Winter Solstice 2010

22nd December 2010 - was the Winter Solstice for the Chinese. During the old days, families will gather around to have their reunion dinner as it was said to be the most important day in the Chinese Lunar calendar. But in the modern days. I guessed this was not popularly practice anymore as people are busier nowadays and often this date falls in the middle of the week where working ones can't make it back to their respective home town. I had tried to practice and celebrate this dinner in KL even though we can't go back to be with our parents. This year I had invited a few friends to join us (Hubby and I) for dinner. At least we celebrate it with friends while we are away from home. We get to eat some Tong Yuen and spend some time with each other.

Ready made Tong Yuen - for lazy people like me.

I had used brown sugar for the syrup instead of normal white sugar. Added Osmanthus as well.

The feast I had prepare - minus the Satay on the table.

Happy Winter Solstice 2010!

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Rice Dumpling Festival Pot Luck Dinner Celebration

Rice Dumpling Festival or Dragon Boat Festival falls on the 5th day of the 5th month on the chinese lunar calendar and the festive was celebrate amongst the Chinese. I had took this opportunity to invite a few friends back to our place to have a pot luck dinner and also for them to sample the rice dumplings that we had made over the weekend.

Each of us had bought different varieties of food for the dinner. Since changing job, I have lesser time to actually cook. Thus for an easy way out, is to 'tar pau' food items and invite friends over with the theme 'Pot Luck'. Hehe.. (Lame excuses rite.... :p). Wanna know what we had over the dinner? We had lots and lots of food and as usual we were practically stuffed maximum before the dinner ends..... ^Burp burp burp^.....

Pork Satay from PJ Old Town Food Court.

Hokkien Mee from Restoran Damansara Hokkien Mee in Uptown

Roast Duck from the famous Loong Foong Restaurant in PJ

Yong Tau Fu from somewhere in Kelana Jaya area

More Yong Tau Fu items

Donashi from Big Apple Donuts

So we had an enjoyable time over the dinner. More pot luck session in the future? I think so... Will try to do it more often especially during festival celebration to create more sense of togetherness as nowadays everyone was really busy with work and own activities.. :)

So for the rest of my readers, I wished you all

'HAPPY RICE DUMPLING FESTIVAL'

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Hokkien Fried Glutinous Rice Dumpling

Duanwu Festival ( 端午節), also known as Dragon Boat Festival, is a traditional and statutory holiday associated with Chinese and other East Asian and Southeast Asian societies as well. For this year, Duanwu Festival falls on 16th June 2010. We had been making our own Chang for the past 2 years, so this year was no exceptional too. Since we had some hands on experience in making Chang previously, the process of making them this year was much more easier. I felt I am getting slightly better in wrapping them, but they still looks very 'odd' to me. In terms of taste wise, the Chang are tastier as compared to the 1st and 2nd batches that we made previously. Words of compliments should be given to my dear Hubby as he is getting more expert in wrapping the Chang. His Chang looked more like those we bought from outside. Thus, I had told him, for next year, I'll be doing all the preparations of the fillings and glutinous rice and he shall be fully in charge for wrapping it.. Hehe... (Not bad idea rite).. :P

So ladies and gentlemen,

let me present to you.....

Our 2010 Chang..........

Hokkien Fried Glutinous Rice Dumplings

Fillings consists of Pork Belly, Skinned Green Beans, Chestnuts, Mushrooms, Chinese Sausages, Dried Shrimps and Salted Egg Yolk

Ingredients

800g glutinous rice

200g skinned green beans

bamboo leaves and strings

(A)

3 tbsp oil

8 cloves garlic, chopped

10 shallots, chopped

2 star anise

4 tsp oyster sauce

1 tsp 5 spice powder

2 tsp pepper

4 tsp light soy sauce

2 tbsp dark soy sauce

4 tsp sugar

4 tsp salt

(B)

