Malaysian Butter Prawns

Malaysian Butter Prawns is one of my favourite local Malaysian seafood dish. You may have already heard of Cereal prawns or Nestum prawns, well it's kind of same same but different! I don't like cereal of any kind! Blergh! But this, I like.. it's very shiok!

I adapted my cooking to the recipe from http://www.smokywok.com/2008/10/malaysian-butter-prawns-recipe.html

The preparation time took the longest as I had to devein the prawns without removing the shell. And I forgot to remove the eyes.. but that's okay, because I don't eat the prawn heads anyway.

Ingredients:

15 head-on prawns, shell on - deveined and remove eyes (whoops! I forgot the eyes!)
A handful of fresh curry leaves
3 tbsps butter
3 egg yolks
3 cloves garlic, minced finely
4-5 bird's eye chilli peppers, seeded and finely chopped
1 tsp salt
Dash of tumeric
1 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp sugar
Dash of Shaoxing Wine (Chinese Rice Wine)
Dash of white pepper
1 red onion
1 pinch of black pepper

Method:

Firstly, clean and devein prawns. Use kitchen scissors to cut shell to remove veins. Marinate in tumeric, add a pinch of salt and pepper. Coat prawns in rice flour.

Heat enough oil to deep fry the prawns. Fry in the hot oil until shells turn red and looked crunchy. Remove and drain, set aside.

Next, use about 2 tbsps of the oil used earlier in your wok. Briskly fry the garlic, chilli peppers curry leaves and salt until fragrant. Turn heat to medium-low, add the butter.

Next, add the egg yolks, squeezing through a perforated spoon and finally add the prawns that were fried earlier. Add more salt if desired at this point. Stir-around to coat prawns with the butter sauce. Serve hot.

And there you have it, Butter prawns, not for the faint hearted! Seriously yummo!

Creamy garlic and white wine mussels

Now that I am residing in Australia, I find that I missed a lot of things about New Zealand, one being the green lipped mussels. Sure there are plenty of those black mussels here, I see them in the supermarkets in Oz, but it is not the same.

I love the big fatty, fleshy juicy mussels. You see, size does matter!! At least to me, I don't want those puny little mussels... I mean, what is that? Wannabe mussels?

Anyway, here is one of my simple recipe to cook mussels. Please ensure that you scrub the mussels clean and remove their beards before cooking.

Ingredients

A dozen or two of mussels in shells
1 diced shallots or onion, I find shallots more fragrant and sweeter.
1 Tablespoon crushed garlic
3 Tablespoons of olive oil or you can use butter
1 cup of water
1 cup of white wine
1 very tiny pinch of sea salt.
Freshly chopped continental parsley herbs
1 cup of double/heavy cream, to be added last, prior to serving.

Method

1. In a large pot, saut矇ed the onions and crushed garlic in olive oil or butter, add in wine and water, let it boil
2. Add in mussels
3. Add in herbs
4. Close lid and let mussels cooked till shells are opened. Discard non opened ones.
5. Remove from heat
6. Stir in heavy cream, we do this last as we do not want the cream to separate or be boiled to smithereens :)
7. Plate up and served with crusty bread and everything always taste better with more wine!!

Green lipped mussels

The Vic Hotel, Wagga

This is not a paid advertorial, the blogger dined at The Victoria Hotel at her bosses's expense...hehehe;)

So this week, we finally had our Xmas party lunch. It kinda became our "Xmas/Easter" breakup lunch get together. Our Xmas party got "postponed" because of work commitments and deadline last year.

For this function, the Bandi guys travelled up to Wagga and we chose The Victoria Hotel because it is affordable, value for money, has the room for us and is pretty consistent with its menu and service. We've been there before several times and loved it. You can't fault the steak here.

I didn't feel like a big lunch this time as I am still on my so called diet which is going pretty well, except for days when I craved carbs and then I hate myself when I feel bloated! Hahahaha. I need to lose some inches before Bangkok so that I don't get squashed in the cattle class on my flight. Argh!! Hate economy.. when am I going to ever travel J class???

