Eighteen Chefs, Tiong Bahru Plaza

I was rampaging the photos from my hp today. Seems that I have taken quite a number of food shots since a few months ago. But I dont have the time (rather I am lazy) to upload the pics into my computer. Since I will be on vacation since tomorrow till the coming new year, I decided to clear some of the pics from the hp to get some space for more pictures taking. This restaurant is known as Eighteenchefs in Tiong Bahru Plaza.

I love the design of the shop. Look funky and even though the space is limited but it looks spacious. Good design. Apart from discounts, I think student have the one for one offer. So quite a lot of youngster are there to eat. Since I am a student, of course and definitely I cant waste the opportunity to flash the student card. As one of my Cambodian friend (Bill) once said, "If you have, flash it."

While waiting for the food to come, here are the seasoning for the food that was yet to come.

First up was the calamari rings. They use a big sotong for this. Taste not bad. But I still prefer the small squid. Taste sweeter and easier to chew. Cos the bigger one makes you feel like you are chewing rubber band. It's just a description. It doesnt really feels like rubber band though it you will feel a little bit like rubber band. HUh?@~@ what am I mumbling ... .whatever ....

This is my order. Salmon curry bake rice. Taste good at the first few bites. But after a while you will get bored of it. So better ask someone to share this with you. The salmon is a bit too dry to swallow. Probably they over cooked it. I think it will taste just nice if they dont pan fry the salmon. Baking it with the cheese will make it just right.

Shalom ordered sausage baked pasta. Doesnt taste as great as it seems to be. Taste similar to my baked rice with a different sauce. I think it was just so so.

Maybe because I am not a great lover of baked rice or baked pasta. You guys may try it out. Probably it doesnt taste that bad cos a lot of people always said I am quite picky about my food *Wink*

Christmas Hot Pot

It Christmas today!! Noel noel NOOOOOOOOOEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLL!!!! Since there will be people everywhere, the best is to stay at home and cook something nice for myself and Shalom. I decided to do my long time yearning try-out ... STEAMBOAT!!!!! The steamboat consist of soup, napa cabbage (it's a must have for steamboat as it makes the soup taste better at the end of the meal), dumplings, fish-pork ball, fresh prawns, dough noodles, chilli paste and additional dished enoki mushrooms beef-rolls. So right now I am going to share the ingredients and their makings one by one.

The soup

Soup base is the most important ingredients in a steamboat. I spent 8-10 hours in brewing the soup in a crockpot (slow cooker). The ingredients of the soup consist of big bone, prawn shell, dried scallop, dried oyster and Knorr chicken cube. The soup taste superb but got spoiled by a little of fishy smell. So if you dont like the fishy smell, you guys can skip out the dried scallop and dried oyster. If you prefer a strong taste then use less water for more bones.

The Dumplings

Skin: Make the dough using wheat flour and water. Knead until it is not sticky anymore. But not too dry though. Then, spread out the dough and make a thin sheet as thick skin wont make the dumpling taste good. But of course not too thin till it tears easily. Then use a tupperware cover (small one) to make the shape of the skin. It can be square or round ones. I prefer round ones. I was not the one who make the skin. Shalom is the one did. Hahahahha ... so the trick to do it I am not sure too ... hahahhahaa

Fillings: Ingredients were made of napa cabbage (chopped), garlic (chopped), spring onions (chopped) and pork (minced). The portion depends on your liking. The seasonings are pure sesame oil, vinegar, white pepper, cornstarch and soy sauce. The addition of cornstarch is to make the fillings smoother than the non-cornstarch fillings. Mixed them together and let it sit for about 30 mins.

Wrapped the fillings with the skin. I made the small ones but Shalom he made a really super duper big dumplings. And of course, it takes longer to cook. Put the dumplings into boiling water. When the dumpling floats, it means the dumpling they are cooked and you can either eat them dry or in a soup. The reason to separately cook the dumpling is because, the flour will turn the soup into gruel.

