Kyspeaks.com

Ladies and gentlemen, today yours truly don on chef’s hat and pretend that I know something about cooking. The recipe you are about to read comes from the Southern part of the country that likes to police the world. Yes, that would be U S of A.

We are going to learn about fried okra, on of my all time favorite beer food that isn’t served in any restaurant this side of Pacific.

fried okra ingredients – okra, pepper, salt, egg, milk

First, the ingredients, and they are fairly simple:

• okra (or lady finger, if you prefer)
• half a cup of milk
• one egg
• a cup of corn flour
• a tea spoon of salt
• pepper to taste
• other spices optional (be imaginative, if you would)

fried okra makes for awesome beer food

Then, the steps, this is child’s play in terms of cooking, no post graduate degree in culinary field is required:

• slice or chop okra into bite size
• beat the egg, milk, salt, pepper, and corn flour in a mixing bowl till even
• coat the okra
• fry till golden brown
• serve while hot!

This is one yummy snack that goes very well with cold beer, Kilkenny, Heineken, Guinness, anything! I brought this as my contribution to Suan’s xmas eve potluck, and was happy that it was well received. Even master chef Lance liked it, and that is plenty good for me

mimi bacon pizza by Haze

Haze came up with this concoction that she called mini bacon pizza. The ingredient’s pretty straight forward:

• bread
• bacon (as many slice as you have bread
• pasta sauce (tomato base)
• mozzarella  cheese
• oregano spice

Steps:

• flatten the bread (she had somehow forgotten this part then…)
• spread pasta sauce on bread, then add cheese and oregano
• carefully lay a strip of that precious bacon on top
• roll everything up and hold it with a toothpick
• fry till golden brown (for the health freaks, you can also bake them)

The result certainly did not disappoint either, I liked it a lot too!

clam chowder (Lance), bacon pasta (Suan), roast chicken (Kim), sausage (Horng)

Lance brought a pot of clam chowder that had uses some sort of bacon stock, it was by far the best clam chowder I’ve ever had! You can actually order it at bbq-addicts.com, I guarantee that you’ll be 100% satisfied!

Suan cooked up some bacon carbonara that turned out to be the best pasta she’s ever made, Kim too roasted a chicken, very juicy, and tasted plenty awesome right out of her new oven! Horng made some sort of east-meet-west sausage for the potluck.

xmas eve party at Suanie’s crib

The little get-together over xmas eve turned out to be a very gastronomically satisfying event. We had a little bit to drink (there’ll be plenty more for NYE in a few days’ time at Michael’s), and spent the night reliving the old tradition of watching Euro Trip all over again.

So how was your xmas?

When it comes to dimsum, Ming Court Hong Kong Tim Sum restaurant at Ipoh is gotta be one of my all time favorites. I always try to make it a point to stop by Ming Court whenever I drive between KL and Penang in the mornings.

For evening commute, I sometimes head to Pun Chun for wantan mee and chicken biscuits instead.

Ming Court Hong Kong Tim Sum restaurant

The restaurant is located at the heart of Ipoh city in an unsuspecting shop lot, opposite another dimsum behemoth that is Fu Shan. While some swore by Fu Shan, I personally had the experience of rather disappointing meal there, hence I stick to this old school outlet these days. (the reason why I don’t blog about Fu Shan).

Parking can be a bit challenging, but there’re private car parks nearby. Like Hong Kong, sharing table is pretty much obligated here due to the volume of customer.

glutinous rice with chicken, braised phoenix claws, stuffed eggplant

The glutinous rice with chicken, braised phoenix claws (chicken feet lah!), stuffed eggplants, and of course, the usual hargao (prawn dimsum) and siumai (pork dimsum) are must orders. The portions are slightly smaller than those found in KL, but packed a bigger punch in flavors.

The dimsum here always tasted super fresh and steamy hot too.

har gao, siu mai, black sesame soup

One of the must-order signature dish at Ming Court is their black sesame soup. While the black colored soup might look a bit like diluted mud from the photo, the combination of it’s smell and taste really blew me away when I had this. It was  rich yet really smooth, there’s no “jelak” feeling afer consuming the whole bowl either.

deep fried dimsum, chee cheong fun, pork ribs

Other than traditional steamed dimsum, there’s a wide variety of deep fried dishes too. I’ve tried their prawns with mayonnaise, wu kok, and quite a few other items completely foreign to me. They all tasted pretty awesome.

Their chee cheong fun and pork ribs were A-OK too.

Horng, KY, FA, on trip to Penang Jan 2009

The dimsum here are priced between RM 2.00 to RM 2.80 with a couple items at RM 4.00. We usually spend slightly more than RM 10 per person for an awesomely satisfying brunch.

