Two weeks ago, I had to go to Tun Hussien Onn National Eye Hospital to get my left eye checked after being hit by the ball during futsal (now pretty much fully recovered.)

Barely a week after that, having been making too much fun on my injured eye, Cheesie too had something on her left eye. So I took her to the same hospital located near Asia Jaya to have a look. As suspected, it was due to allergy to those colored contact lenses she was wearing.

Moral of the story: 1. Karma is a bitch. 2. Love to appreciate your own eye color

Pork Satey at PJ Old Town food court, Gerai Satay Cina Thoo Yuen

After the whole eye opening experience at the hospital where we also met a reader who came up and greeted us, it was time for dinner. Since this part of PJ is quite notorious for its traffic during weekday rush hours, I suggested that we head to PJ Old Town for for some good old cheap and traditional food that also happen to involve my favorite meat – pork.

We ended up at the food court.

Appetizer was 10 sticks of pork satay from Thoo Yuen stall at RM 0.80 per stick. It was quite juicy, and tasted pretty good with the accompanying peanut sauce. I just wish they serve  pork intestine satay too, but they don’t. Bummer.

pork ribs with bitter gourd, steamed tilapia fish with lard at Gerai Thong Kee

To fill our stomach properly, we ordered two dishes from Gerai Thong Kee to go with rice. The stall next to Thong Kee serves umbra juice  with dried sour plum (kedondong in Malay) at RM 2 per glass, nice!

Our first dish was bitter gourd with pork ribs. Quite flavorful with the brown sauce, red chili, and ginger. However, we didn’t have very good cuts of ribs, could have been better, but I’m not really complaining here.

KY and Cheesie at PJ Old Town Food court

Our second dish was this steamed tilapia with spicy sauce as suggested by the owner. The paste tasted a bit like tomyam, and went really well with the fish. However, the secret ingredient that made this otherwise very normal dish good was the lard on top.

Adding lard (be it raw or fried lard) on steamed fish gives the fish meat a softer and smoother texture, and of course, that pork fat flavor. I do that too when steaming pomphret fish (hey, I cook too ok)

The two dishes with rice came to RM 28, that’s fish, meat, and vegetable in a balanced meal. Now both of us needs to put eye drops, *drips drips*

Address:
Intersection of
Jalan Othman & Jalan Selangor
Petaling Jaya, Selangor
GPS: 3.087519, 101.645948

BB Update

By default, when you reply or send a new email from Blackberry, a default signature is attached at the end of the message. As with any email clients, you can always change the default signature into something that you deem appropriate.

Before this morning, mine said “Sent from my Mobile”.  Now it says “Sent from my awesome Blackberry”.

This girl used to not understand why BB is so addictive and now she’s the biggest advocate and addict there is. Cis! You can get your very own BB 8520 at a very good price from Xpax BB!

Tags:  cheesie,  lard,  old-town,  pork,  steamed-fish,  tilapia

Posted by KY | 27 Comments »

Most everyone here will say that the best bak kut teh is found at Klang. I do agree with the statement to a certain degree, but I also believe that the dish has matured beyond it’s original location and now you can find pretty awesome bak kut teh in many places around town and perhaps even in another state (but not Singapore, please!).

Yap Chuan Bak Kut Teh at Puchong

I’ve heard about this elusive bak kut teh place at Puchong for quite a while from Horng, who happens to work in Puchong, and we finally went there a couple weeks ago when FA was in town and suanie was hungry for some meat.

The claim-of-fame for this this particular bkt place lies with the fact that the chef/owner started the restaurant at the tender age of 14, and actually won the best bkt award 2-3 years back. Just to show that the lack of education is not a hinder to archiving early success in life.

soup and dried bkt, steamed fish, tofupok and fuchuk

The restaurant is pretty airy, quite clean and comfortable for a bkt place. We took a table, and grabbed a packet of tea before ordering a pot of soup bak kut teh, dried bak kut teh, and steamed siakap fish (yes, for some reasons they’re famous for steamed fish here) to go with rice and some tofu and fochuk.

The soup bak kut teh was top notch, right up on par with some of the better ones I had, rich, thick, and very herbal, this is Klang version as opposed to the teow chew style BKT soup. The tofupok and fuchuk, however, were just ordinary. For a good bowl of fuchuk, I would still head to subang teowchew bak kut teh.

FA, Horng, Suan, and KY having some awesome bkt!

The dried bak kut teh here reminds me of the one at Lai Choon, Klang but slightly more sophisitcated. There were dried red chili, sliced okra, and dried cuttle fish to add to the taste. The sauce is thick and rather strong, I usually have it with some soup, but the meat is quite a bit more flavorful though. I like it.

Now, I was at first quite skeptical about this whole steamed fish thing, but the steamed siakap (red snapper) turned out to be a surprisingly good dish. Topped with lime, plenty of sliced onion and the slightly salty and sourly sauce, the fish felt like a mixture of Chinese and Thai style of preparation, but the end result was quite splendid.

I think the guys can attest that we had a very satisfying brunch at Yap Chuan Bak Kut Teh, and even though it is almost all the way to the Cyberjaya/Puchong toll, I wouldn’t mind making that journey again. We paid less than RM20 per person, which is pretty reasonable considering there was fish too.

Will definitely go there again.

Address:
Yap Chuan Bak Kut Teh
53, Jalan BPU 2,
Bandar Puchong Utama
Selangor
GPS: 2.994486,101.621094

Tags:  Bak Kut Teh,  bkt,  FA,  horng,  Puchong,  steamed-fish,  suanie

Posted by KY | 31 Comments »

My third dish for the Chinese New year reunion dinner to greet the Year of Boar is steamed Pomphret (Pomfret) fish. This fish is a little pricey, and especially so during the Chinese festive season, however, it is very difficult to find a better fish as far as steamed fish dishes go.

looking at this is making me hungry again

Ingredients:

• a good size pomphret fish (preferably around 1KG)
• shitake mushroom
• chopped garlic
• finely sliced ginger
• salt
• soya sauce
• pork fat (optional)

Steps:

• clean the fish throughly and rub both sides with salt
• put the sliced mushroom, garlic, and ginger evenly on the fish
• sliced some pork fat (I got them from the roasted pork in the HK kailan dish)
• add some soya sauce to the fish
• steam it for about 15 minutes, and let the fish sit in the steamer for another 5 minutes after switching off the fire
• be very careful not to spill the very hot dish while transferring it from the steamer to dining table

can you spot the secret ingredient?

This dish turned out excellent as expected, the secret ingredient (pork fat) makes the fish even smoother and adds a layer of that Year of Pig aroma that is irreplaceable. The garlic and ginger removes any fishy smell that might be present, and the mushroom gives a different taste and texture to enrich the whole experience.

I think adding a little bit of parsley might give a better presentation, sort of like how I dressed up the fried pomphret. You can try this method with other type of fish too, though the result might be less optimal.

Tags:  garlic,  ginger,  mushroom,  reunion-dinner,  steamed-fish,  year-of-pig

Posted by KY | 10 Comments »