BAKED POTATOES

These are not your normal, run the mill baked potatoes. I love to have a really crispy, skin on baked potatoes with a soft, fluffy centre that explodes with taste when it gets into my mouth. This is perfect for those who are lactose intolerant, as there are no cheese or sour cream in this recipe. To get the rich taste, a good splash of pork lard is added. Not only does it bring along a wallop of flavour, it also helps to give the potatoes a crispy crust!

Ingredients

2 of whatever different potatoes you can find.

zest of 1 orange

1 teaspoon of coarse black pepper

10 cloves of garlic

4 rashes of bacon, chopped

3 stalks of sage, roughly chopped

5 tablespoons of pork oil

Method

Parboil the potatoes

Press the boiled potatoes to give it extra surface area. This is to make sure that there is more of the crispy crust when you bake them.

Generously coat the smashed potatoes with pork oil, put them on a tray and bake them for about 30mins on medium heat

On a hot pan, fry the garlic and bacon bits until golden brown.

When the 30mins are up, add the garlic, bacon bits, orange zest, black pepper and sage to the potatoes and bake for another 10mins.

The dish is ready to be served when you smell the aroma of sage and orange.

I just love the crispy skin and the fluffy texture of this dish. The orange zest, bacon and sage brings a christmassy feel to this dish. It goes on famously well with a slab of roasted pork belly.

Enjoy!

A SPECIAL CHRISTMAS ROAST PORK

Christmas is around the corner, and I was asked to make a siu yoke, but with a western twist. So having made porchetta before, I decided to work some of the porchetta's marinade into this.

Ingredients

2kg pork belly

4 tablespoons honey

1 teaspoon cinnamon

4 tablespoons of chopped fresh rosemary

1 whole garlic, chopped

1 tablespoon coarse black pepper

The zest of one orange

The juice of one orange

2 teaspoons of sea salt (for the marinade)

2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar

Method

Clean the pork belly, and make sure there's no bristles on the skin.

With a sharp meat pricker, prick the skin side of the pork belly. The more pricks, the better. ( that sounds so wrong! ;-) )

Mix all the ingredients to form a paste

With the tip of a sharp knife, make tiny cuts into the flesh side of the pork belly.

Rub the paste on the flesh side of the pork belly, and make sure to have the marinade into the tiny cuts that you made earlier. This way the flavour has a much better chance of penetrating the meat.

Now, rub some salt on the skin and let the meat air dry for 5 hours. While that is happening, you will notice water on the skin. I usually wipe the water off every hour and rub salt again. This is to draw moisture out so you will get a good, crispy skin when it's roasted.

Preheat an oven to 180 degree celsius and when the 5 hours are up, put it in and let it roast at that temperature for the first hour. 

Set the temperature at 150 degree celsius for the second hour and 200 degree celsius for the third hour.

Take the meat out after the third hour and baste the skin with vinegar, put it back into the oven, set the temperature to 250 degree celsius and let it cook until the meat is slightly charred. Don't worry about the charring, as you will be able to scrape it off when the meat is cooled.

When it's done, take it out of the oven and let it rest for 30 minutes before scraping the charred bits off and you're ready to serve!

I know it's a tedious process, but the end result is well worth the effort. What you will get is a really crispy skin and a really tender flesh under the crackling. This will be an impressive dish to have on your Christmas dinner table!

Enjoy!

THE LIFE OF A LUNCHBOX
CATERER

Got myself into the lunchbox catering business with a friend recently. It all started with a friend posting on Facebook asking if anyone was interested in a new business venture. Since the workshop business was kind of slow, I got in touch with him and we discussed it for some time. A few names were bandied around before us settling on the name Hot Chicks and pasta, which described our business to a T. 

Finally, we did a food tasting session on 1st November this year, which, coincidentally, was my sister's birthday, and the anniversary of my dad's passing! The two of them are real foodies, and on such an auspicious date, how can anything go wrong?!

The food tasting session was an unprecedented success. With four flavours confirmed for the initial menu, we even did the photoshoot for the menu on the same day!

So once we got the costings right and the menu confirmed, we started taking orders and the first eight packs were sent out on 25th November.

So, what is the life of a lunch pack caterer like? Well, it all begins two days prior to delivery, with the search for the freshest halal slaughtered chicken. All the chicken that we use are slaughtered on the same day that we buy and has to be between 1.5 to 1.7kg in weight. This is to ensure that the chicken remains fresh and it will fit into our compartmentalized boxes.

The chicken is then brought back to be cleaned and quartered. My pet peeve when eating chicken from any shop is that there are coagulated blood in the inside of the chicken, something that I thoroughly remove during the cleaning process. Any feathers that escaped the cleaning process at the slaughterers are also removed at this point.