So I ordered the Thai Beef Salad, it was a good portion, well balanced, lots of different types of greens in the salad. It does have an interesting dressing though! I do not believed that, this is Thai Salad as the dressing was all wrong, it was too sweet, someone had gone berko with the "kicap manis" ( dark sweet soy sauce) and there was no spice at all. It was not tangy nor spicy. A total let down. I think that if one wants to do an Asian dish, you should at least do it right. Don't bastardised a dish and called it what it is. The presentation was good, plate was neat and tidy. Being from a hospitality background, I look at the plating for marks and thumbprints, smears or drip of sauces. Nothing I hate more, than a dirty plate.

Here are what my workmates ordered. As you can see, beautiful plating, right? No one was allowed to start eating till I had taken a snapshot. You can't take me anywhere. As you can see, nothing wrong with the typical western pub meals. You can't do wrong in this category. The service was excellent, we didn't have to wait long for our meal. The plates were also cleared as soon as lunch was finished, the friendly waitress cleared as many glasses and plates as fast as she could.

Salt and Pepper Calamari

Chicken Parmagiana

Chicken Schnitzel

Steak Sandwich

Rump Steak with mushroom sauce

Beer Battered Chips

Lemon Tart

I was too full to have desserts. I took a photo of the Lemon tart because I thought that it look lovely. The chocolate cake that my other colleague had looked dry. I commented to my friend that it should be rich and moist, not dry and hard... served with lots of cream and icecream. The sticky date pudding looked so good. I really wished that I was not on a diet! Sigh! Must be strong and think of Thailand holidays!

And that concludes my "Chreaster" lunch and this old gal had to have a lie down in the arvo after two ciders.

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Victoria Hotel
55 Baylis St Wagga Wagga
Telephone (02) 6921 5233
http://www.vichotelwagga.com.au/



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Flavour of Malaysia, The Grace Hotel Sydney

Disclosure: Jackie and friend dined at the Flavours of Malaysia, Food Festival as guests of The Grace Hotel and Malaysian Kitchen Australia.

First of all, I just want to say how excited I am to be blogging about the Flavours of Malaysia, brought to you by Tourism Malaysia and The Grace Hotel, part of CRAVE Sydney International Food Festival in Sydney.

Malaysian cuisine is a melting pot of different cultures, the many regions of the country, spices and ingredients used makes it a truly a unique and amazing flavour. Yes, I am biased. I was blessed to be borne in that country and had the opportunity to live and eat there till my adulthood. Coming to Australia and years of living overseas has made me missed home, friends and families even more and more each year. I am lucky that I can fly home whenever I get homesick.

How does one describe Malaysian food to a visitor or a newcomer to the taste?  To understand the  flavours of Malaysia, you would have learned from your History lessons in school, that Malaysia was colonized by the Portuguese, Dutch and British. Then came the Asian immigrants from all over  Asia. It's ideal location, Peninsular Malaya, made it a good trading post for many things, one in particular, being the spice trade. It brought in all those beautiful aromatic spices, that you can now find in any Malaysian cuisine. And so it began, the flavours that were influenced from multi-ethnic groups. Our melting pot consists of Eurasians, Chinese, Indians, Peranakan (Chinese and Malay),  Mamak (Indian Muslims) etc. just to name a few. And we sure know how to put on a big feast ;)

The chefs for this event, Flavour of Malaysia, was specially flown in from The Federal Hotel, Kuala Lumpur. This event will showcase some of Malaysia's finest and much loved recipes ranging from famous hawker foods to authentic Nyonya dishes and more from the Northern region of Malaysia. This buffet is great opportunity for all to savour all those delightful favourite dishes among Malaysians. It is truly a gastronomic feast!

