Kopi Club at Low Yat Plaza

Going out for lunch with JW these days are never planned. All you get is a call or an sms about 1/2 an hour before lunch. But then, that is alright for me. When it is about food, you can just snap your fingers and I am there :D.

That was precisely what happened last week. JW sms-ed and told me that she was in the city and whether I would like to have lunch. We decided to go over to Low Yat Plaza for lunch. When we got there, I surprised myself by deciding to skip my favorite Chee Cheong Fun stall and settled for Kopi Club. Was thinking to myself, the last time I was there, I was with Babe and not being very sure when that was, I decided to go browse her blog and there, I found it. The last time I was there was with Babe was in September, almost 3 months have passed.

This time around, I decided to try something western and their Chicken Chop (RM11.90) looked quite inviting and the portion was quite generous too. It came with a bun, yum-yum, with a real slice of butter in it, some french fries and gravy with lovely carrots and onions.



JW opted for Nasi Ayam Goreng (RM10.50) as Ayam Goreng is her favorite. I thought we just had Ayam Goreng at the Sisters a few days ago. Haha.. I reckon JW can eat Ayam Goreng everyday.



With a Hot Lemon Tea (RM3.90) for JW and an Ice Honey Lemon (RM4.80), the total bill came up to RM32.66 (Service Tax of 5%). Once in a while, we have to treat ourselves to good food like these.

Venue:
KopiClub
LG-8, Plaza Low Yat,
Off Jalan Bukit Bintang, KL

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Marble Cake

Wow.. I didn't realize that it has been weeks since my last post. Time really flies .. especially towards the end of the year. And soon, Christmas will be here and I thought to myself? After not having baked for such a long time, could I still do it? So, I decided to bake the world's easiest to bake cake, the Marble Cake.



As usual, started only doing this on Sunday evening. Luckily I still have a block of butter in the freezer. So, took that out at dinner time and by the time dinner was done and all the dishes have been washed, I started work on the butter cake.

My cake has a big fat mouth.. just like me *smirk

This is an old recipe which I cut out from a news paper many years back but it is quite a foolproof recipe.

Ingredients

2 cups wheat flour
1 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup of butter, soften (about 115g)
2 eggs
1 cup of milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp of unsweetened cocoa powder (I used Van Houtens)

Method

1. Preheat the oven at 180C. Grease and flour a 9 inch round pan (I cannot remember if mine was actually a 9in or 8 in pan. Should have written it down at the bottom of the pan when I first bought it).
2. Place the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, butter, eggs, vanilla and milk into a mixing bowl. Mix it all up with a spatula and then beat it with an electric mixer at slow speed for about 2 minutes until the mixture is smooth.
3. Remove about a bowl of batter into another container A.
4. Stir in the cocoa into this batter in container A until it is well mixed.
5. Pour in 1/2 of the original batter into the cake pan.
   
6. Drop in either spoonfuls of the chocolate batter into the cake pan or if you are lazy like me, I just plonked in the entire lot of chocolate batter into the middle of the cake pan.
7. Cover the cake pan with the remaining original batter.
8. Using a knife or a chopstick, swirl the batter around so that this will create a marble effect to the cake.
9. Bake in the oven for 35 minutes or until the wooden pick comes out clean.
   

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I Love Japanese Ra-Men

I love Japanese Ramen, whether it is from the shops or those in the packets which I cook at home. They taste much better than the local instant noodles as I find the Japanese Ramen a lot tastier. I am not sure how much I paid for them but I don't think that they were too expensive. Will need to go check out the price for a bag of 5 packets the next time I go shopping.



Normally I will just add some vegetables, a little meat (like left over chicken or duck from dinner) or half an egg into the ramen. This was what I had for lunch.



After eating that nice lunch, I decided to go check my email and I received an email from an old friend from University. He sent me a mail entitled " Beware! If you love Ramen". His email read "Sorry guys. Have to send to you so many negative news concerning foodstuff these days. Pretty soon, I'll run out of things to eat."

This was his email to me.... "Beware! If You Like Ramen"....was rather scary. I didn't want to post the pictures here as I don't think it is right to spoil people's appetite for Ramen. But if you want to have a look at what the email has to say, then click here at my other blog to have a look.

I know the packet of Ramen that I bought and cooked was manufactured in Hong Kong, China but I don't think I will throw away the last 2 packets. I am sure my body can handle it :D But I might not want to buy any more after this until I do a bit more research (coward me).