All the marinade is made fresh, with the freshest ingredients and the cleaned chicken will be soaked in the marinade in almost airtight sealed bags in the fridge for two days. This is to ensure that the chicken absorbs all the flavours before being grilled, to bet the best tasting chicken.

Depending on the size of the day's orders, waking up at 5am in the morning to start preparing for the day is not unusual. The carrots and broccoli needs to be cleaned and chopped to manageable sizes, the penne needs to be boiled and the chickens need to be roasted, depending on the quantity, for up to two hours at a go. All the equipment and ingredients used are free of porcine contaminants, to aplease local sensitivities.   

When all the cooking's done, it's time to pack everything and head to our central kitchen. This is where we heat the chicken again and pack them according to the orders and delivery locations. 

By eleven am, all the orders would be ready for delivery, waiting for the runners, who would then deliver the food to the respective customers. If time permits, we actually do deliveries on our own too. The cycle continues, with me going to the chicken shop, looking for the freshest chicken to marinade for the coming orders.

This job can be tiring, but if you really like to cook, this is a pretty rewarding one. So next time you order a Hot Chicks Chicken meal, you will know all the work and the freshest ingredients that makes the meal a great one!

LAUNCH OF THAT BLOODY BOTAK

It's been an incredibly busy month for me. Besides juggling my time between maddriver's garage and Rapid Stop brake pads, I got my feet wet in the food catering business with a partner and formed Hot Chicks. Waking up 5 days a week at 5 in the morning to prepare food is no joke!

But being the sucker for punishment, and a lover of all things pork, I've decided to plunge head on into this and make That Bloody Botak into a roast meat business. 

Delicious, melt in your mouth char siu, suitable for all occasions and super tasty too! The char siu is not overly sweet, but for those who like their char siu really sweet, it comes with a serving of sweet and sticky char siu sauce. The char siu is made using only the finest imported pork belly, as this particular source provides the best texture of meat for making super tender char siu. 

The char siu is made using only the finest imported pork belly, as this particular source provides the best texture of meat for making super tender char siu. 

The meat is then marinated for at least two days with my blend of spices to get that rich and sweet taste. It is then grilled low and slow, for at least 3 hours to get that nice and tender meat and a sweet and savoury outer crust.

This is what you will expect from a char siu made by That Bloody Botak. Delicious, tender char siu with the flavour going through the meat!

Besides char siu, my other product, which is also quite popular among my customers id the siu yoke. The things that makes this siu yoke stand out from the rest is the tender, well marinated flesh, and the super crispy skin that remains that way for at least 10 hours, if you have not already finished them off! Trust me, it was was a difficult 10 hour wait!

See how juicy it is! The siu yoke is made from the freshest locally sourced pork belly, lovingly marinated and grilled to perfection. For those who would like to have a little sauce to go with the siu yoke, I have a spicy pineapple sauce that goes just perfect with this, but as is, the siu yoke is good enough to eat on it's own.

As much as I would like to list the prices here, I can't because the price of pork fluctuates, so should you want some of this mouth drooling, lip smacking goodness, call me at +60133420849 and I'll quote you accordingly. The minimum order for  charr siu is 1kg and 2 kg for siu yoke. The weight is taken when the meat is raw, as after grilling, the meat tends to shrink, more evidently in the siu yoke.

SOFT AND CHEWY
CHOCOLATE CHIP
COOKIES

I love soft and chewy cookies. I love dark chocolate too! What better way to have your cake and eat it too! So i surfed the internet and found this easy to follow recipe.

Ingredients

2.75 cups of all purpose flour
Half teaspoon baking soda
1 cup unsalted butter
Half cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs 
2 cups pf dark chocolate chips

Method

Preheat oven to 160 degree celsius
Mix salt, baking soda, flour and set aside
In a bowl, mix butter, both sugars with a mixer until slightly creamy
Now add the vanilla extract and eggs to the mix and beat until mixed well
Add the flour mixture and chocolate chips into the bowl and stir until well combined
Put heaped tablespoons of the cookie dough about 2 inches apart on a greased baking tray
Bake until the cookies are golden brown on the edges, but soft in the centre. this should take between 8 to 10 minutes
Remove when done, let it cool off before storing in an airtight container. 

It is important not to overbake the cookies as they will get hard. This recipe makes about 48 delicious soft chewy cookies and can keep for up to a week, but fat chance of that happening in my house ;-) 

Enjoy!

