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 

MONEYS CORNER
144A Jalan Vivekanda, Off Jalan Tun Sambanthan, Brickfields, 50470 Kuala Lumpur.

This is the place foodies go to to get pork noodles to die for. Besides that, the char kway teow has always been one of my favourites, and there's this new kid on the block, a johnny come lately, who could share the stage or steal the thunder from these two old cocks.

This shop needs no introduction. Of all the pork noodles I've had so far, this is the best! 

Don't be fooled by the small portion, as I was so hungry I ate at least a quarter of it before i realised that I forgot to take a photo! I usually order this without the noodles and the veggies, as I love the unadulterated taste of the pork broth. The choy sum gives out a very slight bitter taste to the soup, so if you want pure porky goodness, this is the way to go.  The liver in the soup is done just the way I like it, Ever so slightly bloody to the bite. The egg added to the soup brings out another level of sweet flavour, complementing the porky broth perfectly!

When Uncle Lim was frying the noodles, the food was excellent! Good thing he trained the Indon worker well, as she could also whip out a plate with the same consistency as Uncle Lim did in his heyday. These days you can still see him there, nursing a drink and keeping an eye on both this and the chicken rice stall, which is also his.

The wok hei is strong in this one, and it's surprisingly tasty too, considering no pork lard was used. There used to be at least six huge prawns in each plate, but times, being as it is now, the size of the prawns have shrunk slightly, but thank god the flavours remains the same. I wouldn't miss this whenever I'm here.

Now, for the new kid on the block. Damm! if only I had an appetite like I used to have before! This is one dish that's really common on the streets of Thailand! Pork stewed in a wonderful braising liquid containing some spices and soy sauce, which is then chopped up and served with a bowl of steaming hot rice. How to go wrong with that?!

Just look at that and to all you pork lovers out there, try telling me that you did not die and go to heaven! Now, that is excellent stuff! A melt in your mouth experience waiting to happen!

And for those who think that pork fat is too unhealthy for you, there are some other fat free protein options for you takut mati buggers too ;-)

I found the salted vegetables just about right, with a slightly sweet aftertaste. 

And that broth! Oh, that broth! It's like the nectar of the pork gods! Spiced with cinnamon and star anise, amongst others, it is bloody excellent! And that fried garlic bits! I love it! The meats were really tender. Too bad I had the char kway teow and pork soup, otherwise i'd be wacking more of this really excellent stuff!

The indian rice stall at the back deserves special mention too, but unfortunately I just can't stuff any more food down my throat without my stomach exploding.! They have very good mutton curry and fried fish there, and should you have the space for some more food, give it a try. You will not regret! 

Enjoy!

THIN CRUST PIZZAS

If you follow this blog you will know that I don't make the pizza base. The last time i made this I used a tortilla from Mission Foods for the base. However, the base was not really what i like, but being a lazy bum I bought the tortilla base from Giant. it's the house brand, and boy was I surprised at how good it was as a thin crust base! It was like the base of California Pizza Kitchen's thin crust pizzas! really nice and crispy!

This time I took the time to make a proper pizza tomato sauce, and made two different types of pizza. One was a 3 cheese smoked salmon and the other was a minced beef and pepperoni. the ingredients are as follows.

Ingredients
A can of skinless tomatoes, finely chopped
One whole garlic, finely chopped
One whole big onion, finely chopped
2 tablespoons dried Italian herbs
Mozzarella cheese, grated
Parmesan cheese, grated
Cheddar cheese, grated
150g minced beef
Sliced pepperoni
sliced smoked salmon



Method

To get a nice and crispy crust, you need to toast the tortilla in a hot pan or oven. These tortillas tend to puff up when hot, so you must be around to squeeze them flat or put something heavy on the top to prevent them from swelling up. What you want at the end of it is a nice, slightly crispy base. Do not over do this as the tortilla will have a chance to be fully crispy when you put the assembled pizza in the oven.

As for the sauce, in a hot pan, drizzle some olive oil and cook the onions, garlic and herbs till fragrant. Add the tomatoes and cook for a further minute to let the flavours infuse with the tomatoes.

For the smoked salmon pizza.....

On the crust, spread the sauce and sprinkle some of the cheeses on top.
put as much smoked salmon as you like, add some more cheese and Italian herbs on top. The pizza is now ready for the oven.

For the pepperoni pizza

Heat the sauce in a pan till it's boiling.
Add the minced beef, stir for 10 seconds and turn off the heat. Minced beef cooks really fast, and nobody will like the taste and texture of overcooked minced beef.
now spread that beefy sauce on the crust, sprinkle some of the cheeses on it, put as much pepperoni as it takes to cover the pizza and sprinkle more cheese and some italian herbs on top. now this pizza is ready for the oven.

Put the two pizzas into the oven, heat it up until the cheese melts and your pizza is ready!

This is a little more time consuming than my pizzas in a flash, but the effort is well worth it! Enjoy!

