and savoury.

Garnish
- freshly chopped coriander
- lemon wedges
- chilli sauce (I used ABC chilli sauce)
- crispy shallot

Noodles
- 2 portions of noodles
- vegetable oil (or sesame oil if you like), fish sauce, a touch of soy sauce
Cook noodles as instructed on the package, do not overcook. Prepare bowls with vegetable oil (or sesame oil), fish sauce and a touch of soy sauce. Drain noodles, place on bowls, and mix the oil and seasonings.

Assembly
Add meat and mushroom toppings on top of the noodles, garnish with freshly chopped coriander, crispy shallot and squeeze a bit of lemon juice. Serve with broth and chilli sauce on the side.

It's a simple dish that requires quite a lot of work. Normally I only make this on weekends :D
How did it go?

The topping was pretty close...I love the balance of sweet, savoury and the touch of citrus. The noodles? Lovely and chewy...but I still feel that it's not close enough to what I normally have in Indonesia. There's something missing!

...probably a few heaping tablespoons of MSG?
:D

Dry Fishball Meepok - Oh How I Miss Thee

I haven't found a place that serves fantastic Singapore food in Hong Kong.
But, it's probably because I don't eat out much :P

I've lived in Singapore for about 2 years and love Singapore food so, so much. In fact, I loved the food so much, I gained a gadzillion pounds when I was there! What's there not to love? Hainanese chicken rice with roasted chicken (the brown skinned one, or sometimes char siew), curry puffs, carrot cake, grilled stingray, laksa, barbecued chicken wings, char kway teow...and there's one thing I miss the most...something I haven't been able to find....

Dry Fishball Noodles (Meepok)

I searched high and low for recipes online...and finally found one that I found doable for me...and its from my good blogging friend, Tigerfish from Teczcape!

Here's my adaptation...
Recipe
- 3 cloves of garlic, minced
- 0.5 lb minced pork
- dark soy sauce, light soy sauce, fish sauce, olive oil, chiu chow chilli oil, chinese black vinegar, white pepper
- 2 portions of dry flat egg noodles
- spring onion and crispy shallot to garnish

Store bought items:
- Fishballs, fish cakes, with soup (I cheated big time, I bought these from a fishball noodle stall downstairs ^_^). Alternatively, you can make your own clear soup to slurp with the dry noodles, chicken stock/beef stock/vegetable stock or seafood stock will do.

Saute minced garlic with a generous amount of olive oil until fragrant, add minced pork, cook until the meat's cooked through, season and taste until you achieve a balance of savoury and tangy. Cook noodles until al dente, drain, place in a bowl, add the meat mixture on top, garnish with spring onion and crispy shallot, serve with fishballs, fishcakes and soup on the side.

Did what I made taste really close to the original? Unfortunately, no T_T...mine wasn't spicy, tangy and satiny enough, plus, it's a little too sweet...and I haven't figured out which flavor I've missed...or maybe I because the way I "adapted" the recipe (deviated too far to be called an adaptation? hehe).

But until I could get my hands on a bowl of Singaporean dry fishball noodles, I'll keep making this.

Korean Potato Noodles with Beef & Mushroom Broth - My Simple Christmas Dinner

This was my Christmas dinner.

If you were expecting some gorgeously golden turkey, tender and juicy steak, super-creative-fancy side dishes, and beautifully crafted desserts, hmm...there was none :P

All the shopping, photo hunting, cleaning & decorating totally consumed me.
That's my official statement.
The reality? I was (again) too lazy to plan anything, and spent most of the day with my ass planted in front of my computer watching my favorite drama series :D

Aaaanyways...
I found this pack of fresh Korean Potato Noodles at City Super (HK$36), and it's a gem!

Update: a HK twitterer who's familiar with Korean food informed me that there is actually very little potato element in this noodle. Interestingly, it is marketed as "potato noodles", probably to attract spud lovers like me. Potato or no potato, give it a try and see if you like it :)

What did I do with it?

Made a simple broth of fresh shitake, straw mushrooms, Chinese cabbage, beef and chicken stock. Meat, vegetables and carb all in one pot. My kind of lazy meal.

Beef & Mushroom Broth
- 1 small clove of garlic, crushed
- 1 cup of beef (HK$20)
- 1 cup of fresh shitake, sliced
- 1 cup of straw mushrooms, sliced
- chicken/beef/vegetable stock
- half a head of large Chinese cabbage, sliced
- olive oil, salt, pepper, sugar

In a medium sized sauce pan/pot, Saute garlic in a bit of hot olive oil, add sliced mushrooms. Hello, kitchen, you smell good! Add stock, bring to boil, add cabbage, cook until it reaches the desired softness, adjust seasoning if necessary, add beef.



While the cabbage was cooking (before dumping beef into broth), prepare a pot of boiling water, cook noodles according to instructions, drain, divide by portion per person, and place in a bowl.

Pour broth over noodles and enjoy is subtle deliciousness.
Perfect for post-holiday-season recovery :D

I don't do "subtle" very often.
So enjoy it while it lasts :)

Ho Ho Congee & Noodle - Do You Fake It? - DoF Cheats

Are you a dedicated food paparazzi?
Do you always carry your giant DSLR around when dining out?

