food

Guilin Mi Fen with Horse Meat

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There’s no horsing around in this outlet. smirk

guilin mi fen horse meat

Okay, the first thing on the agenda when I arrived in Guilin is to eat the famous Gui Lin Mee Fen (rice vermicelli) with horse meat. However, that proved harder to find that I initially thought. Rats too for that matter, but that’s another post.

guilin mee fen

Anyway, after walking 1,000 miles and nearly getting run down by several cars and buses (it’s left hand drive here in China) I decided to consult a person from the industry that knows everything about anything obscure or illegal – hard to find cuisine, the oldest profession in the world, substances, basically The Travelers Guide to a New City (TM). Your friendly neighborhood taxi driver.

gui lin mi fen eat

Within minutes (and a RMB 10 fare, which is RM 5, pretty damn cheap cabs over here) I was on my way to the oldest Guilin Mi Fen with Horse Meat establishment in town. It has reputedly been around for about 40 years (as told by two different sources) and caters to the locals instead of tourists (just the way I like it).

gui lin mee fen

Alas! How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! In the past, horses were used for transport, war machines by knights, riot control by mounted police, and prized stallions on the racetrack. It has now been relegated (at least in China) to food. Heh!

gui lin mi fen horse meat

The Gui Lin Mi Fen is not rice vermicelli as we know it, it looks more like rice noodles to me. You are free to add as many condiments, pickles and spices as you want. I highly recommend their chilli flakes – Guilin is known for its spicy food so go wild with this one.

gui lin mi fen

Gui Lin Mi Fen with Horse Meat is a soup dish, which is not what I usually eat, but since it’s the local specialty, I tasted it and pronounce it GOOD. The spring onions adds a lot to the taste of the soup while the peanuts contribute that additional texture to this dish. Best of all, it only costs RMB 6 (RM 3) for a large bowl.

guilin mi fen

I love it, mostly coz of the horse meat. Horse meat can best be described as something of a cross between beef and lamb. It’s sweet and has a nice gamey aftertaste and it’s surprisingly lean.

guilin mee fen good

Mmm…equine meat!

Posted: 7:19 am China Time (Guilin is in the same timezone as Malaysia)

Hennessy lor mee @ Setapak

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Hennessy lor mee ayer panas

Becky told us about this cognac infused lor mee at Ayer Panas Hawker Center in Setapak and being a huge fan of Hennessy VSOP it was decided that we’ll pay this stall a visit after the Zorbing session.

Hennessy lor mee

The premises of the acclaimed Hennessy lor mee is very unassuming. Their kitchen is quite basic, with their claim to fame sealed by the various empty boxes of Hennessy Very Special Old Pale hanging around the place. You can’t miss it.

Hennessy lor mee jerine

I would be hard pressed to find this place if not for the GPS (remember to type Ayer Panas instead of Air Panas) but the trip was well worth it. We were famished and ordered their flagship dish but before that let me introduce you to the other dishes we had:

Hennessy lor mee hokkien mee

Hokkien Mee. It was good, not very oily, but lacks the deep fried lard that makes or breaks the dish.

Hennessy lor mee pork

I liked the kung pow pork too.

rice vermicelli in wine soup

We also ordered the rice vermicelli in wine soup with lala (RM 11). It’s another one of the famous dishes here, with slices of fresh fish providing an aquatic twist to this already twisted alcohol spiked noodles.

Hennessy lor mee mixed

Back to the Hennessy lor mee (which I remind you is their signature dish, bar none) – it was every bit as tasty as I imagined and more. The cook put a rather generous amount of Hennessy VSOP shots into the dish and the almost philanthropic portions of prawns and pork provides the protein to counter the carbohydrates.

Hennessy lor mee setapak

The Hennessy really added a lot to the taste of the lor mee – mixed into the dish, it became more than the sum of its parts – hearty, rich and sweet. It’s well worth the drive down and at RM 11, it’s practically a steal!

Hennessy lor mee us

Thanks for lunch Becky! She knows the proprietor so we got cutting queue privileges. 😉

Fat Mum

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fat mum

Fat Mum Coffee Shop is practically an institution in Sibu. It caters primarily to people from the clubbing scene wanting to get some grub in their stomach before they head home for the night. They close relatively early compared to the other establishments like the one below Today Hotel (5-6 am) but it’s a great place to eat what you would dub dai chow in KL in the wee hours of the night.

fat mum coffee shop

This place is strictly for those who observe the closing hours of nightspots. Fat Mum’s kitchen closes at 1:30 am while the others stay open till 5 am. I think their rationale is to attract the ethanol brothers instead of the chemical brothers – the latter being more apt to party late and be rowdy.

fat mum kitchen

It has a simple kitchen setup and while the food isn’t anything to write home about, it does the job. You head to Fat Mum coz you want to soak up the alcohol you’ve consumed with rice and dishes, not coz you’re up for some fine dining at 1 am in the morning.

fat mum owner

Meet the owner!

fat mum food

Fat Mum was still very packed at 2 am, perhaps they made an exception for CNY since I don’t remember them opening this late last time.

fat mum dinner

The best thing about Fat Mum is that like all other dai chow places, you can STILL drink while eating supper. It also features Sibu prices, dinner for four inclusive of beer is only RM 62. Heh!

