The Best Restaurants List

I would like to request KL food bloggers to consider doing a list of the top 5 or 10 restaurants they ate in in 2008. Joe? Ivy? Meena? WMW? Kaijai?

When we visit KL, there's just too much action for small town folks like us. We don't even need a list here because there's so few restaurants to choose from, but KL abounds with good restaurants! Where's best for cha sao, for hokkien mee, for chicken rice, or for good old whatever? Remember a guy called Blackwell who used to release an acerbic round up of the best and worst dressed celebrities? Do one for food, and it would be great reading plus information especially for those of us who aren't familiar with KL! KL has the best food in 'Nanyang', you lucky KLites!(Penang is great, but only for a few local dishes and Singapore is mediocre except for chicken rice and fine dining, especially western cuisine.)

Come on, just do it!

Kedai Kopi Jia Xiang

One of these nights when you had a light dinner because you want to loose those stubborn 2 kgs before Chinese New Year, and it is 10 pm and your stomach is acting like it is possessed, head out to Kedai Kopi Jia Xiang in Lintas, behind Brass Monkey Cafe N Bar. In my (humble) opinion, this is one of the best places for sang yuk mien (fresh pork noodles) in KK. I know I've told you that Kedai Kopi Kah Hing in Taman Mesra, Penampang is the best, and it still is very very good, but ? is equally good. The place is open for breakfast and lunch too but somehow the soup's not as good as at dinner. I'm told the mom runs the place in the day while the daughter takes over at night, and somehow daughter seems to cook better than mom. Another plus about eating there at night is that parking is easy whereas in the day--well, you know the parking situation in Lintas. Plus it always feels like an oven there in the day.

The best time to go is after 9pm, when the soup's concentrated after all the previous orders are cooked in the same huge cauldron of soup.

We had a rare supper there recently and you can see we are keeping to our dieting because for once we didn't have any offal. Wey also ordered pork belly in herbal soup (bak kut teh) from another stall in the same shop.


Soup sang yuk mee fun/fresh pork fine rice noodles. You have to ask for the pork crackling mince. I think they are a bit stingy on the meat toppings compared with Kah Hing.


Soy sauce-tossed wheat noodles with sang yuk soup.


Pork belly bak kut teh. I didn't find this very good but I only had one piece, in keeping with my diet control.

I will loose those 2 kgs. Then I can eat all I want again, especially in 2 1/2 weeks' time (CNY). But wait, my stomach is rippling and it's only 8:57 pm. Maybe I'll see you there tonight.

Panettone

Panettone

Okay, Christmas is over so why am I posting on this Italian Christmas bread?

I made panettone for Christmas and New Year because it is light on butter and went well with coffee for breakfast, after a sinful dinner. Now that everybody seems to be mindful of their calorie intake and health, I am cutting down on cakes and cookies except for very special occasions. When you really think about it, desserts are really bad for us. There's cholesterol and saturated fats in the butter that threatens to clog our arteries and give us heart attacks and zero-nutrient sugar that rots our teeth and worse, turns us diabetic. I'm so concerned about fats and sugar now that I didn't bake any cookies for Christmas, and my fruit cake was a lighter one than those I used to make. I think panettone is the perfect thing to eat when you want to avoid the fats and sugar yet have something that doesn't make you feel deprived. Only thing is, you'll have to eat panettone with lots of coffee, because it goes so well together, and too much caffeine is bad too :(

Florence writes a cooking blog with wonderful posts that you can tell are well-tested and successful. I was impressed with her panettone, it looked like the one I brought home from Melbourne last year. I never liked panettone before the Melbourne panettone (which really was from Milan) because the ones I ate from Hyatt Hotel were dry and bland.

Panettone is just a very tall, sweetish bread with dried fruits and liquor that originated from Milan, Italy. The yeast is fermented longer than usual resulting in a soft, moist bread.

My first try was not very successful because in my hurry to get the cake ready so that I could take photos of it in daylight, I over-heated my oven during the 3rd proofing and it killed the yeast so the bread didn't rise as much as the 2nd proofing. However, the bread still turned out moist and I must've eaten 1/4 of the bread by myself. I had some trouble looking for a tall enough paper cup so in the end I just used a removable bundt pan without the bottom sheet. It was slightly too big.