Gareth, Cheesie, KY, and Kim just before Porject Alpha shooting, Jan 2010

Address:
36 Jalan Leong Sin Nam
30300 Ipoh, Perak
GPS: 4.597068,101.086137
Tel: 05-255 7134

I first read about this Thai Fish Farm Restaurant from the post on Kim’s blog. It is a place hidden in the jungle of Hulu Langat, situated at the other end of Klang Valley from where we stay (if you can still consider Hulu Langat to be within Klang Valley), and less than a couple kilometers away from the famous “look-out point”.

grilled crabs, fresh vegetable, Thai Fish Farm Restaurant

It took us close to an hour’s drive to get to Hulu Langat from northern part of PJ on New Year’s day, partly due to the holiday’s heavy traffic, and partly the annoying rain.

It is advisable to go there with a car that has at least decent ground clearance as the last kilometer or so (from the turning off Jalan Hulu Langat KM 4) consist of unpaved road within the jungle.

It felt like we were smuggling contrabands in golden triangle than going for dinner, it was as remote as it was dodgy. Once we reached there, however, there were dozens of cars parked at the clearing and the place was full of people we had to wait over 20 minutes to secure a table.

Thai steamed siakap, vegetable, snail meat, omelete

For the 10 of us, we ordered seven crabs (we wanted more but they ran out!), two types of fish, squid, snails, vegetables, lamb, and vegetable. We ordered some rice to go with all these, and coconut drinks as well as some toddy with Guinness to complete the illusion of being on vacation since we were sitting on stilts by a body of water anyway.

The steamed siakap (barramundi) was delicious, the chili padi and garlic a Thai signature. Vegetable was super fresh, and the omelet, well were just omelet.

The snail meat though, was quite special. Fried in (most probably) curry paste/powder with lime leaf and long bean, it was chewy and flavorful. Tasted like a slightly harder version of escargot but with stronger taste, I liked it a lot.

grilled crab, squid with salted egg, salt grilled fish, grilled lamb

Dinner at Thai Fish Farm is not complete without some grilled crab. Like at Hing Ket in Kampung Jawa, the crab is grilled without any additional seasoning to preserve the original taste of the crustacean. They were not overly grilled and still rather juicy, was quite good to be honest.

The grilled lamb was alright, but I prefer the kampung jawa version. Squid with salted egg though, was a bit of a disappointment. Instead of having the squid fried with salted egg, the “salted egg sauce” was poured on separately, it was a bit weird and slimy, not something I’d order again.

The salt grilled fish is something that I have seen when I was in Thailand but never had the chance to give it a try. The fish, Tilapia in this case, is simply applied with generous amount of salt and grilled. While the fish meat, being Tilapia, was still quite tasteless, and this is where the salted fish skin comes in. Apply a little bit of fish skin and it goes so well with the meat, a rather interesting combination, no soya sauce needed.

kerol, FA, Kim, Gareth, Horng, Ruby, Suan, Eric, KY, Jac, and Terence (hidden)

The bill came up to slightly less than RM 40 per person including coconut juice for everyone (around RM 350+ in total if I’m not mistaken). A very satisfying dinner at exotic location at a decent price, and most importantly, with the company you want to be with. That, was a good new year dinner.

Address:
Restaurant Thai Fish Farm
Km 4, Jalan Ampang Hulu Langat,
68000 Ampang, Selangor
GPS: 3.130077, 101.803586
Tel: 017-251 5235, 019-260 6493

I attended perhaps the most awesome party in 2009 – the second installment of the now rather infamous Malam Tumpang Glamour party, this time by the pool side at Metropolitan Square. I also went to the first MTG a few months ago.

For those who’ve not heard of this strangely named party, it was conjured up by Michael, Elfie, and Reta. The idea is to throw a cheap ass party by getting booze and audio equipments/DJ sponsored, and collect some money to be donated to Furry Friend Farm to help out them poor animals.

In an alternate universe, we’d just eat those animals and save all the trouble, but there’d be no party. Just go to show that you can’t have everything in Vietnam.

KY & Elfie; big party; Elfie, Kelvin, Li Yin w Kendrik, Li Ling; Haze

Anyway, MTG 1 was fun, with a venue that was a bit too hot and slightly too packed, but MTG, man, it was a real party. There were over 100 cheap ass party goers who attended; friends of organizers who brought friends, who brought more friends. The whole 4th degree of separation thing sort of got out of proportions.

I managed to convince Haze the workaholic designer to join us to the party, and thanks to her I made the right decision to go prepared – with a swimming trunk under my “beach wear”. I also brought along the swimming goggle for good measure.

Fiona & Ee Laine; a wet Reta; KY & little Kendrik (not my son)

The party started out not exactly quite as fast as we’d like to, so Terence and I decided to get the ball rolling by jumping into the pool. It was GODDAMN COLD! I had to swim a couple laps to warm up. Jack and AC soon joined us.