First day of spring!

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star yee sang

Today is the first day of spring according to the Lunar calendar. I know, we only have two seasons here – hot and rainy, just trying to be true to our Chinese roots. I only heard about this first day of spring thing from Jasmine – apparently we’re supposed to wear red and everything you do today is a premonition of things to come next year.

star yee sang dinner

Anyway, I just came back from the first of many scheduled lou sang dinners. Yee sang is a Malaysian and Singaporean concoction – basically it’s a toast to good luck (correct me if I’m wrong since I’m not exactly very familiar with Chinese culture).

star lou sang

You use chopsticks to toss a salad (?) consisting of crunchy bits, salmon, vegetables (varies according to outlets) while chanting Prosperous Phrases (TM).

star ang pow

…and I got my first ang pow of the year too! w00t!

Kee Kee Bentong Chicken Rice

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Kee Kee Bentong Chicken Rice steamed

Chicken rice is a deceptively simple dish but it’s one of those things that’s hard to do right. I’ve had horrendous chicken rice – rubbery and tasteless – and really orgasmic chicken rice.

Kee Kee Bentong Chicken Rice

Kee Kee Bentong Chicken Rice is one of the latter.

Kee Kee Bentong Chicken Rice Kelana Jaya

It’s been dubbed the best chicken rice in Petaling Jaya, and while I will not make that claim, it certainly is the best chicken rice in Kelana Jaya. It’s located near SS6 just after the KJ LRT station.

Kee Kee Bentong Chicken Rice owner

It’s quite famous in its own right; I’ve visited this place numerous times since I used to work really close.

Kee Kee Bentong Chicken stall

I had cravings for chicken rice during the long weekend so I went to revisit this wonderful chicken rice place…twice in two days. I ate ½ a chicken and two plates of rice on the first day. That was how much I missed it. I was STUFFED but satiated, until I woke up the next day and felt like going again. >.<

Kee Kee Bentong Chicken Rice meal

This time I ordered ½ a chicken and a plate of rice. The best thing about the chicken here is the melt-in-your-mouth texture and exquisite taste. It’s so tender the breast meat (almost) passes off as thigh and drumsticks!

Kee Kee Bentong Chicken Rice eat

The juiciness of the chicken is preserved so every bite you take squirts the essence of chicken into your taste buds, saturating it as you chew on the soft and slippery chicken meat.

Kee Kee Bentong Chicken Rice sauce

The rice is fragrant and the chilli sauce + ginger they serve with the chicken is mouth-watering.

Kee Kee Bentong Chicken Rice essence

However, the proper way to eat it (well, the way I eat it anyway) is to salvage the sauce mixed with chicken essence that pools at the bottom of the plate and drizzle it on a prime, tender piece of chicken before eating it with some spring onions.

Kee Kee Bentong Chicken

Heavenly!

Kee Kee Bentong Life Chicken

Oh, and we saw a stray chicken running around the place. What are the chances of that? Heh!

Cubes @ Jaya One

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cubes jaya one

Cubes is billed as a Chinese cuisine / wine bar. Mr. Ang had us over for dinner courtesy of Eiling and it was good to have some Chinese food and single malt for a change. 

cubes pork

I’m not going to go into the dish names or prices since most of the stuff we had was off the menu so here’s a description of the dinner: 

cubes duck

This is probably the best duck I’ve ever eaten. It’s served Peking Duck style. 

cubes soft shell crab

Soft shelled crab! 

cubes soft shell crab bun

Best wrapped in a warm man tou (Chinese soft bun) and served with a bed of lettuce and sweet pineapple. I like the sesame seed hints on the crab. 

cubes pork knuckle

The next dish is roasted pork knuckle. You just can’t argue with the porcine goodness. It’s tender and melt-in-your-mouth. 

cubes pork belly

Just when you thought you’ve fulfilled your pig quota for the month, here’s the three layered pork belly with special sauce. This is the best dish of the night – tender, juicy and flavorful. The texture is exquisite with crunchy nuts on top contrasted with soft pork belly. 

cubes prawn

It just can’t get any better than this right? Wrong! Here come the huge prawns! 

cubes chicken

The chicken is almost an anti-climax after all that good food. 

cubes bbq pork

…but wait, pork awaits! There’s no such thing as too much pork! BBQ pork, done really well so it’s all juicy. Mmm… 

cubes veggies

It was a veritable pig out but there was an obligatory vegetable dish just to fulfill the FDA requirements. I like Cubes, but most of the stuff served that night isn’t available on the menu. You can always ask the owner though, I’m sure he can whip something up. 🙂

Turkey stew with quail eggs, Portobello mushrooms and apples

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stew start

The turkey stew is made with half a savory sauce base and half apple juice. It sounds a little weird and we did this as an experiment of sorts but it worked out really well. The stew takes a lot of time to cook (3 hours approximate) but we also made BBQ pork ribs. The hearty stew is served with slices of French loaf topped with Mozzarella cheese slices seared in olive oil.

