Ahh, Maggi Mee, the original favorite instant noodle that has been so instrumental in getting me through college and all those late night hunger. In fact, my first ever meal cooked without the help from mom was a packet of Maggi mee.

Back then, it was the curry flavor Maggi with an egg for extra umph. Nothing fancy, I was already having trouble cracking the egg without making a mess in the kitchen.

Magggi migoreng pedas, garlic, shallots, curry leaves, prawns, assistant!

After plenty late night cook-outs and a few years spent studying/working overseas, my general cooking skills has leveled up quite a bit; and with that, the sophistication in preparing a plate of good old Maggi too, has improved.

Today, I am going to share a simple recipe in preparing fried Maggi Mee with live fresh water prawn (details on getting the freshest fresh water prawn below). Maggi Mee, my way!

snipping the legs off, frying garlic/shallots/curry leaves, then prawns

Ingredients:

• 2 packets of Maggi Mee migoreng plus asli pedas (or any Maggi migoreng)
• shallots, garlic, and curry leaves
• 2 eggs
• a dash of salt and soya sauce
• 4-6 prawns (preferably live!)
• vegetable oil

boil the Maggi, then fry with the condiments and egg, success!

Steps for Prawns:

• heat up frying pan with vegetable oil, and fry shallots, garlic, and curry leaves till fragant
• add live prawn, and sauna it to death
• add a dash of salt and some soya sauce
• tips: add a dash of water and cover the frying pan to steam the seafood a little bit

Steps for Maggi:

• boil Maggi for 2 minutes and then drain water
• mix the condiment in a small bowl with 2 table spoon of water
• stir fry the Maggi with the premixed condiment
• add two eggs, and stir till eggs are cooked

Haze, my cooking assistant and prawn fishing extraordinaire

Finally, add prawns to the noodle, and you’ve got a plate of really awesome fresh water prawn Maggi. Bonus point if you can do both of these steps at the same time to ensure that both items are piping hot when served.

That is my way of cooking Maggi, what about yours?

If you think you have a recipe as interesting, head to Maggi Mee My Way’s website to participate in the contest. All you have to do is by submitting your recipe with Maggi Mee and a few photos (remember your unique ingredients, like my live prawn, for example).

Winners walk away with cash prizes up to RM 4,000 plus RM 100 worth of Maggi products hamper. Check out the prizes listing here. I always love it when contests give away cash prizes, money is just so much more versatile.

The video above  is the prove that the prawns used for the post were really caught from a prawn fishing pond the hard way. We spent 2 hours (1st 45 minutes in vain as we somehow managed to not used the hook) and got a total of 6 prawns back.

The end result was a couple plates of very delicious Maggi Mee with fresh water prawns. Yums!

So do you have what it takes to join Maggi Mee, My Way?

Tags:  haze,  instant-noodle,  lunch money,  maggi,  prawn

Posted by KY | 29 Comments »

When I was young, GUINNESS® was always the drink of choice to go with a good meal for my late dad. The association of the world’s No. 1 international premium black beer with good food etched into my memory since a long time ago. However, it was only many years later that cooking with GUINNESS® caught on in Malaysia with the now classic GUINNESS® pork ribs.

ze chef in black Emmanuel Stroobant working his magic

Little did I know you can cook way more than just pork ribs with GUINNESS®, as demonstrated by the famous Chef in Black from Asian Food Channel, Emmanuel Stroobant. Cheesie, Kenny, and I attended the Guinness Gastronomic Workshop at Mandarin Oriental to find out just how the celebrity chef gets it done.

We even got our hands dirty busy and tried a little kitchen magic ourselves.

ze assistant Antoine Maillet preparing tuna

Chef Stroobant and his assistant Antoine Maillet get things kicking by demonstrating the preparation a starter, tuna tar-tar taco with GUINNESS®. This dish is pretty straight forward and you can try it at home without having a degree from kitchen academy.

my team and I making the tuna tar-tar

Why don’t I just tell you how to do it instead, very simple really.

The ingredients:

• Sashimi grade tuna, 1kg, diced
• small gherkin, 10
• shallot, 10, peeled and diced
• liliput caper, 4 tbps
• tacos, 1 gab
• Japanese mayonnaise, 300g
• ketchup, 5 tbsp
• Worcestershire sauce, 3 tbsp
• GUINNESS® Foreign Extra Stout (FES), 3 tbps (drink the rest!)
• Tabasco to taste

Just mix all ingredients and serve on taco!

cheesie grilling chicken

The two chefs then demonstrated a slightly more complicated dish – Kakuni style braised chicken with GUINNESS®, fresh herb risotto and GUINNESS® poached oyster.

