Malaysian Lunch

Last Wednesday is a special day for me, the canteen in our office prepared lunch with the theme Malaysian Day. The canteen boss used to work in Malaysian before for few years. Am totally flattered when I saw a big Malaysian flag hagging on the food counter, they even set up a quiz for us to guess the raw ingredients that are commonly used in Malaysian cooking. Although the food is not as good as they are in Malaysia, but it did satisfy my longing for asian food and currys.

The Menu:

- Beef Rendang
- Sambal Udang
- Kurma Ayam
- Nasi Lemak
- Char Koay Teow
-Fried Vegetables
- Ikan Bilis
- Fresh Petal
- Bubur Kacang Hijau
- Onde-onde (decorated with dried guava!)

all these for only £3.50. But for me, this is bit too mixed-up...

the bubur kacang hijau comes with an onde-onde decorated with dried guava...

In the mood for Chinese New Year

in the UK.....

Yeah, thanks to Alind, I received my first double ang pow this year by post.


and thanks to Gary, I got my Bee Cheng Hiang bak kua. Things that are hard to get really did taste nicer, I remembered I dont really fancy bak kua when I lived in Malaysia. But it is simply delicious when I had them with bread last night :)

I bought some clementines (which is just like our mandarin oranges) as well from the market

Fruitful Saturday Afternoon

I have long decided to try my mum's curry recipe and my favourite sambal belacan, so I decided to spend the whole saturday afternoon doing just that - preparing the curry paste and sambal belacan. I borrowed a mini chopper from a colleague of mine and hope to get one for myself one of these days. And to cover the smell of belacan (for the benefits of my housemate :p), I managed to cook the red bean soup with longan as well.

Cant wait to cook my curry next week using the curry paste that I have just prepared!

the sambal belacan - to go with my fried rice and fried beehoon :)

the red bean soup with dried longan, in my new bowl brought from Japan Centre in London

Viv's Spaghetti alla Carbonara

I have been watching Rick Stein's Mediterranean Escapes on BBC every thursday last November while I am cooking myself. The kitchen is attached to the living room in the flat that I stayed previously, thus I have the luxury of watching the TV while I cooked and eat! I enjoyed the show alot and didnt missed a show.

Came upon his recipe book one day while I was shopping at Marks and Spencer and decided to try the spaghetti alla carbonara recipe from Sardinia. Since the recipe is from the Mediterranean, I cant find the original ingredient and have to use the substitute instead, like the Sardinian pecorino sardo cheese and Pancetta, which I replace with Parmesan cheese and british smoked back bacon. I didnt even know what is Pancetta in the first place, and like what most people will do nowadays if they need to find out about something, yeah, just google it, and you will have your answer. Pancetta is an Italian type of bacon produced from belly of pork which is seasoned, then rolled up and dry cured.

Here is the result:

Happy 2008

Spent my new year's eve with a bunch of friends in London. We had our dinner at Wong Kei in Chinatown before heading towards the Embankment, but it was already too late. All the entrance to the viewing areas are already closed because there are just too many people. Gotta get there earlier next year ;) if i am still here la....

Happy New Year! and may all your resolutions becomes reality, kekeke....

as you can see, our view is blocked by a big building. We can only see this teeny bits of the fireworks :(