DOGGIE TREATS

Those of you who know me well knows that I have a soft spot for animals. I have three mutts at home that loves snacks, and snacks these days are not cheap. Besides the costs involved, I always want to have the best for my dogs. You won't know what chemicals are added into the commercial dog snacks, so I decided to make them myself.

I found this recipe while surfing the net for dog snacks. As I'm not sure how well my mutts will like this, I halved everything on the recipe, replaced the bacon oil with pork oil, as I don't know if my mutt's stomach will agree with the nitrates used in the curing of the bacon. 

Ingredients

1 egg

half a cup of milk

quarter cup of water

10 tablespoons of pork oil

2.5 cups of wheat flour

In a bowl, mix the egg with all the liquid ingredients

Slowly add it into the flour, stir until it forms a dough

When the dough is done, dust some flour on a clean flat surface and with a rolling pin, roll the dough until it's about 1cm thick

You can now cut it to any shape desired, with a cookie cutter, and place them on a greased cookie tray

Put it in a pre heated 175 degree celsius oven and let it bake for 40 minutes. The smell will permeate the whole kitchen, so be prepared for some mouth watering moments ;-)

Once that's  done, take it out of the oven, let it rest on a wire rack to cool off before keeping them in a cookie jar. Too bad the mutts enjoyed it, if not I'd be perfectly happy to eat them on my own!

Empayar Seremban Siew Pow
LG 1-57, Tingkat Bawah Tanah
Pasar Besar Negri Sembilan
Jalan Besar TBK 4
Taman Bukit Kepayang
70200 Seremban
Negri Sembilan
Tel: 06 – 601 6308



You can't miss this place. It's visible from the North South Highway coming down from Kuala Lumpur. I've always driven past this place without giving it a second thought as it seems like a tourist trap with bad food to me. In a way, it was, a tourist trap, but the food was far from bad!

Tourist traps do not serve prawns as fresh as this. And this is a dish that my wife and I would order seconds. One plate is never enough! The prawns were live, flash boiled and served with soy sauce. Simple as that. But there was nothing simple about the taste. The prawn on it's own is nice and crunchy, with the taste of prawny goodness. Paired with the dark soy sauce, it was a match made in heaven! A simply excellent dish!

Almost everywhere you go in Seremban you are bound to come across a stall selling hakka mee. This stall gives the standard dish a twist by frying it with tou miu, prawns, sotong and egg. I really enjoy this dish! The wok hei is strong in this one. The seafood in this dish are fresh, and if you ask for a serving of sambal to go with this dish, it would give the dish a kick so hard you wonder why they did not do that to the dish in the first place!

Want to have fish but don't like the bones? This is the answer to your prayers! Sliced snapper fillets stir fried with garlic, ginger, oyster sauce and spring onions, with a dash of chinese wine added into the mix. What can I say about this dish? Nice, smoky goodness, that's what! The combination of flavours blends well with the fish. If you added hor fun to the mix, you will have an excellent stand alone dish!

The kam heong lala is pretty good too! A combination of spices and dried shrimps makes this dish a must have when you're having a bowl of rice!

Sweet sour pork......... In ice?! Yes! and it tastes pretty good too! they somehow managed to keep the pork crunchy, with a nice coating of sweet and sour sauce, cold and yet, still damm tasty! I still get a kick when I see the faces of my guests when this dish is brought to the table! This is a must-have whenever I come here.

Together with a dish of toufu, three plates of rice, a coconut, a chinese herbal drink and chinese tea for five, the bill came up to RM171.85 for the five of us. Pretty reasonable, considering the quality and volume of food. Money well spent!

HOT CHICK'S PHOTO SHOOT

Hot Chicks is a brand spanking new company that was started by two foodies who love to cook. They specialise roast chicken, and are in the food delivery business. No time to go out for lunch? Want to cater for a small party? Need marinated meat for your BBQ? Tired of eating unhealthy food day in, day out? Hot Chicks is the solution. Chicken, freshly slaughtered in the halal way, marinated for a minimum of two days to let the flavour go all the way into the meat, expertly grilled in a pork free environment to bring you lip smacking, finger licking, tender and tasty chicken! A side of carbohydrates and fibre makes this a complete healthy meal! none of the unhealthy stuff are used in the process of making a Hot Chicks meal, and the only additional oil that they use is cold pressed olive oil.

Hot Chicks recently had a photoshoot for their website and menu, and I was there to make sure the food were all finished ;-) Here are some of the pictures of what went on that day. Should you want to order anything, they can be contacted Facebook, through a link from this blog ;-)

BLACK PEPPER CHICKEN 

SPICY HONEY LEMONGRASS CHICKEN 

CHINESE BBQ CHICKEN