Blue blue skies.... and what we ate!

That's the beautiful blue skies I was referring to and Perth's skyline from King's Park. So many things have changed for the place I once called home for 5 years. Boy and I had a great trip back there and totally pigged out on great food and fantastic company.

Vietnamese food is super awesome in Australia because of the good quality of meat they get. I've tried vietnamese food in Vietnam itself... still prefer the ones in Australia. This is a Bun.. a vermicelli noodle bowl with grilled pork. Its a healthy meal with lots of shredded veggies. The magic lies in the small bowl on the right. The nuoc cham. That, when poured over it turns it into an awesome meal!

This one is  a beef ball horfun. The horfun is no less silky than the ones we get in Ipoh and the broth is just heavenly. It is served with a large plate of raw bean sprouts, basil leaves and lemon wedges. Super yummy. Boy almost finished this gigantic bowl for lunch.

A roast beef dinner my beautiful girlfriend cooked for us. The roast beef was prettily pink, done just right. Along with the crunchy veggies, we wolved it all down.

We went to Sandalford wineyards and had wine tasting! I'm not much of a wine drinker but I must say they do have some easy to drink wines. The lighter ones are like grape juice and cranberry juice. Prices were super reasonable compared to what we pay in Malaysia too.

The wineyard had big sprawling grounds and the kids had a great time running around, jumping up and down and generally having a ball of a time.

This was a version of eggs benedict for a breakfast in Fremantle.. rather blah. Didn't they know that eggs benny are meant to be served on toasted english muffins? Hrmmmm

Michele's Crepes!! This was an old favourite from my uni days. We went to queue for it and then discovered that it is now manned by asians. I later found out that the business was sold a few years ago... that explains the difference in quality.

Ordered a ham cheese mushroom crepe.. I took two bites and boy had half... we gave the remaining to my girlfriend's furkids. They seemed to like it.

And for the grand finale.... we had this fantastic Italian dinner at Garganos, Claremont.

Mozzarella cheese on tomatoes drizzled with olive oil

Beef Carpaccio with Parmesan Cheese

My favourite.. fresh spaghetti in a cheese sauce with shaved black truffles and mushrooms. To die for.

Half a portion of a t-bone steak. Humongous and nicely done.

My gf's fish.. which I wasn't able to even try.... was getting seriously full by now

Veggies!

The decadent desserts trolley

My choice.... profiteroles!

We also had Fig gelato and Strawberry gelato... indeed a sumptuous meal!! I asked to roll back home but my girlfriend wouldn't leave her car there....

The fabulous sunset on our flight home...... Thanks Perth, for leaving us beautiful memories and a few additional inches on the waistline!

Satisfaction - a good pot of curry

I can't get no... satisfaction...

Wasn't that a popular song a long time ago?

Today I want to talk about Satisfaction. What does it take to satisfy you? Some people aim for an infinite amount of money, because enough is never enough.

Money allows you to consume more. We eat more, wear more, buy more cars, more houses, more of everything... simply because we can.

We are so obsessed with overconsumption these days fueled by advertisements, glossy magazines and just your run of the mill of wanting to keep up with the Joneses. Get off the treadmill people! It never works! Your consumption always increases with your income! It's never enough!

Today I am feeling buoyant, with the endorphins I have from a run in the morning. Well, more of a jog/walk than a run but I am still glad I did it! I'm now making chicken curry on a rainy afternoon for tonight's dinner.

Simple pleasures of life. My idea of a healthIER curry. Chuck in lots of vegetables. Potatoes, carrots, onions long beans and eggplants and finish off with some yoghurt. I tried it with coconut milk the last time and found it way too heavy.

Let's experiment and see how this goes. It turned out to my satisfaction, lucky me.

Come to think of it, a pot of curry is a lot like life, isn't it? It's delicious but you know overconsumption leads to high cholesterol and obesity. Too much of a good thing is baaaaad.