You will need:

ingredients

  • Turkey drumstick
  • Pork ribs
  • Quail eggs
  • La MASIA extra virgin olive oil
  • Coat & Cook Honey and Soy Sauce marinate
  • Heinz BIG N CHUNKY Stew
  • PEEL FRESH apple juice
  • Mozzarella cheese block
  • BBQ sauce
  • Potatoes
  • Baby carrots
  • Portobello mushrooms
  • Onions and garlic
  • Apple
  • French loaf

turkey drum size

Turkey drumsticks are huge – check out the sheer size of it.

turkey drum slice

The turkey drumstick will be the stock of the stew but we wanted the meat as well so we sliced the turkey drumstick with a knife, going sideways as to maximize the return on investment on this bird.

sliced turkey

Mmm…

apple

We started off by preparing the ingredients for the stew. Chop up the onions, garlic, potatoes and apples. The last two should be cubed and diced respectively. Put the baby carrots into the plate as well.

pre stew

Next up, fry the onions and garlic in olive oil…

fry turkey

…and put in the slices of turkey to sear it for the stew.

stew base

Open the can of stew base and dump it into a suitable sized pot. DO NOT ADD WATER.

stew progress

Throw in the rest of the ingredients except the quail eggs and Portobello mushrooms.

quail eggs boil

Boil 6 of the quail eggs (reserve the rest for the stew) and peel it.

turkey drum

You can also throw in the pasta at this time for the two birds with one stone thing (pardon the lame pun).

add apple juice

Pour in the apple juice in lieu of water – trust me on this. Add about 500 ml or so.

turkey stew

Chuck in all the rest of the ingredients and let the stew…well, stew for 2 hours.

Here’s the video!

marinade

This is where you cook the pork ribs. Marinate the pork ribs with Coat & Cook Honey and Soy Sauce and let it sit for a while.

fry pork ribs

Use olive oil to fry some onions and garlic and put in the pork ribs.

pork ribs done

You don’t want to overcook the porcine goodness so flip every now and then and add BBQ sauce before serving.

thicken stew

After 2 hours (do check on the stew from time to time and remember to turn the heat down) put in a few slices of bread to thicken up the stew.

quail eggs crack

Add BBQ sauce and crack in the quail eggs…

mushrooms

…and the Portobello mushrooms.

stewing

Let it stew (you guessed it) for 30 more minutes with the lid on.

Crack the rest of the quail eggs in at this point. High cholesterol but adds a lot to the taste!

bread stew

Chop up the French loaf to go with the stew and heat it with cheese slices on top of olive oil until the Mozzarella cheese melts.

melted french loaf cheese

Cook some pasta to garnish in the middle of the French loaf with melted cheese…

serving

…and serve with the turkey stew with quail eggs, Portobello mushrooms and apples.

stew end

I’m telling you, it tastes DIVINE. It might be a bit sour but it’ll be nothing a bit of BBQ sauce can’t fix and the medley of sour, sweet and savory notes is something to experience. The stew is thick and full of turkey with quail egg and apple surprises!

Surf and turf vegeroni spiral pasta with homemade sauce

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Surf and turf vegeroni spiral pasta with homemade cream

I just moved into my new studio apartment with cooking facilities and decided to break in the kitchen by whipping something up. This inspiration made us go to the nearest hypermarket to pick up some stuff for pasta. I wanted a hybrid seafood and red meat dish – squid and beef, so here’s the surf and turf pasta!

You will need:

Surf and turf vegeroni spiral pasta with homemade cream ingredients

  • Fresh whole squid
  • Aussie beef steaks
  • Enochi mushrooms
  • Fresh white button mushroom
  • Broccoli
  • Whipping cream
  • Perfect Italiano Mozzarella cheese slab
  • Tatura butter
  • McCormick Garlic Pepper Seasoning Grinder
  • McCormick Italian Herbs
  • McCormick Season All salt seasoning
  • Heinz Garlic BBQ sauce
  • Onions
  • Garlic
  • San Remo Vegeroni Spirals pasta

garlic

My friend started squashing the garlic…

onion

…and chopping up the onions.

marinate beef

While I went to work marinating the Aussie beef with a mixture of Heinz Garlic BBQ sauce…

marinated beef

…before adding in some raw garlic and grinding some McCormick Garlic Pepper Seasoning into it.