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Cup Cake Toppers Makes My Life Simpler

I have been rather busy doing a lot of exciting things of late and blog wise, I have appeared to be doing a lot of bento-ing rather than baking... so much so that Christene of AllThingsPurple gave me a call 2 weeks ago for a chat and also to ask me if I still bake. Ha Ha.. yeah I do.. especially for a good reason or a good cause. I have realized that baking for me is really a hobby that I love. It will never really be a business or a money making venture for me. The money bit may be okie but the time it takes to bake and decorate can be rather long. Furthermore money does not appear to be the compensation I seek from doing it. It is the happiness and joy from recipients faces that I seek and value. Perhaps that is why I have only been doing baking for family, friends and charity. And I really had a hard time convincing Christene that I will not accept any money for baking those few cuppies for her little girl's birthday. Read here for her little princess' birthday party. Ha Ha.. in the end, we reached a compromise. I will bake the cuppies and she will go get the toppers for the cuppies.

The spirals were done using the lovely rolling pin I bought at Cake Connections

These imprints were done using a little rolling pin which was a present from my good friend Susan (Sue mei mei)

For the cuppies' recipe, I merely used a simple butter cake recipe but added chocolate chips into one batch and dried strawberry bits in the other. The butter cake recipe was taken from Aunty Yochana's website here. I will normally try to use her recipes as they are guaranteed to work and furthermore, she uses weight measurements. I get a little worried sometimes when I read recipes when the ingredients are measured with cups.

A plain old cuppie design with a fondant table cloth design which I made

A cuppie that most child would love.. thanks to the added sprinkles and clown topper from Cake Connections

I actually took 2 evenings to prepare the cakes. The first evening was for the fondant and I know that fondant can be kept longer than the cuppies. I made the fondant into a few colors and set them aside. The next evening was for the baking and the laying of the basic decorations with the fondant and some sprinkles.

Now isn't this a lot prettier?

And this too?

I think if I were to have made the toppers for the cuppies, it would easily have taken at least one to two evenings shaping them as we need toppers for 40 cuppies. Hence, I am so glad that Christene was getting the cuppies toppers from Cake Connections.

The basic decorations on the cuppies which I did at home before they were sent to Christene's house

At Christene's place, we took out the cuppies and laid them all on the dinning table, took out the sprinkles and the toppers she bought and I think in less than half and hour, we were done decorating 40 cuppies. Opps.. forgot to mention. We were so efficient and quick as we also had a little helper. Her name is Kimberly (Christene's elder princess). She managed us using the convey style system. She will first dictate which of the cuppies get to be decorated with sprinkles (which was my job - to put on the sprinkles). Then her job was to stick on the topper and mummy's job was to put them into the plastic dome cup and staple them. See, when you have a system, everything works efficiently and quickly. This child has potential and I have already earmarked her for one of my projects when she grows up :D.

Pretty flowers for the little girls

Cute clowns for the little boys

I am so happy that people like Cake Connection has made my life as a cook(baker)wannabe so much simpler. When in need a great toppers, I know where to get them :)

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Pancake House International - Food Review

It was Sunday late afternoon when my mum decided that she wanted to buy some nyonya kueh for offerings to one of the ancestors. As I was going out in the evening, decided to go to Sunway Pyramid to see if there were any around. Was walking towards the supermarket entrance into Jusco when I spotted the Pancake House International. Mmm.. I have only tried Paddington's Pancake at The Curve and Mid Valley, The Gardens. Was wondering how different this would be.


Decided to go try it out after picking up what I wanted for mum (mum had to settled with Man Tou - dumplings from the frozen food section as I couldn't find any nyonya kueh).

Surveyed the menu and it turned out that the food sold there was quite interesting. Pancake House unlike Paddington's had more than pancakes on the menu list. They had pastas, rice dishes, pancakes (of course) and waffles.

We order one piece of their "Best Taco in Town" (RM6.50). I like it a lot as it is light and tasty. Generous amount of cheese toppings.


For the mains, we tried their Gambero Spaghetti (RM21) and the Smoked Golden Tinapa with Garlic Rice and a fried egg (RM15).

The Gambero Spaghetti, a tomato based sauce with about 5 medium sized prawns was quite tasty but not hot enough. At best, it was only warm. That kind of spoiled it for me.

The Smoked Golden Tinapa was quite a disappointment. Firstly, if you looked at the picture, you might not have guessed that it was a fish dish. The poor fish came with it's skin broken up and it was not on the fish. The waiter did apologize to us for that but he gave us the excuse that they have to make sure that the fish is cooked before serving it up. And the garlic rice served with the fish.. which was under the fried egg is again at room temperature. I expected the rice to be hot. The taste of the marinade on the skin of the fish was quite overpowering. Overall, I didn't like this dish one bit :(.

