This One's For the English-speaking Non-Malaysian Readers

02 June 2008 | Hisham | | Food, Humour
 

... all 3 or so of them.

Uh.... right.
 

WTF???

31 May 2008 | sila | | Food, Humour, Recent News
 

And I say it again...WTF?? This creature has been wandering the backyards of our neighborhood in the last few weeks. Where did it come from? Why is it here? Why hasn't it been caught and made into dinner????? It's pooping on our driveway, big old tahi ayam crap! Whose up for a good chase? Grrrrrr...

Chicken in the backyard
Close Up of said chicken

As a consequence, we had to stop putting out birdseed for the birds and squirrels since this chicken was taking advantage of it. Grrrrrr

 

Pacific Northwest: Part XI (Vancouver - Night)

07 October 2007 | sila | | Family Pics, Food, Friends
 

After walking around Vancouver, we were pretty tired, so we met up with Lilian for a spot of dinner. Come see what we had!

Olive Tapenade appetizer
 

Chocolate Lemon Bars

13 July 2007 | sila | | Food
 

Thanks to the birthday presents from Lilian, I have had some more fun experiments in the kitchen. One of the recipe books contains the recipe for Lemon Bars, which is a sugar cookie-esque base topped with a tangy lemon custard. I decided to up the ante and top the custard with a layer of melted chocolate.

Well. Who can blame me for wanting to add chocolate, right? ;-)

 

Bread 2006 - Sprouted Wheat Bread, 2nd Try

27 June 2007 | sila | | Food
 

So last year, I tried making Sprouted Wheat Bread with whole wheat flour and it turned out like this:

Sprouted Wheat Bread, 1st Try

Remember this bread? The one that required me to be part gardener, part baker. I thought the first time that I made it, that the whole wheat flour hid the wheat berries and the sprouts. So I tried the bread again, this time with white whole wheat flour.

 

Bread 2006 (September through December)

29 May 2007 | sila | | Food
 

Let's take a short break from the vacation for some bread. These are breads that I baked the final 4 months of last year. I know, I should have really written this entry a long time ago. But here goes.

This first bread is called Onion Caraway Bread. My second try at this bread.

Onion Caraway dough
 

Shepherd's Pie

26 May 2007 | sila | | Food
 

For some reason today I'm a bit rajin to write and publish entries on the blog. Must be the prospect of the 3-day weekend coming up! Woohoooo!

I'm a bit backlogged, but here's a quick review of Shepherd's Pie which I made earlier this year.

First, cook the beef and tomato mixture on the stovetop (with peas, and other veggies too). Make sure you cook it in an oven-safe pan.

Meat mixture bubbling on the stovetop
 

Bread 2006 (April to August)

13 February 2007 | sila | | Food
 

After the Sprouted Wheat Bread adventure, I did continue to bake breads at a steady pace (weekly, pretty much). We had a few repeated breads, but I tried to balance the repeats with some new recipes.

Here are the breads I made from April to August of last year.

 

Breads 2006 (Sprouted Wheat Bread)

03 February 2007 | sila | | Food
 

I really have been remiss in posting my bread experiments from last year! So to continue the story, I take up where I left off: the next bread I baked in April. I tackled a complicated bread and took so many different pictures that I figure it rates its own entry. :D

I have been baking pretty steadily, and really getting into bread baking. It’s still something I enjoy doing, and the process is getting quite familiar and comforting. It’s still an adventure to see whether the bread will rise or not, or if it will have the texture I want.

In fact, I’ve even branched out to combining a bit of gardening with baking bread.
 

Yesterday's Birthday Cake

23 January 2007 | Hisham | | Family Pics, Food
 

Yesterday was Ain's birthday. I thought I could have the money to buy a present for Ain this year. But we spent way over our regular budget this month getting Irfan prepared for kindergarten. So, maybe next year.

Anyway, there was cake as can be seen in the photograph below.

And apparently Irfan ain't partial to yoghurt cheese cakes.

Which is good news, cause there's more for me! :-D

 

Soups

09 October 2006 | sila | | Food
 

I don't know what it is about Ramadan, but fasting makes me think about food. My last entry was about bread. What goes well with bread? Soups, of course! Toast up a little bread and dip it in hot soup, like little croutons. Mm mmm. Some soups even begin with stale leftover bread. Like this Gazpacho Andaluz.

Gazpacho Andaluz
 

Bread 2006 (January through April)

29 September 2006 | sila | | Food
 

It's time for more bread! Continuing the adventures of bread that began with my birthday present from last year, and the breads of the second half of last year, here's some more roti roti roti.

Pain Ordinaire Careme
 

Desperate Prevention of Dilution

05 September 2006 | Hisham | | Food
 

This was conceived untold years ago by me, but I forgot about it until recently, and most especially last night when we had teh ais to drink for dinner. Teh ais translates directly into iced tea, but it's not exactly that. It's more to the tune of tea with thick sweetened condensed milk in warm water, mixed with ice cubes or ice tubes.

Some restaurants serve teh ais with a lot of ice rather than tea, which leads to very diluted tea if you leave it on the table for too long. This would also lead to a very annoyed Hisham.

What I propose is this:

Hours before taking orders for teh ais (or Nescafe ais or Milo ais for that matter) brew a ton of the drink, pour the liquid onto ice cube trays and freeze the lot of them. When someone orders a teh ais, put the ice cubes from the freezer tray into the glass. That way when the ice melts the teh ais doesn't get diluted by plain water from normal melting ice cubes.

And in the end Hisham doesn't get annoyed, which is a good deal for me.

 

Cake on the First of May

02 May 2006 | Hisham | | Family Pics, Food
 

May 1st is Irfan's Cik Su F's 19th birthday. Her sisters, including Ain, chipped in for a cake for a little get together. The cake had oranges and strawberries and mangos and kiwi fruits and grapes. Irfan also wanted in on the cutting of the cake, as usual. For the main course, Ain made bihun goreng, which was delicious.

It's all gone now. Snif snif. :\'-(

 

Pajeri Terong

09 April 2006 | sila | | Food
 

When we were growing up, Hisham's favorite food was Pajeri Nenas (holy cow! No Wikipedia listing for this!!). Pajeri is a kind of spicy thick gravy, sweeter than a curry but similar to a curry, containing different spices as well as kerisik).

I had never made this dish myself, and finally I attempted it. But instead of Nenas (pineapple), i used Terong (eggplant/aubergine) to make Pajeri Terong.

 

2005: A Bread Retrospective

12 February 2006 | sila | | Food
 

You got it! Another bread entry. In my one and only entry on this topic, I was waxing poetic about My New Hobby, and showed the breads I had been able to produce. That was about early August, last year. For the last one-third of the year, I have been hard at work baking bread and learning more and more about it. Vin no longer buys any bread, and I have experimented with a variety of breads in my bread book.

This entry shows a selection of the different breads that I baked August through December of 2005.

 

Squiddies!

30 January 2006 | Hisham | | Family Pics, Food
 

The best fried calamari (sotong celup tepung) on this planet, as well as several other planets and moons (including the seafood industry on Europa), is located at the Medan Ikan Bakar FELCRA at Simpang Dua, Sitiawan. The taste and the texture is just right. And saying that the price is very affordable there is an understatement. In Sitiawan, this is where we'd like to engorge ourselves on seafood on special occasions.

Last night we went there to celebrate Irfan's grandparents 34th anniversary. Here are three of the photos from the dinner.