Roti Kahwin

My latest fav snack is roti kahwin, a totally unhealthy choice. It has butter, sugar, coconut milk plus starch. Totally what I don't need right now, especially as Christmas is near. Just the other night I pulled on my jeans and found that no matter how I jumped, laid on the floor or stopped breathing, I couldn't button up. I am very tempted to use the liquify tool on several of my photos. So in a vain (literally) attempt to loose some weight before I tuck in all those Christmas goodies, I have decided to go on a vegan diet, during daylight hours (thus the lack of food posts recently). Dinner is a different matter. My body needs meat to repair.

The problem is when I know I am on a diet, I crave for food even more. It's like you guys or girls wanting the one you can't get. This is when I pass by Dott's Egg Tarts and drop in to grab a box of the best tarts in town, gobble them quickly before I hear voices in my head, or go to bed early so that I can get up in time to make it to McD's before 11 am for the only item I like there--their Sausage McMuffin. But lately, my weakness, like I told you, is roti kahwin. With a cuppa black coffee, just like those China ah peks.





Roti is bread in Malay, and kahwin is married. Married bread. Made in heaven. And it is, the way the kaya (custard spread made of thick coconut milk, eggs and sugar that looks like baby poo) and the butter just brings out the best in each other. For those who haven't eaten roti kahwin, let me tell you. The bread is super cottony soft with just the right amount of moisture. As you sink your teeth and lips in, the kaya hits your taste buds and nose (you can never go wrong with coconut milk) and then the cold butter melts to create a most wonderful taste with the kaya. You reach out for the second slice before you've even finished the first.

I used to favor Fook Yuen in Damai until a couple of months ago when I regurgitated my roti kahwin on first bite. They had used margarine instead of butter. They still do, because I brought a friend there last night and threatened the boss that I will only go to Kedai Kopi Gunung Emas in Foh San if they still put margarine in my bread. He looked startled, like I just told him I knew his biggest secret. I can taste it, I said, giving him a look that sent him running to his fridges, searching high and low for butter. It was most satisfying to see. He personally made the sandwiches and brought them to my table. Please, if you eat there, ask for butter. They have increased the price from RM1/US$0.28 to RM1.30 per set/US$0.37 of two slices of bread and are giving you the cheaper substitute. But of course, if margarine is more your taste, go ahead. I know some people can't taste the difference.

Kedai Kopi Gunung Emas has exactly the same bread and kaya as Fook Yuen. I know that for sure because I know both of the bakers/owners. They started out as partners in Fook Yuen. Fook Yuen is the more popular coffee shop, since it shares a walkway full of food stalls. It has also been featured on many TV programs, local and otherwise (Singapore & Hong Kong). I still get my bread and kaya there if I'm in the area, but more and more I go to Gunung Emas.

One loaf of white bread at Gunung Emas is RM2.50. I think the kaya is RM2.70. You can make about 5-6 sets of roti kahwin, with half a cup of kaya left over. Brew a cup of hot coffee and there's nothing more sublime.



p.s. Never eat roti kahwin in those new style 'old' coffee shops like Kopitiam and Old Town. The bread and kaya aren't worth eating.

Linda' s Four-Winged Bean Salad

These are four-winged beans, also called four-angled beans. These beans grow easily here, climbing up fences and giving a handful of beans every 3 days or so from one single plant. Because they grow and fruit easily, veg vendors usually have a plant or two, enough for their consumption with extra to sell. This is one veg I am pretty sure is pesticide free, especially when there's only a kilo or two of it out for sale. Once in a while I grow one plant in my garden but they are so fruitful that after a while nobody wants this on the table.

This is a superb salad my friend Linda often makes. I'm not sure of the origin, it could be nyonya (Malay-Chinese). There's no cooking required as the lime juice sort of pickles the beans which have to be cut super thin, one-cell thin if possible. Yes, thin enough to mount on a microscope slide. I was out of peanut brittle so I used grounded cashew nuts. It worked just as well. You will be taken by the burst of flavors from the bunga kantan, the dried shrimps and the fish sauce, the sting from the bird's eye chilies and the tangy sweetness of the lime juice and the sugar. You will also love the crunch of the uncooked beans. YUM.

p.s. I know veg recipes and posts aren't popular. You have heard of fibre and a painful condition if you don't eat enough veg? Starts with an 'h', 3 syllables. First one to answer correctly gets a carton of prune juice. Virtual of course.