Their desserts were much better (luckily). We ordered 2 desserts as I was so tempted by their Waffle Foldover (RM12.00) but since this is a pancake shop, we also order the Caramel Banana Pancakes (RM12.00).

The Waffle Foldover was very nice and they were very generous with their scoop of vanilla ice-cream. It was gi-nor-mous. And they sprinkled it with a good bit of chopped walnuts and smarties.

The pancakes are what pancakes should be but I was just wondering where the caramel was. It came with a small container of maple syrup only... mmm..

The entire meal with 2 bottles of mineral water came up to RM78.65 (10% service charge - RM7.15 included). Well, I am not sure if there will be a 2nd time for me there but if I do go again, it will definitely be for their Waffle Foldover :D.

Pancake House International
LG, 126 Sunway Pyramid
No 3 Jalan PJS 11/5, Bandar Sunway,
46150 Petaling Jaya,
Selangor

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Bento #18

Ya Ya.. I know. I have been bento-ing a lot more often then I am baking these days... so much so that my dear friend Christene of AllThingsPurple called me up to ask me if I am still baking haha. Yah I am still baking. It is just that bento-ing seems fun and lately it has started to become more a necessity as I am planning to start my 3rd project... a weight management project. Will share this once I have tighted up all the screws to my little project boat.

The other thing is also to catchup with the other bento bloggers so that I can qualify for competitions organized by my favorite bento blogger - Pat of BentoPet. So, here goes my Bento #18.


I made this bento for lunch as using minced meat that was left over from making my wonton during the weekend. I found out that I made more meat then I had wonton skin. Oh well, improve a bit to make it into another meal :D

These are the meat patties that I made. For simple meat patties you can use minced chicken (or pork), mince prawns, water chestnuts, spring onions and some shitake mushrooms. Marinade the meat with a little sesame oil, salt and sugar to taste and a dash of pepper. Shape them into a small hockey pucks. First dunk them into a beaten egg, then cover the pucks with some breadcrumbs. Fry them in a wok of hot oil and there you have it... home made meat patties.



This other tray holds my rice topped with some nori bits and sesame seeds, a rolled up plain omellete and stir fried mushrooms with brocolli.

Okie.. that is my 18th bento post.. Another 82 more to go if the qualifying criteria is 100 bento posts for next year's competition :D

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Japanese Curry

I have only tried Japanese curry once before this and it was at Sushi King. They were having a promotion and only after much persuasion by the nice waitress that I decided to order my first Japanese curry. Not sure why there was so much reluctance on my part but I think it is my stupid mind set. I always only associate good curries to Indian and Malay cooking. Ha Ha.

Anyway, the curry tasted quite good. A little sweet but then sweet is my favorite flavor. Have not ordered it again, not that I didn't like it. But I reckon it was more like a habit.. a habit of not ordering it.

So, one day, I decided to get a pre-cooked curry pack from the Japanese food outlet. They actually had a whole lot to choose from. I decided to pick one which was in a blue box, blue being one of my favourite colors.. and also I was told that it was one of the more popular one :D.


The cooking is very easy. Just microwave it or dump the entire packet (take it out from the paper box first yeah) inside the boiling water for 5 minutes (I forgot how long .. please read the instructions on the box). I boiled some rice to go with it.


The taste is as I liked it, sweet with only a tinge of spicy. My only complaint is..... where are all those chucks of meat and vegetables they showed on the box?? It was like "hoi dei low chump" - trying to fish a needle from the sea (literally translated from Cantonese to English).

Mmmm.. cannot read the Japanese writings on the box. Maybe I was supposed to add more meat and veg into the curry???

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Bento #17

Last week, I put up a post on how to cook Okonomiyaki. As I had 1/2 a bag of flour left, I decided to finish it before the horrible weevils find their way to that bag of floor, especially in this damp weather. This time, I replaced the mushrooms with a little white squid and small prawns. Maybe I didn't add enough squid and prawns as I could not really taste that much of a difference, except the little bit more chewy when I bit into the squid. I think I will stick to the mushrooms the next time. Healthy and cheaper :D

Top tray : Okinomiyaki with squid and prawns
Lower tray : White rice with a sprinkling of the yummy nori bits, bonito flakes and some leftover egg furikake.
Right tray : Lovely seedless grapes

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Bento #16

Bento #16 is a relatively simple on as it is made up of mainly leftovers. The rice is from the same batch of Multi Grains Rice which I made earlier.