massage beef

I also gave it a good massage, Kobe style. This is The Turf (TM).

brocolli

Prepare the broccoli by tearing it into manageable pieces and slice half the button mushrooms while keeping the other half whole.

veggies

Put everything onto a plate – it’s for the homemade sauce. This is supposed to be for the sauce base. Next – seafood!

squid

The squid should be boiled – shake some salt into the water and just chuck the damn sotong into the pot.

desquid

Squid has this cartilage thing inside it so remember to pull it out after you’ve boiled it. This is The Surf (TM).

vegeroni

The next step is to cook the vegeroni spiral pasta in salted water.

stir fry me

While you’re waiting it to become al dente start stir frying the garlic, onion, enochi mushroom, broccoli, and button mushroom in LOTS OF BUTTER.

stir fry

I used ½ a block of butter and if you want your pasta to taste as good as mine you’ll do the same. 😉

italian herbs

Shake in some Italian herbs to add some delicious hints to your sauce.

cream

Add cream to the entire mixture…

eat cheese

…and chop off half the block of cheese into the pasta sauce.

add cheese

I know, this is not going to win any Heart Healthy (TM) awards but it tastes fucking good okay?

add butter

Your pasta should be done by now so drain and put in a healthy amount of butter. Be generous! Go kung fu on the butter block and melt it in the pasta!

fry beef

Got beef? Don’t look at me. Fry the goddamn thing. Put the heat on low and sear it so you won’t overcook it.

Surf and turf vegeroni spiral pasta with homemade cream serve

Now it’s time to chow down! Pour the pasta sauce into the butter saturated pasta, add in the beef and squid and serve!

Surf and turf vegeroni spiral pasta with homemade cream dish

Serving suggestion: Grind some pepper on top of the butter and eat while hot! 🙂

Beondegi – Korean silkworm pupa

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canned food

I got this can of mystery food in Busan and had it last night for supper. I call it mystery food coz I still don’t know what it is. I don’t read Korean and since I bought this in Korea, there are no English translations anywhere.

Update: I have found out what this is! =D It’s Beondegi – Korean silkworm pupa. It’s a very popular snack in Korea and can be found in convenience stores in cans, where I got mine.

korean canned food

It looks remarkably similar to cockroach larvae right?

cockroach larvae

Exhibit A

Update: I emailed the photo below to the Korea Air flight crew that I met and she translated it for it – it is Beondegi (Silkworm). Mmm…I’m so glad I accidentally purchased this! =D

Beondegi Korean silkworm pupa

I would have dedicated a longer post if I knew it was silkworm pupa though, but worry not, I have ANOTHER CAN (had the foresight to get two – haha) so I’ll do a cooking post with that one. 🙂 

It’s crunchy too, just like how cockroach egg casings sound when you step on it. I found it quite delicious actually.

Eating dog meat in Korea

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dog meat

I managed to get gastronomically acquainted with man’s best friend during my trip to Korea. I have made it a personal jihad/crusade to sample their wonderful canine products. It was harder than I thought, despite the English – Korean word translator because: 

dog meat translate

Contrary to popular belief, selling dog meat is illegal in Korea! 

eating dog meat korea

We had to ask a lot of street vendors, who all shook their heads and looked away. Just as we were about to give up, one kindly old lady overheard us, proclaimed gae jang guk (dog meat soup) and made the appropriate “woof woof” sounds. She led us down this really dodgy and narrow side street and we half expected to be mugged in the cobbled alley. 

dog meat shop korea

…but lo and behold – there it was, an eating establishment in the middle of nowhere, out of the sight of casual tourists and probably accessible only to locals. 

dog meat korea

We entered the establishment and I asked for gae jang guk. The female proprietor eyed us and our entourage of cameras with some suspicion and I improvised a combination of sign language and enthused “I eat”. She finally nodded and let us into the seating area. 

dan gogi tang

I present to you dan gogi tang (dog meat soup) made with 100% authentic dog meat! It’s served with the usual Korean condiments and steamed rice. 

dog meat soup

It should be noted that the dog meat in Korea is not from your pet Labrador but a specially bred dog made for eating. 

gae jang guk

I find the dog meat excessively gamey and there is a lot of fat in this breed of dog. It tastes like nothing I’ve ever sampled before – the best I can describe it is a cross between lamb and pork but with a VERY strong smell and aftertaste. The odor was quite overwhelming despite the hot peppers and what not used to flavor the soup.

I would love to try it again though. I’m thinking back to the fatty-lean texture and pungent odor infusing the meat, and I’m drooling at the thought of chewing that in my mouth right now, allowing my palate to savor the taste of dog meat.

Bon appétit!

Oh, and the first dog I met barked at me. I’m serious. Does he know I ate his brethren?

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