Linda's Four-Winged Bean Salad
400 g 4 winged beans*
2 heap T dried shrimps, washed well
8 (to your liking) chili padis or hot chilies
1/2 heart of bunga kantan (a ginger flower)
juice from 2 large limes
1/2 to 1 T fish sauce
1/3 t salt
1/2 T fine sugar
2 T peanut brittle, pounded until fine

* instead of beans, Linda sometimes uses pakis (wild fern, fiddleheads) and the result is more than excellent. The pakis need to be blanched briefly in boiling water.

1. Wash the beans very well, drain & pat dry with a clean towel. Top and tail. Slice into very thin slices, as thin as you can. Cut the chilies up, cut the bunga kantan heart very finely.

2. Mix everything together except for the peanut brittle. Taste and season to your liking. Sprinkle the pounded peanut brittle on top.

Explain This Esplanade

One of the prettiest drive in KK is along the Likas Bay. These pictures were taken around noon today, giving harsh and washed out colors. Drive there in the afternoon, around 4, when the tide is high and the sea is bright blue, and you'll agree with me that this is our best scenic drive.



That's Mt Kinabalu peeking out.







Wait a minute, what's that big orange building coming up, facing the road?(Notice Mt Kinabalu--very faint-- in the background. Nice juxtaposition huh?)





Two storeys, the higher from which to look out to. Somebody, pleeeassee plant some big trees to hide this monster. In the meantime, paint it green or something.



On closer look, the huts aren't so bad. They would look better if the roofs are thatched with atap. No more atap? Can always import some from the Maldives. Many Malaysians love Maldivian banks.



And 200 years later anthropologists will tell us we are related to the Red Indians of British Columbia.

I say lay off Likas Bay!!

Beauty To Beast

I was driving into town this morning when I missed a turn and had to make a U into Karamunsing Complex. Has anyone been there recently?

Work is halfway done to add more space to the building and some of the columns are right on the side of the road. I see this happen again and again in this town: Lintas, with the new multi-storey carpark on the fringe of the road, the on-going construction of Harbor City opposite Sutera Magellan, which juts into the only boulevard in KK, a new building in Asia City which also suddenly juts into the road, next to Chung Hwa School and perhaps many more that I'm not aware of. If these buildings were built a long time ago, it is understandable. All these buildings with shallow setbacks have been built the last few years and continue to be built without regard to setbacks bylaws, provision for road extensions or future expansion.



Part of Asia City. Asia City blatantly creeps onto the roads, here facing the road leading to KK, and the back too, facing Centrepoint. There are only two roads parallel to the coast, this one and the coastal road. If road reserves are taken up by (new) buildings, where's the room for future expansion??



Another outrageous building that seeps onto the road is the new multi-storey carpark at Lintas. It's so near the road that there's no path at the side of the building because it is right on the road. What the??



So you are driving along my favorite road, one I call The Boulevard. You come down the new flyover and suddenly the road narrows; it merges into the right lane. Why? Because further up, a new mass of shoplots is being built, on the zig of the road, making it a bottle neck.



You drive past this awful building ("With a giant colander on top" said my daughter) and the road zags in. Which means the road can't be expanded because the building is in the way. A building that wasn't built 10 or 5 years ago when planners didn't know better.

This Harbor City project is an extension of the ugliness of Asia City. Right across is the famed Sutera Magellan Resort, one of the top 2 most well-designed and maintained hotels in KK. It's like black vs white, good vs evil, ugly vs beautiful, a contradiction of tastes and vision.

Karamunsing Complex is the best example of the reasons why this city is called 'cowboy town'. Anything goes. Rules can be broken as long as you have the might and power. Prominent politicians have been known to pull an OJ Simpson. I remember more than 10 years ago when I was working in Tun Fuad Building, just opposite from Karamunsing Complex, people in K Complex suddenly rushed out onto the roads. They had heard a loud crack and parts of the building were indeed to have been found with new cracks and barriers were set up to cordon off certain areas. Within a few weeks, people slowly went back and the whole thing is forgotten. Since then, the building has been renovated and revamped by its new owners with such blatantness it makes me wonder if they are free from the city's building codes and regulations. Inside the podium, new space was added by cantilevering into the sides of the wall next to the elevators on each floor. How did the authorities find this acceptable? Is is really safe, have they considered the loading? This is the reason I just don't go to Karamunsing Complex, period.



This one takes the prize. The columns of the new addition are FRIGGING right ON THE ROAD.



Drive further up and this is a completed part of the expanded building. Was any piling done? Don't we need a safe distance from the walls of any building to the road?? So okay those are just columns, not walls. You have a driver ram into this column and see what happens to the building. Besides, the way it goes, very soon there'll be walls. Right after they get the O.C. Look what happened to Warisan Sq.