The meat stew is a plain one which is made up pork bits and I added a freshly boiled egg as mum says that it is not good to eat eggs which have been left overnight. Not sure why but when we were kids, she absolutely refused to let the sons eat them.



The veg is freshly stir fried as normally vegetables are all eaten up on the day they were cooked. I guess vegetables which have to be refried will be rather limped and none of the vitamins would have been retained. The veg dish was stir fried carrots, cabbage and some abalone mushrooms in a little garlic.



For desserts, I had a banana.. yum yum :)

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Mixed Grains Rice

I have never tried mixed grains before. At best, it was either brown rice or the Thai Red Rice. But after reading Babe's post on Mixed Grains Fried Rice, I simply had to give it a go. Got some advice from Babe and went shopping over the weekend. Actually, there were quite a few varieties of mixed grains at the Organic shops. I was actually at a loss as to which one to select. Finally, I went to this Organic shop in near OUG (Overseas Union Garden) market in Kuala Lumpur. The lady was very helpful and she recommended the Chinese Yam and Multi Grains Rice. This is the packet I bought. The cost of this packet was RM14 for 1 kg.


The ingredients inside the bag included Australian Brown Rice, Oat, Sorghum Rice, Job's Tears, Buck'wheat, Gordon Euryale Seed, Wheat, Barley, Red Lentils, Pearl Rice and Yam. Actually, I could not recognize more than half of the stuff inside the bag.

Her advice was to soak the grains between 1 hour to 2 hours before cooking. And as this was my first time eating this, she also recommended for me to add in 1 cup of white rice to 1 cup of the multi grains rice, in case I am not use to the texture.

Well, I followed her instructions to the letter and cooked up a pot of multi grain rice with the same portion of white rice. This is what I got. It was quite yummy but the best part of it, after eating a bowl of it for lunch, one can last the entire afternoon until dinner without any hunger pangs :D. A great diet meal.

The results .......

1 cup of white rice, 1 cup of mixed grains rice (soaked for 2 hours) and 2 and 3/4 cups of water. I steamed the rice instead of putting it into my lousy rice cooker. I reckon that if you did put it into the rice cooker, you may need to add a little bit more water. A bit of a trial and error.

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Okonomiyaki

Okonomiyaki is one of those Japanese dishes that I like very much and I finally was able to get all the ingredients that I needed to make this. Okonomiyaki is really like a Pizza, japanese style. But when I did it, mine looked more like a pancake :D. This is how it out to look like, in a restaurant..

This image was borrowed from Travel To Japan website.

This is what mine looked like.Not sure why the entire photo color is orange but then it was only a camera phone.


Here's another picture of my okonomiyaki.


It was very easy to do and quite tasty. Here, this recipe was taken off a brochure they were handing out at that nice little Japanese shop at Mid Valley, The Gardens. Haha.. finally got the name of the shop.


I already halved everything in the recipe as I think one full pan of okonomiyaki is quite enough for 1 meal.

Ingredients

100g okonomiyaki flour
2 eggs
100 cc of water
250g of cabbage
50g of meat ingredient (chicken/beef/squid/prawn) - I didn't add any... coz I didn't have any in the freezer
50g of vegetable ingredient (mushrooms/onion/ corn) - I only used mushrooms and onion)

Garnishing

Brown okonomiyaki sauce
Mayonnaise
Dried Bonito flakes
Green seaweed flakes

Method

1. Slice cabbage finely
2. Finely cut up the ingredients that you want to add
3. Mix okonomiyaki sauce, eggs and water together in a big bowl and stir until frothy
4. Add cabbage into the mixture
5. Pour in all the finely cut ingredients into the batter and mix thoroughly
6. Heat some oil in the frying pan
7. When oil is hot, pour all the batter mix into the frying pan and fry in medium heat
8. When the bottom surface of the okonomiyaki has turned golden brown, flip it over
9. Once both sides have turn golden brown, serve it on a plate
10. Garnish it with the okonomiyaki sauce and mayonnaise
11. Sprinkle the bonito flakes and the seaweed flakes just before serving

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Bento #15

Went over to the Japanese Store at Mid Valley The Garden again over the weekend and bought a few cool stuff. I hope I still have the packet at home as I forgot to take a photo of the bag. It was a sushi rice mix, I think the bag only had Japanese words on it. The little white sticker with the few English words on it had quite a lot of things on it... including carrots, vinegar, etc etc. I must really go back and retrieve that bag soon, if I have not already thrown it away.