Ask any Malaysian and they will tell you that you don't say no to Malaysian food, let alone a Malaysian Buffet. I dream of Malaysian buffets every night. (True story, I really do.) I change my pillowcases often from the drooling alone. So for me, this invite was a great opportunity to get my Malaysian cravings fixed, plus to share this experience with you, my readers, about the Malaysian food campaign during the month of October for CRAVE.

Many of my regular readers will know that I live in country New South Wales, and sadly, I have to say that there are no Malaysian restaurants in the regional area. To get my fix, aside from my cooking Malay food myself, I would have to travel to the nearest cities such as Sydney, Melbourne or even Canberra.

And who doesn't love Malaysian food? Have you seen the line outside Mamak in Sydney? How about all those Malaysian restaurants in Sydney? JackieM in Concord, CintaRia, Nonya; they are always full with happy customers eating away. I'm so envious of Sydneysiders, as they have all these yumminess, right outside their doorstep.

Here are some mouth watering photos to give you an idea of what was at the buffet. If you are interested in more photos, click on this link My Flickr

I started off my lunch with an old favourite, Rose Bandung. I used to buy this at road stalls back home in my schooldays after school. It's basically rose syrup mixed with icy cold milk. Very tasty and sweet. I enjoyed the roti jala and roti canai, everyone's favourite for breakfast or snacks in Malaysia.

My all time favorite salad, Pasembur, especially ones from Penang. You add all the salads and condiments and topped it up with peanut sauce, similar to gado gado in Indonesia. Malaysian food has its similarities to Indonesia because of its close proximity and inter relations. A Malaysian pickle, also known as Achar. It is a mixed vege pickle, sweet, tangy and spicy. Great as a side dish to any mains.

Look at my plate of salad. I had the Squid Sambal, Achar, Pasembur and I tossed my own Rojak as well. Who's a clever gal?

Mixed veges; sauteed okra and eggplants on the left and Daging Masak Hitam, which basically translates to beef cooked in dark soy, heavily spiced of course, with cardamon, cumin, coriander, cinnamon and fennel and most likely to have chillies and brown sugar as well. Sort of like your Chinese Black Beef Pepper but Malay style.

This is what I had for lunch. I had the chicken rendang, mamak goreng ( noodles), chicken satays and roti jala. I love satays and could have happily live on satays alone. The was sambal prawns as well, I was a little dissapointed that there was no stinky beans (petai) with the sambal prawns. Gotta love those sambal udang with petai beans. Example on the book cover below, green petai beans.

This is my favourite snack. You grab all the fruits and mixed and tossed it with shrimp paste and topped it off with peanut crunch and sesame seeds. Crunchy and yummy. Another Penang favorites of mine. Various fruits can be used;
Green mango
Pineapple
Cucumber
Jambu air, not sure of the English translation.

These are various types of sambal sauces, aka love of my life. I could drink these. Can you tell I am from Kedah state? We sure can handle our hot chillies.

To cool your burning tongue, you can try this dessert; Ais Campur. Basically, it means to add everything to shaven ice. Also on the buffet are various nyonya kuihs like ondeh ondeh, kuih talam, kuih bingka, kuih lapis. Kuih lapis a favourite childhood teatime snack of mine. I like to eat mine by peeling them a  layer at a time by layers. How do you eat yours?

It was definitely a delicious lunch, I was amazed that I could walk back after all that food. It certainly was good to meet up with foodie friends and enjoying this wonderful spread. I could have taken many more photos of the main dishes but it wouldn't be fair to the other diners trying to get to the wonderful dishes.

Many thanks to Grace Hotel Sydney and Malaysian Kitchen Australia for this opportunity.

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Grace Brasserie at the Grace Hotel

Level 2, 77 York Street, Sydney

Flavours of Malaysia

Dates: October 5-21, 2012

Times: Lunch Monday-Friday and Sunday 12pm-2pm

Dinner Friday and Saturday 6pm-9pm

Cost: Lunch Monday to Friday $38, Lunch on Sunday $48, Dinner $48

Bookings: +61 (02) 9272 6636

Asian Snapper

I love this dish as a child and still do as an adult. My mum likes to steam fish for healthier way of eating. I, on the other hand, likes mine deep fried. Pretty much everything....fried chicken... fried soft shelled crabs, fried fish... etc..And this is why I am fat!