The Prawns

Prawns are easy. Just peel the shell off and wait to be cooked in the steamboat later. Hahahaha .... But have to ensure that the prawns are really very fresh. How to determine that? If the shell can be easily peel off and the flesh of the prawns are left intact, it means the prawns are fresh, succulent and sweet. To see whether it's fresh, the eyes of the prawns will shine. Or else the unfresh prawn eyes are quite dull.

The Fish-Pork Balls

This one is easy. Get a flesh of a red snapper, minced pork and garlic. Mixed them with pure sesame oil, soy sauce, white pepper and cornstarch. Take a tablespoon of the mixture and roll them into balls. Marinate it for 30 mins before you start your steamboat.

The Dipping Sauce

I used the dried chilli flakes oil produced in China. It is known as "Lao Gan Ma Chilli Oil" . This is the kind of chillies used for steamboat or dumplings.

Of course it does not comprise of the chillies only. It will only be spicy. Too plain. So, what I did here is I soy sauce but Shalom said it's still need a little bit more to enhance the taste of the dipping sauce. He suggested to add in some sugar and vinegar. I would say WOW it really taste great man!!

The Enoki Mushrooms Beef Roll

This is a modification of recipe from Lee Kum Kee. Ingredients are simple. Just beef slices and enoki mushrooms. Marinate seasoning consists of pure sesame oil, Lee Kum Kee premium oyster sauce and sesame seeds. After marinating the beef with the seasoning for about 15mins, wrap around the enoki mushrooms with a beef slice. Use constarch to stick the edge of the beef slice together. Next heat the pan with oil or sesame oil for a more fragrance taste. Pan-fry the till the beef is cooked and ready to serve.

Shalom ate most of the dumplings and the beef rolls. While I ate most of the fish-pork balls. It taste really great hohohoho ... Hmm ... seems that I am not a bad cook after all. Hahhahahaha ... Anyway, it was an enjoyable and great Christmas for me!!! You guys can try out the steamboat thingy if you have any occasions later. I assure you that it will be the most enjoyable event to do it together other than bbq! ^_^

The Dim Sum Restaurant at Desa Setapak, KL

HIIIIIIII FOOOOOOOOOOLKKKKKKKKKKS!!!!!!!!!!! TADAIMMMMMMMAAAAAA!! I am finally back again to blogging world. Recently, I have been really busier than a bee can be. I was engulfed with experiments (where it takes about 9-10 hours daily leaving me dropped dead whenever I am back home). Due to the tiredness and stress, I indulged myself in taiwanese dramas making me too lazy to pen a few words in my blog. I have a lot to write as recently things had been quite happening around me. Well, mostly it's about FOOD.... kekekekeke .... An old history of food which I have had is in Kuala Lumpur aka KL.

This is a dim sum shop located at Desa Setapak, known as Six Happiness Restaurant. To find the exact location, you can visit the URL in the following.

http://www.sixhappiness.com

The food that me and my big family love here is the Hong Kong dim sum (a kind of Chinese morning Hi-Tea) and it is very famous for that. The savour of the dim sum can be seen from the pictures in the following. What makes those dim sum special is the freshness of the ingredients. Fresh and succulent pork and prawns makes a great dim sum. But I think it's a little too salty though. That's the downside of the dimsum. I will not be elaborating on how each of the dim sum taste like cos I always believe that a picture can explain a thousand words. Hahahhahaha .. alright ok ... I will cut the crap ... enjoy the pics folks.

In addition to dim sum, their all time favourites are the fried noodles and fried rice. But similar to their dim sum, a little bit too much of salt. Maybe salt is too cheap in Malaysia ... that's why they ..... I talk too much. Hope you guys will go try out when you "Jalan-jalan cari makan" *WINK*

Osaka Castle, Osaka

Sashiburi ... it's been a while since I wrote the last trip in Kyoto. The Nishiki Food Market. Today, I will blog about my last trip in Japan, i.e. Osaka Castle. Osaka Castle was built during the Tokugawa era (the shogun era). It was quite a majestic view of the castle. The first initial built castle was burnt and this was rebuilt abuot hundred years ago, if i dont remember wrongly. They have a fish that possess dragon head on the top of the castle. This is to prevent any misfortune to befall the castle again. The visit of this castle will give you a feeling that you time travel back to the Tokugawa era. The steps were quite high cos horses will gallop on it to reach the top of the castle.