But a pool party isn’t complete without getting people thrown into the pool. So we did just that, Reta, Elfie, Michael, Yvonne, Horng, Vicky, Haze, Ee Laine, Chris, Siao Ling, Eric, Nigel, Nazrul… were among the people whom Terence and I managed to throw/forced into the pool. There were quite a few more whom we don’t remember or never had the time to know. I think we must have done it to at least a couple dozen people.

Terence & KY – we got the pool thing going!

We basically went up to someone random and asked “hi, what’s your name?”, said person would answer, and the next question was “why are you still dry?”. 3-4 people would then gang up and haul the person up, remove all phones/wallet/keys, and throw him/her into the pool.

It was damn FUN!… at least until Terence slipped while carrying Yvonne (I was holding onto her legs), and the poor gal developed a small tower on top of her head from the fall, OUCH. (sorry Yvonne, and nice to have met you)

The party then went on with more drinking, dancing, and getting even more people thrown into the cold, cold water. It was a blast! At the end a very drunk Jack had to sleep in his car overnight and somehow lost the wallet during the party, collateral damage, oh well!

some group photos, and a wasted Terence in the lift

RM 400 was raised for Furry Friend Farm, extreme tiredness for the organizers (thanks guys!), some alcohol induced pre-digested food gathered on the floor, a very drunk Terence who was reported peeing out of a window late in the night, and a tonne of very happy party goers who’re only left wondering what MTG 3 would bring!

The organizers want to thank Carlsberg & Tuborg for the beer, Redbull for the energy drink, 2crank.com (awesome indie music portal) for the venue, and Elfie’s manager Eugene for donating his credit card to charity while being completely wasted.

Among countries in South East Asia, Singapore is perhaps the only country that Malaysians often argue with when it comes to origin of food as well as who has the best of certain dishes. Truth is, while a lot of famous “Singaporean dishes” probably originated from Malaysia, our southern neighbors do have quite a lot of original food worth sampling.

Teow Chew pork noodle – pork ball, meat, and liver

The day after the first ever Nuffnang Awards, instead of following the tour, we decided to head to Ponggol Nasi Lemak Center at Upper Serangoon Street to try the pork noodle for brunch. According to Cheng Leong, this is the absolute must have whenever he comes to Singapore.

Though being in one of the only two professions that can legally lie, we trust Cheng Leong the lawyer when it comes to food.

Ponggol Nasi Lemak Centre

Ponggol Nasi Lemak Centre is just a short walk from NE13 Kovan station. The smallish hawker center houses over half a dozen stalls with at least a few operating around the clock. We ordered from AMK House of Teochew Noodles that operates 24 hours a day.

The stall offers a few dishes, but everyone ended up ordering the same dried version of Teow Chew pork noodle for $3 a bowl.

Haze, KY, FA, Gareth, Kim, and Cheng Leong

The dish is basically similar to wantan noodle but with a healthy dosage of pork meat, a few pork balls, liver (if you prefer), mushroom, some vegetables, and plenty of deep fried shallots in a vinegar based sauce with a bowl of soup at the side and some red chili padi as condiment.

Even with a heavy dose of skepticism at first, the pork noodle turned out to be really nice. It’s a combination of taste that I never really had before, and I really liked the sauce that works not unlike the experience you get from having xiao long bao with vinegar. It was very tasty.

If you’re around Singapore, this would be a decent place to eat. I’ve read that the nasi lemak is pretty good too.

Address:
Ponggol Nasi Lemak Centre
965 Upper Serangoon Rd,
Singapore, 534721,Singapore
GPS: 1.361822,103.886611
Tel: 6281 0020‎

The must-have applications on BB 8520

For those who just bought their Blackberry 8520 from Xpax and are new to Blackberry, here’s a few applications that I consider a must have. These are the software I advised every BB users to install, and they are all free (as in free beer type of free)

1. UberTwitter
This is of course, a must have for anyone with a twitter account. Twitterberry might have a cooler name, but UberTwitter absolutely pawns in terms of functionality and user friendliness. It supports basically everything twitter has to offer, including picture upload, geo tagging (with cell towers or GPS), RT, reply all, DM, etc etc.

2. Opera Mini
While the Blackberry built in browser is pretty decent, Opera Mini offers a much better user interface in web surfing. The browser also goes through a proxy that compresses and reduced image size for faster downloading. Other than that, the wealth of short cut keys make web browsing a much simpler affair with less fiddling on the trackpad/trackball

3. BBM version 5.0
The BBM version 4.6 that comes with Blackberry 8520 is perfectly usable, but the upgraded version offers a better user interface, ability to add display picture, and also the very interesting Blackberry Group that allows calendar, task, and file sharing capabilities.

4. Google Apps
Google Map, Gmail, Google Latitute, Google News, Google Readers and more are available for your BB 8520.

5. Blackberry App World
For everything else, there’s the Blackberry App World.