1 tsp 5 spice powder

1 tsp pepper powder

1 tsp salt

2 tsp sugar

2 tbsp rice wine

4 tsp dark soy sauce

Fillings

500g pork belly

24 chestnuts

24 mushrooms, soaked

50g dried shrimps

2 Chinese Sausages

24 salted egg yolks

Methods

1. Preparation for glutinous rice and skinned green beans: Rinse both separately. Soak separately for 5 hours and drain.
2. For A: Heat up oil. Stir fry garlic, shallots and star anise till fragrant. Add in oyster sauce and stir fry till fragrant. Add in glutinous rice and stir well. Add in 5 spice powder and pepper, stir fry till fragrant. Add in remaining seasoning and stir evenly. Set aside.
3. Rinse pork belly and cut into 24 pieces. Season with B, put in fridge overnight.
4. Soak chestnuts overnight. Pick out skin from slot.
5. Soak mushrooms overnight. Trim the stems. Rinse and squeeze out water.
6. Rinse dried shrimps and soak in water for 15 minutes. Heat up some oil, stir-fry till fragrant. Dish out and set aside.
7. Rinsed salted egg yolk and drained.
8. Wrapping: Overlap 2 bamboo leaves, placed the longer leaf below the shorter. Hold up leaves with hands, fold 1/3 of leaves to form corn shape. Fill cone with a layer of glutinous rice, add in skinned green beans and other fillings in correct sequences and cover with a layer of skinned green beans. Lastly place a layer of glutinous rice and press tightly. Wrap and secure with strings.
9. Base a pot with few bamboo leaves, add in 2 tsp salt and water. Bring to boil with the dumplings. Switch to medium heat and continue boiling for approximately 2 hours.

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My Birthday Celebration Part 2 - A Korean Affair

After our 1st part birthday celebration, we had another round of 'makan' in Puchong IOI Boulevard. Initially we were supposed to go to Umai Ya for their buffet lunch, but we had a bummer when we were there; their buffet lunch was only offered at their Uptown branch. Since we were already in Puchong, we decided to try new things. We saw a korean restaurant - KimchiHaru in the area and decided to give it a try.

Kimchi was normally served in Korean cuisine as Banchan. To be honest, I'm not a kimchi lover at all. I simply couldn't enjoy the taste of cold cabbage in their dressing; well maybe I'm the weirdo here coz I do know people who loves Kimchi. As for Hubby, I think he belongs to the weirdo group like me for disliking Kimchi. Hehe....

Kimchi - served as Banchan and it is refillable.

Salad as their Banchan too.

More varieties of Banchan served during our meal.

Hubby had ordered Yook Gae Jang (Korean Spicy Beef and Vegetable Soup) served with rice. As shown in their menu, the best way to eat them was to scoop all the rice into the bowl and mixed well. Taste wise for this dish was mediocre in my opinion as I think the soup was not flavourful enough. The portion of beef in the soup was a too little - shredded too fine. They should be more generous in their portion.

Can't really spot any shredded beef on the surface.

Once you digged deep inside the bowl, now you get to see the beef slices but majority of it was just shredded mushroom.

For me, I had ordered Cheese Bulgoki Bibimbap aka Korean Mixed Rice. Bibimbap is served as a bowl of warm white rice topped with namul (sautéed and seasoned vegetables) and gochujang (chili pepper paste). A raw or fried egg and sliced meat (usually beef) are common additions. The ingredients are stirred together thoroughly just before eating. It can be served either cold or hot. Vegetables commonly used in bibimbap include julienned cucumber, zucchini, mu (daikon), mushrooms, doraji (bellflower root), and gim, as well as spinach, soybean sprouts, and gosari (bracken fern stems). For visual appeal, the vegetables are often placed so that adjacent colors complement each other. I preferred this as compared to Hubby's.

My Bimbibap - before being mixed.

End result - we had a bowl of colourful rice.

We ordered another side dish as well - Seafood Pa-Jeon aka Korean pancake.Pajeon is a variety of jeon with green onions as its prominent ingredient. Pa literally means green onion in Korean. It is a pancake-like Korean dish made from a batter of eggs, flour, rice flour, green onions and other additional ingredients depending on the variety such as seafood.

The Pa-jeon was nice. But they should try to minimized the amount of oil being used. It was rather oily once u had a look at the bottom the pancake.

Overally, the atmosphere in the restaurant was good. Kinda cosy but food wise was just average. Nothing to shout about. But of coz what matters the most was the company of dear Hubby during the whole dining experience. :)

Kimchiharu (IOI Boulevard)

G-55, IOI Boulevard,

Jln Kenari 5, Bdr Puchong Jaya,

47170 Puchong, Selangor.

03-80769020

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My Birthday Celebration 2010 Part 1 - A Taiwan Affair

A year had passed and I am older or should I say 'wiser'. Yup, my birthday was here again. OMG, how I wish now I can turn back the time and be a teenager again but what the heck rite, we do get old eventually. So back to my birthday celebration with my Hubby, we had a small cake cutting session back at our love nest; just the two of us. He had took the trouble of getting the cake earlier and purposely driving back to our place to place the cake in the fridge during his lunch time but little that he knew, the cake was slightly ruined, the wordings of my birthday cake was a bit 'cacat' due to the chocolate piece falling out of their initial place. Was it bad? Neh, not really that bad but it does look kinda funny. Wondering how it end up to be? Here u go..........