I must confess that I am not. The DSLR is too lazy to lug around to work along with my 1000001 items stuffed into my purse every day. I don't welcome the additional kilo of luggage.

Plus, I don't always document my meals, unless there's something special, i.e:
- It is not what I've been eating the same damn shit over and over for one month straight
- The meal is especially yummy
- The meal sucked big time, it is worth mentioning
- I haven't blogged about the said yummility/disastrous meal

However, I always carry my humble little point and shoot (Canon IXUS 870IS), just in case I desperately needed to document something. It works mighty fine. Most importantly, it has a magical slimming effect when I take pictures of my daily outfit (yes, I am that narcissistic!).

But taking photographs of food? Well, although it's nice...but it's not amazing.

Here comes another dirty little secret...

I like faking it.

Faking waa...t?
Oh, relax, sous chef.
I like faking the blurry effect of what we can get with DSLR camera to create Depth of Field, using an easy photoshop trick.

Please bear in mind that I am by no means a photoshop expert, nor an expert in photography....just sharin', okie? ^_*

1. Open the file in Photoshop (I am using Adobe Photoshop CS3)


2. Sharpen it.
If it looks too sharp/too harsh/too oily/too shiny, simply undo it.


3. Select blur tool


4. Select brush size, mode (normal/lighten/darken) and strength (100%)


5....and blur the heck outta that background.

Blur the parts which aren't supposed to be the star (focus) of the photograph.
There are other ways to blur it even more, but since I am to lazy to select parts, I chose this method.
Shaking my mouse vigorously to get a more blurry effect is (hopefully) a good exercise for my wrist.
Hehe *idiotic giggle*

6. Save the edited photograph

...and that's it!

Of course, you can pair this dummy trick with other photoshop magic tricks such as adjusting the lighting, colors, removing my eyebags or even adding Rob Pattinson as my dinner date ...we'll get into some of that next time, okie?

Now the food...what did I do to increase my dress size that night?

Jar Jeong Hor Fun (Spicy Meat Sauce on Rice Noodles)

This dish is normally served with egg noodles, but I love rice noodles. The sauce is a little on the sweet side, not exactly my favorite jar jeong noodle, but it's nothing that can't be fixed with a dash of soy sauce.

Beef Cake Steamed Rice with Egg

Imagine what you can do with that bowl of raw egg...(go all the way, this is not a PG-13 blog hehe)

Pour it over the beef rice...


Mix it nice...


Pour soy sauce on top...again, the soy sauce served with this rice is a little too sweet. Needed to add a regular soy sauce.


Ah! I remembered to save an original copy (the "before" version) of the above edited photo.

A bit dark and gloomy, don't you think? You can still see sous chef's striped shirt pretty clearly here.

Fragrant and springy beef cake...with satiny smooth, creamy egg...and a dash of soy....

Yum.
I was kinda jealous of sous chef's order.

Now, don't we always want a combination of textures?

We need something crunchy!
These deep fried wontons with a mayo dip were just what we needed.

...and of course I had to fool myself that I eat somehow healthily, by ordering a side of veggie.

The water spinach with preserved beancurd sauce was again...a little too sweet.
Anyway, all in all, it was a good dinner. I'd go back for the beef cake steamed rice and fried wontons for sure.

One good thing about eating in a mall is....I could buy a dress one size bigger right after dinner.

Ho Ho Congee & Noodle
Metroplaza, Kwai Fong (Kwai Fong MTR Station Exit E), 3rd floor
葵芳興芳路223號新都會廣場3樓370-374號
Tel: 2487 7668

Nasi Mie Goreng Tek Tek, Mie Ayam, Nasi Soto - Food before Flight & Cloud Reading

What would be the perfect meal for my one night transit in Jakarta before flying to Bali? 5-star hotel buffet indulgence? A scrumptious Padang spread? Fancy schmancy Indonesian fusion? Na-ah! I want a lazy, ordered in (by SMS), carb on carb satisfier.....Nasi Mie Goreng Tek Tek (Fried Rice and Noodle Mix from a Street Cart Vendor)! Spicy and delicious, it got me totally high, put me to sleep almost instantly, critical to preserve all the energy I was gonna need for my flight the next day. Zzzzzz....the next day....

Hello, sunshine! I was so looking forward to the normally-crappy-yet-I-still-love airline food, only to learn that Air Asia domestic flights do not serve food. You have to purchase in flight food, and you're not allowed to bring outside food on board. Whoa! Luckily, before we boarded the flight, we had this wonderful brunch at one of the ordinary cafes at Bandara Soekarno Hatta's domestic departure terminal...

I ordered my all time favorite Mie Ayam (Indonesian Chicken Noodle). The texture of the noodle was not what I was expected, a bit overcooked, less chewy, but the chicken compensated it.

My sis ordered another Indonesian breakfast/brunch favorite, Soto Ayam (Indonesian chicken in broth), it was not bad at all, much better than what we expected, but not as good as Soto Ayam from famous outlets.