To visit the inner part of the castle, you will need to pay 600 yen for a visit and similar to the Sanjusangendo Temple, you are not allow to take pictures on the display artifacts. Therefore, we decided not to go in. Taking pictures outside was more than satisfying.


Around the castle, they sell quite a number of snacks such as the ice kacang like drinks, ice cream and takoyakis. The takoyakis here didnt taste as good as in Tokyo as they were as dried as the ones that you can find in Takashimaya but of course with a bigger chunk of tako inside the balls.

I think Japanese really love red beans. In whatever dessert that they are eating, they must have red beans. Red beans red beans everywhere. Luckily I am a red beans lover. I dont really like green beans though unless I need to detox. Else I wont be taking green beans.

Somewhere in between the train station and the castle is a stadium and there was an event going on that day. We were quite surprised to see the place was filled with people and there were stalls set up. We later found out that there was a concert going on. Gosh the people were just too many.

There are stalls selling fried noodles, red beans filling doraemon cakes, dorayakis, strawberries coated in sugar, egg pancakes. We bought the fried noodles and egg pancakes to try and see if it is tasty. And it was as good as it looks. Very very tasty especially the fried noodles. Though only cabbage and noodles, it tastes really good when fried with their special vinegar. We have two packets of this!!!

Our trip in Japan seems tiring cos we walked a lot but IT WAS DEFINITELY AND ENJOYABLE TRIP!!!! ^_^ See a lot, walk a lot and eat a lot! Overall, I like the place, the people and the food! I hope someday sometime I will go back to Japan again. *Grins*Wink*Wink*

Nishiki Food Market, Kyoto

Nishiki Food Market isnt a tourist spot actually. It is one of the area recommended in a BIG file of Kyoto Budget Inn under the section "What to do" in Kyoto. So we visited this area and see what it is like. Since majority of Japan is very well-organized, the food market is no surprise at all. Basically, it was a market where it sells a lot of food stuffs especially seafood and some fermented vegetables and fruits! The best thing here is you can always sample the fermented stuff and bonito if you are curious how it will taste like. The stall owner are very hospitable too. Even if you say you wont buy after you test, they wont get angry at all! First stall where we buy our food is this dessert stall. Each we bought one to sample how it taste like. But of course the lookalike we didnt buy it. Just those that looks different from each other. Hehehehe....

They have a lot of grill seafood too. Fishes, squid (tako), scallop etc. They really looks tempting but didnt manage to eat them all ....

This is what I regret the most!!! The fresh abalone is as big as my hands and it only cost 50SGD. Gosh I really regretted we didnt buy this and ask the stall owner to grill it. It really looks umph ....... But we tried the scallop though. 3 cost about 12SGD and each is as big as half of your hand. It taste sooooooooo FRESH and SUPERB!!!

Along the way, they have a lot of bentos too. The bentos are meant for workers who are working for their lunch. We also bought a few boxes here for our lunch before we depart to our next destination. The bentos really taste AWESOME!! OIISHIIIII desu. Their taste are similar to those that you can get in the japanese restaurant in Singapore. I am not exaggerating here ... IT'S TRUE!!!!

They have a variety of vegetables with different colours too. They all looks delicious to me. But didnt manage to try this cos the food we bought is already a lot ...

We bought some of the salted vegetables back. You can sample each of them. Ranging from olive to raw pepper. Some taste good, some well not to my taste. Dont really like them. However, they are not cheap though. But can last for very long as you will only need a little bit for a big bowl of rice or porridge. Just mix them together. And i think it will taste not that salty.

Here is another stall selling grills. You can find a lot of grill eels here too ...

Here, there are a few stalls that sell a lot of fermented vegetables. It doesnt smell good but it taste good though ^_^