However, for today, I have decided to do a quick fry then baked the fish in the oven. Deep frying is far easier when you have a deep fryer.  Must get me one of those. Just bear in mind that if you do decide to fry, it can be rather sloppy and messy in a wok or pan.

Ingredients

Serves: 4

• 1 (approx 700 g) whole snapper, cleaned and scaled
• 1/2 cup fresh coriander leaves
• 2 tablespoons oil
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger
• 1 French shallots, thinly sliced
• 2 small red chillies, sliced
• I tablespoon of kicap manis (sweet soy sauce)
• 2 tablespoons water
• 1 whatchamallit of Buk Choy (chinese greens) 
• I packet of beansprouts
• I packet of shittake mushrooms

NOTE:
Extra Ginger thinly sliced and fried
Coriander leaves and fresh chilies for garnish

A few drops of sesame oil to sprinkle on dish before serving

Preparation method

Prep: 30 minutes   Cook: 30 minutes

1. Preheat oven to 190 degrees C.
2. Line a roasting pan with aluminum foil.
3. Stuff the cavity of the snapper with the coriander leaves and set aside.
4. Heat the oil in a large frypan over high heat until it begins to smoke. Place the snapper in the frypan, and quickly brown on both sides, about 1 minute total. Place the fish into the roasting pan, and sprinkle with fish sauce. Reserve the oil in the frypan.
5. Bake fish in preheated oven until the flesh flakes easily with a fork, 25 to 30 minutes.
6. Meanwhile, heat the remaining oil in the frypan over medium heat. Fry the garlic and ginger and shallots, removed when crunchy
7. Add kicap manis and water. 
8. In a wok, stir fry the Buk Choy, mushrooms and beansprouts on high heat for a few minutes.
9. Place the stir fried veges on a plate and rest your fish on top of the greens. Pour the sauce over the snapper, and garnish with extra coriander leaves to serve.
10. Sprinkle sesame oil on the dish. The smell of that alone will get them running to the table.
11. Serve with jasmine rice.

Happy Eating ;) Just don't look at those fishy eyes and you'll be right!!!

Black Pepper Crabs

Last week, I had forgotten to get some blue swimmers crabs and so this week, I made sure that I did not forget to pick these babies up after work Friday. Err, thanks to modern technology... yup, I have sent an email to myself, is that so strange?

Check out this beautiful hue of blue swimmers crab, how pretty are these babies? So I was thinking Black Pepper crabs, mainly because I had gotten some Lee Kum Kee Black from my last Canberra trip and I wanted to try out this pepper sauce. I wasn't sure that it would have the same heat and spiciness as a Malaysian brand. I have to say.....Foooyooohhh, this sauce was kicking it! Still, I reckon it had to do with my putting in baby chillies and extra grounded black pepper. I was burning!!! It was very shiok!!!! My lips and tongue are numb now and that is so good!!!

I don't really have any recipe for this. Just the sauce from the bottle, chillies, spring onions, shallots and crabs and you tossed them around the wok till the shell changed colour then that's it... very simple dish ;) takes no time at all.

Ikan Goreng

My dinner tonite is a simple dish, fried fish. I used leatherjacket fish. If I had mackarel, I would have cooked fish stuffed with sambal rempah. Damn you sambal rempah, why are you on my mind???

Err... I ran out of red chillies and it was bucketing down today, how good was the rain?? I even cooked bubur kacang coz it was a nice cold day for it. Anyway, I was afraid of drowning so I didn't go to the supermarket to get red chillies. Instead, what I had with the fried fish was Thai chilli shrimp flakes sprinkled on top of fish, served with chopped up chilli padi and soy sauce.