Something memorable from this cafe.....we love the vintage teacup and saucer used to serve our Indonesian hot coffee and hot tea, we even asked the waiter where to get them from. To our disappointment, his answer was "dunno". Sob sob.

What happens if I boarded a flight without any in flight entertainment, no magazine or book on hand, and still wanting more food?

I stared out the window gawking at the clouds and to me, the big fluffy ones looked like cotton candy and the small puckered ones look like pop corn. Hmmm....deliciously delusional.

Hong Kong All Day Breakfast - Hoi On Cafe, Sheung Wan

There are so many things which I love about weekends...
- Waking up early (NOT late), and actually feeling eager to wake up, so that I can start enjoying my weekend ASAP
- Working. (Whhhatttt???)...on something I love doing, such as cooking more intricate things, hand making goodies, and taking pictures with natural sunlight
- The ability to look outside my apartment window (the multimillion dollar view = a parking lot. Haha!)
- Wearing no make up at all or spending extra time (which I normally don't have) dolling myself up
...and so on, and so forth...but one of my all time favorite thing to enjoy on weekends is a pleasant and leisurely...

Hong Kong All Day Breakfast

Last weekend, I accidentally found this charming old cafe just beside the hideously renovated Western Market in Hong Kong's Sheung Wan district.

If you love anything old, this place will charm the heck outta you. It serves classic Hong Kong baked goods, such as cocktail buns (sweet buns with sugar and coconut filling), pineapple buns (sweet buns with crispy crumble-like topping), swiss rolls, and sponge cakes...


Hong Kong's classic beverages...such as bottled Kowloon Dairy milk, boxed vita soy milk and lemon tea.

The metal doors are marked with the shop's name...full of chips and rust


The original floor tiles, warped and faded. The "car seats" are painted red, in a shape I've never seen before. It's like a blast from the past in the midst of Hong Kong's hustle and bustle.

The Good ol' Food

Sliced Beef Noodles topped with fried egg, plus a cup of milk tea.
I know...you might say, why having this outside if you can easily do this at home? Nononono. It's just not the same, I don't know why...but I bet the antique culteries made all the difference!

How charming! I was sooo tempted to steal (nono), ehm, ask to buy these babies off them. But, I don't want to be the person who turned this old place into one of those joints who serve plastic disposable cutleries.


...and for me the sugar tasted sweeter scooped by this lovely old tea spoon. Those are all feasts for my eyes!

Spicy pork noodles topped with fried egg.
The perfect combo of MSG laden noodle with canned spicy pork. My weekly junk food treat!

Hong Kong style French Toast with butter, topped with gloriously golden syrup
The new versions included peanut butter in between two slices of bread. This one consisted of just one thick slice of bread which was so fragrant and creamy from the milk marinate. Heaven! This must have like a gadzillion billion calories. (Did you see the way we pour the golden syrup from the top picture?)

I bet such an old place should have a regular crowd of customers... where everybody know each other's names, chit chat about the golden olden days of Hong Kong, the brits, the economic crisis, their biggest mah jong win, the flat chested girls/skinny boys they went after/who went after them...

I bet this uncle was the loner, seated separately from the other groups of uncles, fiercely concentrating on enjoying his food...and talk about enjoying....check out this uncle below...

His expression defined the word "orgasmic" to describe how good his pineapple bun + cup of hot milk were.

Cup Noodles & Black Cow - Lazy Midnight Snack

It's cold. It's past midnight. I was hungry. I was lazy.

The battle in my head:

Angel: "Don't even think about it. Whatever you eat now will go straight to ("she" was eyeing the bulges underneath my giant sweater and gave up)...ah what the heck! Go ahead. Make the devil's day"

Devil: MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! What an easy win!

"When you wanna do something wrong, you gotta do it right" - Joey Tribbiani from Friends.

The perfect crime would involve a huge steamy bowl of spicy noodles, with accessories such as cheese sausages, meatballs, topped with an egg. However, I couldn't even be bothered to turn on my stove, let alone wash the pots and bowls afterwards. The idea of toiling for my midnight crime almost had me crawling towards my bed, under my thick blankets.

Devil: Wait wait wait wait....(panicking)...you have some cup noodles! They are (almost) as delicious, and you DON'T have to do any cooking and washing at all! Just pour some hot water into the cup and you'll get what you wanted (all said in a very persuasive tone)

Me: You had me at cup noodles

Angel: You can still fix this! Just attend a body combat class, a hip hop class and an aerobic class back to back tomorrow! (I don't think that's ever gonna happen)


The spicy curry seafood cup noodles had me all thristy for more! I want something sweet to counter attack all the MSG action from the noodles. Hmmm, nothing's better than this tall glass of black cow.

What the heck is a black cow?

Normally, we get coke/root beer float from A&W with vanilla ice cream, right? I first learnt about this black cow in Hong Kong's pizza hut.

Black cow = Coca cola + Chocolate ice cream float

What????!!! Yep. That's what I thought too. But, you gotta try it. It works.

Now, would you excuse me while I crawl back under my blanket and grow myself even bigger.