You need to plan ahead when making this bread because the proofing takes ages. The first proofing takes at least 12 hours, then 2 hours and then 2 again! I also had some problem with the dough, with turned out very wet and shaggy. I had to increase the flour from 245 g to 400 g before the dough could be handled without sticking to my hands and work surface. I also added extra dried fruits. I didn't get the fluffy light bread that Florence got, and strange enough in my second try the bread wasn't as moist as the first (was it because I let the poolish grow for nearly 20 hours?) but I am pretty happy with my panettone anyway. Maybe with more practice I can make better panettone by this Christmas.


In my hurry to take these photos before sundown, the bread was not fully baked and you can see that it was slightly sticky.

For the panettone recipe, do check Florence's post.

p.s A reader, Sarah, directed me to this great video by Gourmet mag. So now I know I should not add extra flour but instead fold the dough (I had put it in my mixer) by hand. Sarah, thanks so much for directing me to the video site. I've never seen online video series that are so clear. You Tube should raise the standards of the videos allowed for posting.

Wat Dan Ho

Wat dan ho. This was the first try. The noodles could've been thinner, the egg rawer and there should've been more gravy, but the wok hei and taste were there so I was encouraged and planned another shot at the dish for the next day. This family was going to eat a lot of wat tan ho until I get it right.


2nd try in cooking wat tan ho. The family pronounced it as good as the restaurants'--was it to stop me from cooking it again tomorrow? But I accept the verdict unabashedly because I think my wat dan ho is even better--the noodles were home-made, unadulterated and fresh. Notice I'm keeping my resolution to serve more greens, to Wey's horror.

Wat= slippery, dan= egg, ho = flat rice noodles. Just 3 syllables in Chinese to 8 in English. Did you hear about the reason why Chinese are good/fast in math? No, not because God compensated us for small eyes, lack of height, boobs and legs. The reason became clear in 1999 when we struggled to say "sembilan belas (19) sembilan puluh (90) sembilan (9)" in Malay. That's 13 syllables against 4 syllables ("e jiu jiu jiu") in Chinese. Granted, you can still say "satu sembilan sembilan sembilan" (11 syllables) but that still makes you 22 syllables slower to answer if someone asked you what's 1999 + 1999. Unless you are good at Peter Piper and Seashells. Ok, that's my 2 cents for Random Monday.

Yeah, wat dan ho, a popular noodle dish in Malaysia and Singapore. It is the perfect noodle dish if you don't want dry-fried noodles or soupy noodles. The most notable thing about this dish is that the gravy is made slippery by the addition of a raw egg just before dishing out the noodles. And to me, the most important thing other than the taste is the wok hei. Wok= Chinese frying pan, concave in shape to increase surface area, prevent spilling and to concentrate heat, hei = heat. Many stir fry dishes can't be replicated at home because our hobs just can't fire up so much heat quickly. However, in Malaysia where all homes are open because we don't have a cold wind to keep out, you can have a strong ventilator or even better, an outdoor open kitchen like I have and fry away to nobody's business especially if you don't live in apartments.

To keep the heat of the wok, fry individual portions so that the noodles sear well. Defy that and your wat dan ho is bound to be bland. Now excuse me while I go put brow pencil on--the high heat can singe your brows. Remember the char kuey tiao aunty in Penang who wore goggles? Did you think she had such bad fashion taste??

Wat Dan Ho (1 large portion)
300 - 400 g kuey tiao (if chilled, let it come to room temp)
1/2 cup sliced meat*
1 /2 handful mustard greens, in short lengths

meat seasoning: use sliced pork or chicken or seafood and add big pinch of salt, a shake of pepper and 1/2 t cornflour to the meat. This is basic seasoning for meat in Chinese stir fries.

Gravy:
1 1/2 cup chicken stock (just use diluted Swanson's)
1/8 t salt
1/2 -1 t light soy sauce (depending on your taste)
a shake of pepper
1/2 t fine sugar
2 heaped t cornflour

extra : 1 T chicken stock mixed with 1/2 t light soy sauce
veg oil
1 egg

1. Put 1/2 T oil into a smoking hot wok. Use ladle to make sure the sides of the wok are well-oiled. Throw in the kuey tiao and let it sear; do not stir all the time. Turn the noodles over and sear other sides. This is done quickly because the heat is very high. You want brown but not burnt patches. When you see there's enough searing of the noodles, sprinkle in the extra sauce of 1 T stock mixed with 1/2 t light soy sauce, stir quickly and remove onto a plate. Arrange the noodles because you are going to pour the gravy on top. Keep warm.