KOK SIONG NASI KANDAR PENANG

47G Jln Bandar 16 Pusat Bandar Puchong 47100 Selangor 47100 Puchong  The force is strong in this one. So strong that it's tractor beam will drag me there whenever I'm in Puchong. If the Millennium Falcon did not stand a chance against it, what about me?! So stand by, Chewie, we'll be in for a culinary treat! A close encounter of the Nasi Kandar kind! I've always been a fan of nasi kandar. I've travelled to it's spiritual home up north to savour it's goodness. There are times that I've been blown away, and there's times that I wish I could blow away those stall owners who desecrate the name Nasi Kandar with their less than mediocre offerings.    This stall is in a chinese coffeeshop. The  curries look normal, but believe me, when they are mixed together in the correct proportions, there's nothing normal about it! So is the queue during lunch hour. I was there at 11am and there already was a queue 10 strong! That chicken in the background is what the queue is all about! I just can't seem to get enough of it. So much so that I usually ask for two pieces instead of just one. The chicken is properly marinated with all the herbs and spices, fried on the spot and chopped up piping hot and put on your plate. Nothing beats a freshly fried, properly marinated chicken. I had it for lunch yesterday and my mouth is watering now as I'm writing this! As you can see, there are plates waiting for that chicken. the chicken really died for a good cause, in this case! As you can see, the portions are huge! It's big enough for two people to share if you ordered two pieces of that fried chicken goodness to go with it! And that curry mix! Makes me wonder why i drove more than 300km to have that nasi kandar in that back lane, which was damm expensive and did not taste as good as this! That curry mix is heavenly! That portion cost me RM12, good enough for two people and I highly recommend this place! So go try it once, and I dare you not to want to go back there again and again after that! Enjoy!

BRAISED NOODLES WITH MUSHROOMS AND VEGGIES

It's a pretty cool night, and I'm longing for some comfort food, you know, something familiar, like what your mom used cook, but the fridge is full of veggies, and I have to finish it off, so this is one dish that includes ingredients that were common in my mom's kitchen. 

When we were kids, salted soy bean paste, aka taochu, was something that my mom used quite a bit. It goes with fish, pork, chicken and noodles too. Since it has been a cool day, a little ginger will go a long way in keeping the body warm and bringing flavour to a vegetarian dish. Add some garlic to the mix and it would taste like how my mom used to cook pork liver. I used to love that dish! So cooking noodles with whatever veggies I have in the fridge with that as a braising broth should taste pretty good too! If the ingredients looks familiar, it's because one pack of veggies is always too much for the both of us to finish off, so I have to think of creative ways to get rid of them without it going to waste. ;-)

Ingredients

1 portion of wantan noodles
6 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 king oyster mushroom, sliced
A handful of bean sprouts
A handful of japanese mushrooms
A handful of green dragon veggeis, chopped
A 5cm knob of ginger, finely sliced
5 teaspoons of salted soy beans, mashed to a paste
1 tablespoon corn flour with some water

Method

In a pot of boiling water, cook the wantan noodles for 15 seconds, drain and put aside
In a hot pan, cook the garlic and ginger until fragrant
Add all the mushrooms, salted soy bean paste and half a cup of water, let it cook till the mushrooms are soft
Once the water has boiled down and the mushrooms are soft, it's time to add the green veggies and the bean sprouts. These do not take long to cook, so you might want to add the wantan noodles in at this point, with the watered corn starch mixture to thicken the gravy. 
Stir it well and it's ready to serve.

Feel free to add some soy sauce to this dish if it's not salty enough, but to me, it's just fine the way it is. A balanced meal with all the protein, fibre and carbohydrates to take you to breakfast! 

Enjoy! 

MUSHROOM YEE MEE

Over the past week I've been grilling so much meat that should I see another roast chicken, I'd go bonkers! Went to the butcher's at the supermarket to get some meat for char siu, and I came across this vegetable that I really like to eat. It's name, translated from cantonese, is called green dragon vegetable. Next to it was some delicious looking king oyster and japanese mushrooms. Bought those, together with some sweet pepper and yee mee thinking those would make a good dinner!

Ingredients

2 portions of yee mee
5 cm knob of young ginger, finely sliced
1 king oyster mushroom, finely sliced
About half a pack of japanese mushrooms, cleaned
1 handful of green dragon vegetable, chopped into manageable pieces
Half a big onion, finely sliced
5 cloves of garlic, chopped
2 sweet peppers, julienned 
2 tablespoons of light soy sauce
2 tablespoons of sesame seed oil
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons of black pepper

Method

Cook the yee mee to al dente, put it aside.
In a hot pan, add the butter, garlic , ginger and onions and cook to fragrant.
Add all the mushrooms and sweet pepper, cook until the mushrooms are slightly soft.
Add the green dragon vegetables and the cooked yee mee. The green dragon vegetables takes next to no time to cook, so you can now add the pepper, soy sauce and sesame seed oil to the mix.
Stir well and it's ready to serve.

Lately I've taken a liking to mushrooms, and with the protein from the mushrooms, I find the craving for meat greatly reduced. But somehow, the craving for super hot chili remains, hence the sliced chilli padi in the picture! Anyway, with or without the chili padi, this is one damm tasty meat-free dish! Enjoy!