It's available everywhere in restaurants, roadside stalls but yet you can choose to make it at home. Immediate satisfaction vs slow cooking, healthier DIY style?

It's what you make of it. It's a great base for meals that you can have with bread, rice and noodles. As I am typing this I am having my curry with noodles and a poached egg. Curry is flexible, just like life. If it doesn't work on the first attempt, try and try again with different approaches until you get it just right for you. Don't give up!

So there you go peeps. Take life by the horns, accustom it to your needs like a curry by adding more vegies and changing the coconut milk to yoghurt but most importantly, do enjoy it.

That's really what life is all about. Curry on, baby!

Brunch food

It's Sunday! Sunday brings along a host of feelings, mainly negative ones and intensifying as the day wears on with the dreaded Monday blues sometimes working overtime and checking in on Sunday nights too. Let's counter the shift with some positive influences. Brunch!

Weekends are mainly the point where most working people look forward to when they are allocated the much awaited sleep in and then hunt for a nice place to brunch at. Parents excepted of course. The driving around for tuitions and weekend activities usually precede the plans you have for the aforementioned joy.

 Let's see some of the notable brunches accumulated from here, there and everywhere. This is a ham and cheese croissant from a cafe in King Street, Perth. Super flaky pastry and fragrant grilled cheese makes this a light(ish) breakfast to have. This is boy's breakfast of choice whenever we are in western countries.

Unfortunately we haven't found anything decent in KL so far where this is concerned.

 Caffeine is a must have in the morning. Take your pick of lattes, cappuccinos, long blacks, flat whites or good old Kopi! I always believe in indulging where the drink is best known for, so when I'm in Ipoh, it's always hot KOPI, with less condensed milk. Ipoh has a particular brand of coffee beans roasted with white sugar, thus the specialty of white kopi you get in the coffeeshops there are unique to Ipoh. This picture however is more like what I drink these days because of my location now. Invested in a nespresso machine and I'm happy with my lattes and cappucinos at home.

 This breakfast brings back memories of sunday brunches when I was a child and my grandmother used to prepare this. I save it for a treat these days.  Crispy luncheon meat slices, baked beans with eggs and toast. There is usually a fried egg sunny side up as well. I must have been feeling lazy that day.

Breakfast of the champions!

This is my breakfast of choice when I am in Ipoh. Chu cheong fun with curry and deep fried turnip fritters (sar kot). This combination of crispy, spicy, salty and sweet hits the spot every single time. Horribly sinful though, I don't even want to think of the calories this plate of yum contains.

This is a favourite. A huge plate of char cheong meen you can get in almost any noodle shop in Hong Kong. Love the meat strips sauteed in bean sauce over the springy wanton noodles! A side of additional wantons in soup completes the meal. If i recall correctly this was from Mak's Noodles at Wellington St, HK.

"Corn fritters" served with crispy bacon and a side of salad. That looks like a pancake no matter how you slice it huh? I've been meaning to give that cafe a second chance, but haven't gotten around to it. It's a certain australian cafe that's in Bangsar. Packed to the rafters with customers, I did not find it particularly spectacular.

Eggs Benedict with smoked salmon. Again, the bread were supposed to be french toast but what came out obviously wasn't. The bread was thin and small. Maybe they are trying to cater to the appetites of the weight conscious, but I did not find this of good value at all. This was at a cafe near my place. Again, still need to give them another chance where food is concerned.

Lastly, a good local favourite that both boy and myself enjoy. Crispy, light, probably super unhealthy, but what the heck, you only live once. Tosai and roti canai, courtesy of your neighbourhood mamak shop! Bon appetito and have a great Sunday!

A very prawny post

I've always liked Penang prawn noodles. I've found the best so far to be in a little corner coffee shop in PJ that offers mainly penang hawker food. The prawn noodles there are to die for but for the sake of my cholesterol levels and also since parking is a hassle, I try to limit it to once or twice in a month. Check this bowl of beauty out.

