Last month it was the Vietnamese cooking demo and Vietnamese promotion at Latest Recipe, Le Meridien. Now the very same hotel runs the Taste of Italy” culinary event featuring guest Chef Fabrizio from Westin Bejing Financial Street.
Together with a bunch of bloggers & members of media, we were treated to a cooking demonstration by the good chef, and here’s one of his recipe.
Now even I think I can properly cook a meal with lobster that will do the shell fish justice. Here’s the recipe.
glorious Maine lobster in frying pan with olive oil, herbs & cherry tomato
Ingredients:
For the pesto
here’s the spaghetti with lobster
The preparation method is pretty straight forward, and let me just copy verbatim from Chef Fabrizio’s text.
Roast garlic in large pan with olive oil. Add lobster, cherry tomato and cook with some water, add seasoning. Boil pasta in a large pot with salted water until the favorite cooking. Blend herbs with the olive oil for pesto. Take“` lobster out of the sauce, clean the tongs and half the tail. Arrange halved tail in a plate. Strain spaghetti and add sauce with herb pesto and butter. Arrange spaghetti beside the lobster, add lobster meat. Decorate with some herb leaves and serve.
fresh spring herb pesto, prepared with a blender
It’s pretty simple isn’t it?
Chef Fabrizio has a bit of flair and the lack of “seriousness” when it comes to preparation of his dishes. As he proudly said “I am not a pastry chef”, and cooking should involves a sense of flexibility and creativity. I like this style.
In fact, in a short span of 1 hour or so, the good chef prepared three dishes right in front of us, including the eggplant millefeuille recipe shared by Kim.
and we were served a very good buffet spread too, Chef Fabrizio & Chef Antoine
To get a taste of Chef Fabrizio’s creations, you can head to Favola at Le Meridien KL from June 4 to June 12, 2011. Ala carte goes for RM 25++ to RM 130++. Don’t miss out especially if you’re a fan of authentic Italian cuisine.
KY with Chef Fabrizio, Jon & Ciki, Cindy & Kim & Haze, Kim & Gareth
We were also fed an awesome spread of Italian dishes after the event (and after we sampled all three dishes prepared by Chef Fabrizio). There were cold cuts, clams, pizza, bruschetta, smoked salmon, salad, and more. It was a fantastic and certainly gastronomically satisfied session.
Address:
Favola
2 Jalan Stesen Sentral,
Kuala Lumpur 50470
GPS: 3.135631,101.686476
Tel: 03-2263 7888
This is easily one of my favorite dishes from mom when I was young. Every time mom made her signature chicken rice, I would take a second serving. I think if she had made this more often, perhaps I’d be 6 foot tall and weigh 80kg with pure muscle (or more likely, same height with extra 20kg fat)
awesome home cook chicken rice with chinese sausage
The ingredients are quite close to claypot chicken rice, but with a few extras that you typically wouldn’t find at hawker center.
While it does take a few extra steps to prepare, this isn’t a dish that is difficult to make at all, or have ingredients that are hard to source even if you aren’t reside in Malaysia (and crave for that claypot chicken rice). Here’s the recipe.
home cook chicken rice ingredients – chicken, mushroom, chinese sausage
The ingredients (for 2 pax):
fry the rice and ingredients, then continue in rice cooker
You do need both a frying pan and rice cooker to make this dish, but no, there’s no clay pot or charcoal flame needed in this case.
Instructions:
prepare the condiments – fried shallots and spring onion
While waiting for the rice to cook, prepare some fried shallots and chopped some fresh green onion as garnish. They will greatly add to the overall flavor and texture to the chicken rice dish.
One or two stalks of green onion and a couple shallots would be enough.
haze enjoying the chicken rice with ABC soup
The result is two plates of absolutely delicious home cook chicken rice prepared only in around one hour or so. The dish is best accompanied with some clear soup (ABC, radish soup, etc). Optionally, you can also add some salted fish on top, I would if I had some good quality ones to go with.
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One of my favorite quick meal is fried rice, and of all the different versions, one of my favorites would be the good old fashion sambal belacan fried rice.
Since it isn’t exactly a popular dish at hawker centres or Chinese/Malay restaurants, I thought a simple recipe could be helpful for those who are a bit adventures in the kitchen.
sambal belacan fried rice with prawns
First of all, to make sambal belacan fried rice, you must make sambal belacan. No brainer right?
The ingredients couldn’t be simpler, I got them from local market
sambal belacan’s ingredients – chili & belacan
Here’s how you do it
The mortar and pestle was obtained for RM 35 at a local market. You can use a blender but it won’t taste the same though. I keep the finished product in an air tight jar in the fridge.
Haze’s pounding it the old school way
So now that you have the sambal, here is how you make the fried rice, ingredients:
stir to perfection
Steps:
Salt is not needed since belacan provides the necessary saltiness to the rice already. The result is two servings of really spicy, fragrant, and rather delicious old school sambal belacan fried rice. Sambal took about 30 minutes to prepare, and fried rice another 15 minutes or so.
Of course, we made more than enough sambal for just cooking fried rice, the actual main intention was to use it as condiment for tau eu bak (braised pork belly with soya sauce), which will be the next recipe I publish here.
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:
boil the Maggi, then fry with the condiments and egg, success!
Steps for Prawns:
Steps for Maggi:
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?
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:
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:
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!