My little 'imperfect' birthday cake which was eventually made perfect with the presence of dear Hubby singing the birthday song to me....

MUACKS MUACKS DARLING!

Since I am kinda busy with my new job, there's not much fancy celebration on my birthday as it falls on a weekday. We ventured into Sunway Pyramid to look for some good food and ended up in a Taiwanese restaurant - Xian Ding Wei. We must have caught the 'Taiwan food bug' after our recent travel to their country.

'What Do You Want To Eat?' as written on their menu.

Each of us ordered set meals which consists of rice (braised pork rice/plain rice), 3 side dishes, 1 soup and 1 main dishes. I had chosen Sweet Sour Pork set and Hubby had picked the Pepper Steak set.We even ordered another side dish - Special Chicken Roll. Apparently the restaurant are having some promotion where if we ordered more than RM60, we can actually ordered one dish at the price of RM1. Since we were entitled for that, we had ordered their Chicken in 3 Variety of Sauce. Wow, can you imagine how pack our table is when all the food arrive? Hehe.. Both of us are really big eaters! 'Paiseh paiseh'.

Braised Pork Rice

Yummy soup and their side dishes.

Sweet Sour Pork - LOVE IT!

Pepper Steak - cooked perfectly - juicy and yet tender.

Chicken in 3 Variety of Sauces - very aromatic. I love it, but Hubby don't quite fancy them.

Special Chicken Roll

Mixed Fruit Tea - definitely recommended. Give it a try if you visit this place.

Sour plum Jasmine Tea

We had a great time and enjoyable meal in this place. We gonna come back for more next time to sample their other dishes.

This post was specially dedicated to my dear Hubby,

'Thanks for all your love and effort put in to make this date an enjoyable and memorable day'.

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Happy Mother's Day - Sendo No Ya Restaurant

Today is a special day for all Mothers in the world, it's MOTHER'S DAY. On this special day, we had brought our parents to try out Japanese food in Sendo No Ya in Kuantan. This is the first time they had tried Japanese food. Most items that we had ordered from the menu was consider 'safe' food for both Daddy and Mummy. 'Safe' food in this context is merely defined as food items that were serve cooked since both of them don't really fancy raw food items such as sashimi. So we ordered quite a number of items from the menu ranging from rice, tempura, sushi and sashimi (for Sis, Hubby and I).

The food was consider quite good but definitely not the service in the restaurant. We need to request more than 5 times to get our tea being refilled in a few occasions; maybe due to the overwhelming crowd that came in to the restaurant for this special occasion to have dinner with their family, the restaurant do not have enough manpower to handle it but I think it shouldn't be the way especially when they are charging 10% service charge on the bill. They definitely need improvement on their service. Nevertheless, Mummy and Daddy was quite satisfied with the food that was served for the night. Interested to know what we had for the night, scroll down and have a peek.

Take Sushi and Sashimi

Salmon Sashimi

Unagi Don

Karubi Don

Oyako Don

Tori Katsu Curry Rice

Ebi Fried Don

Komachi Ika

Hampan Age

Kaki Age

We had our mini cake cutting ceremony back home. I had bought a Pistachio Cream Cake for Mummy. We had a good time for the past 2 days. So this post specially dedicated to my beloved Mummy who had gave us unconditional love all these years.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

MUMMY, We Love You! Thanks for everything!

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Crocodile Rock Restaurant

Our whole family decided to go and try something different for dinner. Since Mum and Dad rarely take western food, we decided to go to Crocodile Rock Restaurant in Kuantan. The restaurant was actually a one storey bungalow setup restaurant. You can opt to sit indoor or outdoor once you were inside but being an air-cond person like me, of course I'll choose indoor. (I wanna be eating the food and not being food to the mosquitoes in the area especially during night time.... :D )

One big happy family.... :)

The entrance of the restaurant.

Their menu.

Ordering food for our parents are definitely a 'hard' task since both of them don't really fancy anything that is cheesy and Dad (not a beef or lamb lover). Thus we had ordered a grilled chicken for Dad and salmon steak for Mum. Both commented their main dishes were good. As for me, I had ordered Carbonara Spaghetti, Hubby ordered Beef Burger, Sis ordered Rib-Eye Steak and Pizza Margherita for all of us to share. Overall, the dining experience is the place is good. Their setup is cosy and is a good place for friend to dine in and catch up.

Fruit Punch

Kiwi Freeze

Grilled Chicken for Dad.

Beef Burger for Hubby.

Carbonara Spaghetti for Me.

Salmon Steak for Mum.

Rib Eye Steak for Sis.

Pizza Margherita for sharing.

Their place was decorated with Xmas tree to boost up the Xmas feel during this festive season.

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