It's a notch above what you get in Penang because nowadays a bowl of noodles in Penang is but snack sized and the prawns? Calling them shrimps will be an exaggeration because they take the shrimps and slice them further into wafer thin slices. Talk about knife skills!

Thus nowadays I don't bother to have to travel up north anymore for my prawn noodles because everyone I've brought to sample this dish  agrees it is just as good. Heartier, in fact.

Here are some other excellent prawn dishes I've had over the years.  This here is a simple dish of "bak cheok har" which simply means blanched prawns that are served with a heavenly dipping sauce. The prawns are so fresh and sweet that you need nary anything else in the broth while cooking. The best version I've had of this dish is from Guangzhou, China which is great for these food, but not my favourite city in the world.



There one here is simply panfried and served with a twist of lemon on the side. This I had in a tapas bar in Barcelona. The prawn flavour was very intense and sweet. Boy, I really do need to check my cholesterol levels soon. But then again I suppose when you are having food in a tapas bar in Barcelona, the atmosphere alone adds to the quality of the food? Not true, we had some lemons there as well. This though, was remarkable. I wonder if they were carabineros..

This little dish held some gems of peeled shrimps sizzling in olive oil with some garlic slices and dried chillies and a sprig of rosemary. It was divine! Boy could not get enough of it and insisted we return for seconds the next night! What can I say, if you strike gold you strike gold. The tapas places that serve decent food are usually decent across board. This was in a little tapas place in Born, Barcelona.


And finally, this was a dish we had at El Cellar di San Roca, voted one of the best restaurants in the world by San Pellegrino. It was an interesting dish to experience. We were told that everything on this plate is edible. So from the white powder was some dehydrated prawn dust and hang on, let me get you the proper name from the menu. Ok here we go - A whole king prawn - chargrilled king prawn, king prawn sand, ink rocks, fried legs, head juice and king prawn essence. A little too molecularly gastronomic for my liking, but it was an experience.

The reason I decided to come up with this prawny post was because I wanted to make spaghetti marinara tonight and so bought a kilo of fresh prawns from the market. After shelling and heading them, I decided to make a concentrated prawn stock to add to my pasta tonight... Will let you know how that turns out...

An overview of my food experience

Foooooooooood.

There are those that eat to live and others that live to eat. No prizes guessing which category yours truly falls under. I'm an Ipoh girl. We Ipohites know good food, having grown up surrounded by fresh produce, good and cheap hawker food. We know our silky smooth flat rice noodles, our crunchy fat beansprouts, our white kopi, bakuteh, toast with kaya, roast pig, curry noodles, popiah, wow... need I go on? I grew up eating my grandmother's cooking. Grandma was from Dongguan, China and boy was her cooking to die for. She used to steam, braise and stew to her heart's delight and I grew up appreciating good food.


When I went abroad to study in Perth, Australia, I had to learn how to cook simple and very basic meals. Dad would always tell me to don't skimp on food, go out and have a nice steak once in a while. And at that point in time I stayed off beef. I know, big mistake for that time period, right?  It was so good and fresh and affordable!! I stayed off beef for a good 20 years because I mistakenly thought I did not like the smell of it. I've started eating it again in 09 and I do enjoy a good steak once in a while now. Anyway, being in Perth in the late nineties meant eating out was great and affordable, even for a student.




After I graduated I started going into fine dining, appreciating great food and willing to travel great distances to hunt for good food. That went on for a couple of years until I had my son. Even then, as soon as he was old enough I'd bring him along on our foodie trips, trying restaurant after restaurant at whichever destination we went to.  My favourite foodie destinations are still Japan, Hong Kong and Australia. Oooooh I forgot, Spain too!

I still believe in good food, great fresh produce with minimal of fast food, preservatives and colouring. The difference is now that I'm in KL, the choices for dining are not that fantastic. Call me an Ipoh snob, but really, there's nothing much to shout about. I like some of the hawker food choices in here, and some Japanese and Korean restaurants but when it comes to western food... I'd rather cook these days.