See below, not exactly a good pic either, taken with my iphone ..

King Prawns Noodle

So what does one eat when she has been baking all day and is absolutely tired and stuffed? As in very hungry, I could eat a horse but not literally... eww!!! And this is even though she has been eating as many cookies, as fast as she bakes them?

Fried Noodles!!! Yipppeeee... we going on a crab high!! Ooops I mean carb! heheheh..Look, starvation times, no time for fancy recipes..just grab some greens, some meat, open a packet of egg noodles, tossed those whatchamacclit around a couple times in the wok on high heat and ... Add fish sauce, add kicap manis.. add salt.. and serve with sambal terasi (hot chili paste)..tada!!!! No fuss...very quick meal to prepare...prep time is approx ten minutes ad that was to peel those shells off the prawns...When you're done eating.... soon you will be on carb high and on your way to watching Korean drama all evening... BLISS!

Basa Fish stir-fry

Today was my second day back at work for me and I was very tired by the time I got home. I had to stop at the post office to collect my parcels and get some dog food for the furkids on the way home and I was too buggered for dinner by then. But I figured that, I had better eat something other than durian, for dinner. This morning I was starving at work because I am sure that I only had durians last nite for tea.

So anyway, into the kitchen I go. Looking into the fridge and freezer; I have frozen veges and skinless fish fillets and a packet of tofu from my Asian food heist! Yup, simple and painless!

Tada! When in doubt, stir fry loh! Rita would totally agree with me on this one.

So in she goes into my saute pan. Oh! by the way, I do have a Scanpan Classic Saute Pan to giveaway in September. Please check out the this link for the giveaway which will be drawn in September 2011
http://yummystuffgoeshere.blogspot.com/p/kitchenware-direct-competition.html

The competition finishes in September but you can enter anytime. I want to take this opportunity as well, to thank Kitchenware Direct for sponsoring a beautiful Scanpan

Okay back to this dish now...heheheh ;)

Here is the easy and fast fish stirfry and I am taking some to work tomorrow.  Looks yummy, doesn't it?

Thai Fish Cakes

This blog is for a friend who is surely missing her Thai Fish Cakes by now....nudge winks! I got my fish patties from an Asian supermarket recently. However, if you can't find any, do not despair, these fishcakes are easy enough to make if you have a food processor. Asian fish cakes are much better than western coz they are tastier, flavoursome with herbs and non-battered.

This is my version, once again.. measurements are approx only since I never measure when I cook.

Ingredients

3 pieces of boneless white filleted fish meat
1 tablespoon of red curry
2 tablespoon of fish sauce
Couple of kafir leave, use coriander if none, sliced thinly
3 french bean sliced thinly, use spring onions if none.
1 tablespoon of cornflour for coating

Method

Put fish meat in the food processor and process for a couple of minutes,
Add remainder ingredients, make sure it is smooth paste.
Put in fridge to chill for few minutes. This makes it harder and will not crumble to bits when frying.
Bring it out from fridge.
Make into patties, coat with flour
Fry the patties til they are brown.

You can served it hot with rice and sweet chilli sauce for dipping sauce.

Today, I have made sambal belachan as my sauce. The belachan (shrimp paste) was toasted in oven wrapped in tin foil to spare my neighbourhood from the strong smell. I cut a small piece and wrap in tin foil and baked it in the oven. Frankly, they have no idea what they are missing out on and I love the smell. Yup! I licked the tin foil after I was done toasting..inhaled the chilli too..

Sambal Prawns with Petai

Err, I couldn't take it any longer! After batting my eyelashes at the buah petai jars in the pantry for several days, I finally caved in. Yesterday I just had to cook my first jar of Petai. This Ninja here bought three jars while I was in Melbourne, so clever of me, right?

This is a very simple easy dish to make, all my dishes are usually easy and fast. I get too hungry and don't have the patience. I have never measured anything I cooked and that is probably why I find that baking is so hard because baking is all about measurements and precisions.