It is a dish with a touch of Japanese style in preparing the chicken, having the skin crispy while not over cooking the meat. A pint of GUINNESS® Foreign Extra Stout is used, with other ingredients such as sugar, soy, garlic, ginger, and black pepper to complete the dish.

kenny with his risotto

The risotto is pretty straight forward, with risotto rice, olive oil, onion, parsley, chives, chervil, salt and pepper cooked in chicken stock and some white wine to perfection. It actually goes really well with the braised chicken.

After the good chef demonstrated to us the preparation of the dessert – GUINNESS® sorbet (it was actually very good!), it was time for us to get ourselves busy.

We were split into four teams of three and tried cooking the dishes above in front of at least 200 people! It was actually a little bit intimidating. My team did the taco tar-tar, Cheesie had to dodge some burning oil in preparing the chicken, while Kenny tried hard not to under cook the risotto. It was some experience, and lucky we didn’t burn down the kitchen (fire extinguisher was available)

parmesan crusted chicken, chicken liver parfait, Guinness sorbet

After the cooking demonstration, the good people at GUINNESS® treated us to a sumptuous dinner with GUINNESS® infused dishes inspired by the celebrity chef himself, Emmanual Stroobant (probably just in case we were not able to eat our own creation?).

We started out with chicken liver parfait with GUINNESS® jelly, aged balsamic with small brioche. I never really liked pate (chicken liver), but the combination with GUINNESS® jelly was actually pretty nice.

Next came the GUINNESS® sorbet to cool things off a bit before the main dish was served, Parmesan crusted chicken with GUINNESS® dough baked green asparagus and tomato nage.

fraindises, chocolate tart with Guinness cherries, olive oil ice cream

We ended the night with soft centered chocolate tart with GUINNESS® cherrie and the rather interesting olive oil ice cream. It was lots of fun and certain gastronomically satisfying! I think some of the Western food places should start looking to adopting the idea.

Tags:  cheesie,  chef in black,  guinness,  kenny,  lunch money,  yc

Posted by KY | 33 Comments »

Note to self: never bet on football again!

I bet against Spain in Euro 2008 and ended up owing a home-cooked meal to Eiling, stupid Germany squad, hmph! Anyway, to keep to the promise, I went to Isetan last week and spent too much money on a Tefal frying pan to prepare one of my favorite traditional dishes specialized by my mom: fried mee hun with stewed pork.

tools, material, preparation, fruit of labor

On the day itself, I called up mom to recap the recipe since this was something I’ve never attempted before. According to her, the ingredients as are as follow:

• a clove of garlic
• some shallots
• mee hun for 3-4 pax
• a can of stewed pork
• a carrot
• cabbage
• some prawns
• dark soya sauce, light soya sauce, sugar and salt

Not overly complicated, she also mentioned I should remove excess lard and oil from the canned stewed meat. Lets just say I am one who does not like to follow recipes verbatim.

shallots and garlic go first

Now, this is slightly more complicated than the angel hair pasta with scallop that I made, but I’m sure with a little bit of practice and a few meals of mee hun to your pet dog, you will be able do it too. Here goes:

• soak mee hun in water for 30 mins to an hour
• prepare mixture of 2 sp soya sauce, 2 sp dark soya sauce, some salt, and some sugar with water
• fry chopped garlic and shallots until fragrant
• add prawn and cook till they start to turn red
• add mee hun, the sauce from 2nd step, stir
• add canned stewed pork, stir, add some water if your pan gets too dry
• add cabbage and carrot, stir till they are cooked
• slightly overpriced but awesome mee hun is ready!

can’t you smell it from here?

Believe it or not, the mee hun actually turned out better than expected. In fact, it was as good as mom’s! Eiling, Rachel, and I all finished our huge servings rather quickly and was very satisfied. The mixture of pork, prawn, and vegetable worked beautifully, and the hint of lard in that mee hun, *slurps*, you just have to try it.