And now, they are adding more space and spilling onto the road. On top of the safety factor, these new additions are pure eyesore. This city has turned from a nice, pretty town into a hotch potch haphazard ugly maze, both macro as in overall orientation of the buildings and micro as in the individual ugliestness of each building. And it will get worse as more buildings are added with no proper planning, vision and aesthetics. We will get as ugly as Bangkok. Politicians willing, we'll get uglier than Bangkok.

Which is truly a shame, because KK hugs a long shore & coast line so that if you drive on the coastal road, you have a breathtaking blue sea on the left. And you have the ugly city on the right. I've always imagined how the city will look if we had good architects and planners. But the truth is, we just don't have the right authorities or even attitude to build this city. Politics and other factors rule the shaping of our skyline.

One of our most beautiful area is the Likas Bay coastline. Truly magnificent, on a sunny day when the sea is blue and the coconut and casuarina trees are swaying in the breeze. Even on stormy days, the long lines of swaying trees and the waves on the grey sea makes a gorgeous scene. When they started work on the esplanade (the plan apparently is to make the whole of the coastline from Tanjung Aru to Yayasan Sabah Building a long esplanade), I was happy. I imagined a simple, natural walkway where families can walk, looking out at the sun setting over the sea (yes, we are so lucky the sun sets over the sea and not the mountain as in the case of the other towns like Tawau and Sandakan). The coastline is so beautiful you just cannot build anything to distract the beauty of the area.

My heart sank when I drove to 1 Borneo last weekend. Midway along the Likas Bay road, the new esplanade stood out obtrusively. Instead of the beauty of the sea, the casuarina trees and the shore, you now see the man-made concrete walls, and strange enough, some totem pole-like lights, and worst of all, a 2-storey intrusive bright orange building that looks like a public toilet right in the middle of it all. I truly want to cry. I beg the authorities to please stop the further building of the esplanade. I can imagine the whole coastline marred by these concrete walls and dotted with orange buildings. That would really be a tragedy for KK, like plastic surgery gone wrong on a natural beauty. The worst thing would be if different sections of the esplanade are designed by different people, as I heard they are, because the section in front of the Promenade apartments is reportedly assigned to a middle east group. Imagine a different design and concept every few kilometres. Have we not learnt from Kuala Lumpur's LRT?

I will be taking some pictures of these absurd construction in the city. I am also going to make a list of the top 10 ugliest buildings in town. Please tell me what your choices are, and after compilation, I will post The Top 10 Ugliest Buidlings In KK. I need your input.

Soba Sushi

Soba sushi

This is not something you'd find in Japanese restaurants. I've only eaten this 3 times. The first time was when Yoko a neighbor, invited me to her farewell lunch 15 years ago and she made so many unusual Japanese dishes (I wasn't so into Japanese cuisine then) that I just had to write the recipes all down. The second time I ate this was when I got home from Yoko and replicated her dishes, especially her chirashi sushi. Blue Lotus mentioned soba sushi in her blog last month and I was so happy to find my old notebook in the storeroom.

Yoko's soba sushi was made with buckwheat soba, without any filling. As I've only got green tea soba in the house, that's what I used. The filling can be anything, even teriyaki chicken or a tempura prawn. This is an elegant sushi sure to impress anyone so do try and make it one day. Tastewise, I think rice sushi is still better and soba is better eaten as a noodle.







Soba Sushi
200g buckwheat or green tea soba
8 sticks of suirmi, or boiled, shelled prawns
any other filling like avocada or cuke

Tsuyu Dip
1/2 t dashi granules
1 small piece of kelp*
1 T Kikkoman soy sauce
1/4 cup water

-serve separately finely cut spring onions

-Boil the kelp briefly, remove the kelp & take pot off the fire (tell you the truth: I don't bother with the kelp-I can't taste the difference). Add the dashi granules (hondashi) and soy sauce & mix to taste. Don't make it too salty. Cool.

1. Tie a small bunch of soba (about 1.5 cm in diameter) 1/3 way down its length with a string. Don't tie too tightly because the noodles need room to expand. You will have about 3 bunches.

2. Drop the soba in boiling water, stir, and let it boil for about 3 minutes. At this stage I do what I do with all dried noodles and pasta. I switch off the heat and let the noodles cook, covered. This way the noodles still taste el dente and you save energy, for your wallet and the future generation.

3. Drain and cool in a colander until dry, or lay the soba on a kitchen towel.

4. When cool, put a sheet of nori on a sushi mat, arrange the soba over it (if too long, cut it. You can still use the cut ends, just lay them end to end), spread out into a thin layer. Put the filling in the center and roll as you would rice sushi.

5. Cut into 1" or 2.5 cm rolls and serve with the dip and some finely cut spring onions.