Anyway, back to me, ahem!

Ingredients, approx only:

500gm of fresh or frozen prawn meat

1 jar of buah petai ( from asian supermarket)

Chilli Paste/jam

1 tablespoon of oil for frying chili paste

2 teaspoon of minced garlic

1 tablespoon of kicap manis (Indonesian sweet soy sauce)

Fry the chilli paste then throw in those suckers, the prawn I mean..
Add buah petai, strain the juice from the jar
Stif fry away.... left right left...and around we go!
When the prawns has changed colour, then it's cook.
Tada!!!! Serve with rice..;)

Dried Curried Prawns

This was an accidental dish, I had actually burnt my satay dinner earlier and so had to cooked this as frozen prawn meat defrost faster than frozen meat.

How in the world did I burned my satays???? Heck! Anything is possible with me! I blamed old age.. loss of memory... etc etc.. I had gone out to water the garden and I forgot that I had satay sticks on the grill. Good, aren't I? This reminds of another story where I 'nuked' my donuts in the microwave coz I went to answer the phone..LOL ;)

So for a fast dinner, grab the frozen prawns, thawed it out. Remove shells and devined. Then pan fry prawns and add curry paste. I used Thai Paneang red curry paste. Add very little water. Served with rice when cooked. extremely fast meal to cook. Voila! There you have it! Curried prawns and no crying over burnt chicken satays!

Sushi

This angry ninja was feeling hot and steamy today. I hate the humidity. I had zero tolerance for anything today.

I went 'berko' on a fly in the office today. Unlike Mr Miyaki, I did not catch it with a chopstick. I did however went after it with my rolled up newspaper and let's just say that fly won't be buzzing around me for now, he was chopped into two pieces. It didn't alter my mood though. How is the fly related to this post? It's not.

But on the way home from work, I picked up some stuff for sushi rolls to go on a carb high as it will keep me happy for awhile.

Prawn Laksa

I think I need to go on another chinese grocery run. I checked my pantry and all I found was one jar of Laksa Paste by AYAM Brand.

Oh well, prawn laksa it is then. So I threw in some prawn meat and veges in a pot of boiling laksa soup. Super yummo, excellent for a cold night. I know it is middle of September now and we are in Spring in Australia but the nite is still very cold. So anything soupy with chillies is a plus!

I kinda like this lens by the way, it is very low light in the evening in my house and I love how I can capture this and it doesn't look too bad... tastes good too!

Nasi Lemak Sambal Prawns

Woke up hungry this morning and was craving nasi lemak, a Malaysian breaky. So ended up cooking some king size prawns in sambal paste from Malaysia. I didn't have any ikan bilis and so it is a very simple dish as in coconut rice and sambal prawns only. So delish!

It's finger licking good and I should have bought more of that sambal paste, note to self, buy more next trip to Melbourne ;) So hot and spicy.

Master Crab Singapore, contributed by Jo

A friend of mine from my SQ days recently celebrated her birthday. This was no ordinary celebration, it was a grand feasting of sumptious seafood and she is one very lucky gal.

I was envious when I saw the photos, this was close encounter of the seafood kind. There was chilli crab, salted egg crabs, oatmeal prawns, squid. Drool factor....10 out of 10!!!! Yummy stuff... not to be missed!

The place is called Master Crab and the address is

Address: Blk 19 Ghim Moh Road #01-229 Singapore

Now I haven't tried these myself, I will have to, on my next trip to Singapore. I have been told that the crabs are fresh, succulent & juicy.

Photos contributions by Josephine Oei

To conclude, this rating is from Josephine herself; meanwhile I will just have to drool at her photos and wait for my return to Singapore in near future.

"This seafood joint is at Ghim Moh road block 19 just opposite Ulu Pandan CC.
I can rate it 7/10 for the crab compare to Ang Mo Kio Blk 232 Melben crab."