Total cost of the meal was close to RM 30 for 3 person, but that includes a one time purchase of dark soya sauce. The canned pork was close to RM 10 but well worth it. Eiling brought a bottle of wine to commemorate the occasion too (that, or she’s just an alcoholic) It was a splendid dinner.

a bottle of red wine to go with the awesome dish

Take home chef signing off!

Tags:  eiling,  pork,  rachel,  stewed,  vermicelli

Posted by KY | 45 Comments »

It’s been a while since I did a recipe and cooking post. In fact, it’s been a while since I did any cooking at all. Not counting the insect meal we had back in May, I haven’t done any cooking since Chinese New Year (I usually cook the reunion dinner.)

angel hair pasta with scallops, slurps

While helping Cheesie out with grocery shopping, we somehow ended up at this seafood specialty shop at SS2 (the same row as restaurant Hoppy). They sell anything from frozen prawns to lobsters to live crab, and when I saw the huge frozen scallop in the fridge, it was love at first sight.

The 20 huge scallops in a bag costs a cool RM 37.50, so this wasn’t going to be a cheap meal, but temptation won at the end, and the rest is history. Anyway, lets get on to this whole recipe thing already.

just half a dozen ingredients and 4 steps, real easy!

Ingredients:

• scallops, the bigger the better!
• sliced garlic (aglio)
• dried red chili
• virgin olive oil (olio)
• black pepper
• angel hair spaghetti

The steps:

• boil spaghetti
• at the same time (if you have more than one stove), heat up some olive oil and start frying garlic, dried chili, and scallop till the scallop just about to start getting brown skin
• add in spaghetti, stir a while to get the scallop taste mixed into the pasta
• sprinkle some black pepper, and it’s good to eat!

tastes even better than it looks ok!

The pasta actually turned out very good. I always like angel hair as the finer strands of pasta tends to be able to soak up more sauce, plus it’s easier to chew as well. Scallop has always been one of my favorite seafood choices, I used to have fried rice with scallop back in States, and this is just a western style of the same thing.

This is something really simple to cook (as opposed to kung pao chicken or fried pomphret), and you can always replace scallops with prawns or even sausages (on a budget). So don’t always just rely on Maggie Mee, get busy already!

Tags:  angel hair,  cheesie,  scallop,  spaghetti

Posted by KY | 51 Comments »

I am a strong believer that you gotta do something slightly crazy once in a while to stay sane in this world, so last Saturday I invited a bunch of daring friends and hosted an Insect Cook Out. The attendees were Kim, Su Ann, Sammy, Terence, ST, Dree, and of course my house mate Rachel. The following 6 minute video is the whole insect cook out adventure, check it out!

The whole idea actually started right after Terence, Dree, and I went to Bangkok and had our weird and wonderful creatures including insects, worms, and frogs. Kim was protesting the fact that we did not bring back anything for her, and that’s when Terence came up with the idea that we should just cook some ourselves.

the ingredients from aquarium shop and grocery store

I eventually tabled the idea to Kim and she responded enthusiastically, then I got Su Ann, Sammy, and the rest of the gang to join in as well. This thing is actually going to work!

So I set up the official time for this unusual cook out at 5pm on Saturday evening. I went out to grocery store to get the seasonings: pepper, curry leaves, shallots, dried chili, and garlic. Just half an hour before the cook out, I got to an aquarium shop near Sunway and got a box of good size worms (RM9) and 120 crickets (for RM3)

ahhh, glorious protein enriched food

Contrary to Su Ann’s believe that we googled for the recipe, it was completely original sans the “salt juice” suggested by Terence.

First I fry some shallots, garlic, dried chili, and curry leaves to flavor the oil. These are then taken out and the crickets and worms thrown in the hot oil. Some salt juice is then added for extra kick. It’s that simple, and boy it turned out great! (the insects were freeze in the fridge for about 15 minutes prior cooking to prevent them from jumping everywhere)

the crazy diners

The dish actually tasted a lot better than what we had in Bangkok, and we didn’t even save up anything for my buddy Douglas who came late. The worms were a bit like soft shell crab (as described by Sammy), and the crickets still juicy inside while crispy on the outside. Very nice.

There’ll be another short video for this where Rachel and Kim ate the bugs raw, stay tuned!

I’m so going to prepare this again for the next x’mas eve party!

Tags:  crickets,  dree,  gareth,  insect,  kimberly,  ky,  rachel,  su ann,  terence,  worms

Posted by KY | 78 Comments »