Anyway, I made a simple bento for lunch using whatever that was in the fridge. I noticed that I have been bento-ing more than I have been baking.... oh, I do miss baking... but bento-ing is fun and it is quick and simple too :).

I have also started discussing a new project I have in mind with my dear bento blogging friend Pat of Bento Pet. Hope to see my proposed project take off soon. And thank you very much Pat, for giving me the time and keeping an open mind on this (hopefully NOT) a hare brain scheme of mine. Keeping fingers and toes crossed.

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Top tray : Short grain rice with the delicious pre-mix that came complete even with the nori bits for garnishing and 2 sausages (steamed)

Bottom tray : Quail eggs (bought a rabbit craft cutter from MPH bookstore MidValley but the sumo were cut free-hand - notice how untidy they are heehee), cucumbers, crab sticks and grapes.

Bento #14

Ever since I found that little Japanese supermarket like outlet at the Gardens, Mid Valley, I have been going there almost every weekend. The people there are rather nice as they will take the time to explain to me what new products they have and also how to use some of the products. I have been buying quite a few interesting stuff from them each time.

One of the items I bought recently were rice cakes (I think that is what they are called). They are made totally of glutinous rice and they come in either rectangular pieces like those in the photo below and also in small disc forms. These can be either lightly fried in a little oil or put into sweet soups like the red bean soups to give it more body.


I also got some of these Egg Furikake. Looks very nice and interesting.


With just these two ingredients, I am ready to make my very simple Bento #14.

I just had to lightly fry the rice cakes and once they are done, i used a small piece of nori sheet to hold it up. Lightly smear some Japanese mayonnaise around the 3 sides of the cake and press it into a pile of Egg Furikake. And this is how it looks.


Cut up a plum or two, wash a bunch of grapes and some cherry tomatoes and you are ready.


And this is the end result, almost hassle free.

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Bento #13

I didn't think that I will be bento-ing yesterday as I knew I was going to have a company paid lunch but when I got back, I realize that I didn't have much time for a leisurely sit-down dinner before I had to rush off for my Monday night meeting with some of my business partners. After frying the rice and taking a quick shower after that, I only had time to cut up 2 plums and 1 kiwi fruit and stuff some rice into my bento box before I ran off.

I think it was rather rude of me but I cannot help it. I arrived at 10 minutes to 8pm and the meeting is to start at 8pm. So, without too much ceremony, I just took out my Bento and ate my dinner at the office, with 2 of them eyeing my food. I didn't ask if they have eaten as there was definitely not enough to share *evil grin*

Left tray : 2 plums and 1 kiwi fruit
Right tray : Fried Thai Red Rice (recipe in the previous post)

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Fried Thai Red Rice

I have normally eaten only white rice or brown rice. But the first time I ate red rice was at this eatery Ying Ker Lou - Hakka Cuisine in Sunway Pyramid which serves authentic Hakka Cuisine. The dishes were lovely and I am trying to get some photos to post it up on the blog. I remember taking photos with my camera phone but I cannot locate them now :(


Anyway, I found the red rice very nice indeed and decided to buy a very small packet (I think the 1 kg packet) as any packet larger than that will be a magnet to weevils (gosh, how I detest these little bugs). I cooked them the first time following the directions on the packet 2 cups of water to 1 cup of rice. The rice turned out pretty hard. Luckily none of us who ate it had indigestion that night.

Yesterday, I cooked it again but this time, with 2 1/2 cups of water to 1 cup of rice. It turned out much better. As I was in a hurry to rush of for my Monday night meetings, I had only enough time to fry it all up with whatever I can find in the fridge. This is the result.


Ingredients
2 cups red rice, cooked
3 shallots - chopped
1 large carrot - diced
1 cup of frozen corn
1 fresh red chilli - sliced
4 pieces of mushroom sausages - sliced
2 eggs, beaten and scrambled
1 tbsp of mini dried shrimps

Method

1. After the rice is cooked, dish it out and fluff it to be cooled whilst preparing the other ingredients
2. Heat up the wok/pan and add a little oil.
3. Once the oil is hot, put in the shallot and fry until aromatic.
4. Add in the dried shrimps and then add in the sausages.
5. Put in the chilli, carrots and corn.
6. Add in a 1/4 tsp salt, 1/4 sugar and some pepper
7. Put in the rice into the wok and mix all the ingredients into the rice.
8. Add soya sauce to taste.
9. Finally add in the scrambled eggs and dish it out.

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