2. Put 1 T oil into a clean wok (same wok can be used), add the meat, fry a few sec until meat has changed to white color, and add the veg and remove onto another plate or bowl.

3. Pour all the gravy ingredients into the same wok, stir and cover. When the gravy boils and thickens, add the fried meat & veg, let it start to boil, switch off the heat and crack the egg in, stir once or twice to break the egg yolk and quickly pour the gravy over the fried noodles. The egg should be quite raw as it will still cook in the gravy. You need to work quickly.

Top with fried pork fat crackling if like. Use pork oil to fry a tastier plate of wat tan ho but please, do that only once in a while.

Flat Rice Noodles (Kuey Tiao)

Cheong fun without filling

Flat rice noodles or kuey tiao (ho fun in Cantonese) are called as such to distinguish them from ordinary rice noodles, which are usually thin and cylindrical, and unlike in China where they are fresh, the rice noodles we get here are dried. Flat rice noodles are popular because they are slippery-smooth and soft with a slight bite. I prefer flat rice noodles to fresh yellow oily wheat noodles because I hate the flavor of the lye said to be an ingredient of yellow oily noodles. Lye is a corrosive chemical (NaOH--sodium hyroxide) found in soap and household cleaning detergents. Still hungry for that bowl of oily yellow noodles?

Flat rice noodles are not that pure too. Boric acid as a preservative is used in commercial rice noodles such as flat rice noodles and the real-fun-to-eat noodles called lao su fen meaning 'mouse tail noodles', which really look more like large worms than tails to me. Many years ago a dozen or more primary school children in Malaysia died after a lunch of mouse tail noodles that had too much boric acid.

I stopped eating kuey tiao about 10 years ago after a shocking discovery. A friend brought me to a noodles factory in Kolombong that makes, among others, cheong fun (rice rolls) and I started serving that for snacks for my cell group. One Saturday, I went to the factory late, around 2 pm, when they were closing, and I noticed bags of noodles stacked on some tables and I asked the girl working there what would happen to the unsold noodles. She nonchalantly replied that the noodles can stay on the tables through the weekend without refrigeration. I just couldn't believe that in our hot weather noodles can stay fresh for more than 24 hours. Just how much boric acid is in the noodles? Boric acid reportedly causes infertility (damages the testes--ouch) and damage to internal organs. Plastics too are out to make sure you don't pass your genes to the next generation. So why do you think infertility is on the rise?

I happened to watch a Korean program last night and was so glad I did. Have you ever wondered how they peel the skins off canned mandarin oranges and orange pulp in orange juice and canned fruits such as peaches? Orange sections are soaked and boiled in hydrochloric acid (HCL) and peaches are soaked in NaOH. Of course, they neutralise the HCL and NaOH with base and acids respectively, and so by law need not reveal that the canning process includes contamination with these chemicals. And besides the treatment by these chemicals, the canned fruits are subject to heat, which destroys Vitamin C and also changes their color so coloring is added. Then because these fruits are picked when still unripe, they add tons of sugar to sweeten them. The result is perfect, processed fruits with very little nutritional value and lots of sugar/calories. In fact, there's so much sugar that 1 large can of mandarins contain the same calories as 13 fresh mandarins! Still like those canned peaches and cherries?

So, given all that, bless you if you still eat flat noodles and yellow oily noodles. But we, the mothers/girlfriends/conscientious cooks can do something about processed food. We can cook from scratch. I truly believe that we should go back to those unprocessed food days.

This is where food bloggers come in. In this case, Zurin of Cherry On A Cake. Zurin recently posted a recipe on home-made kuey tiao. Thanks Zurin! My kuey tiao turned out so successful that I made a batch for afternoon snack and another for dinner, and I suspect I'll make another batch before I post this because I need to take some pictures of the how-to.

Other than kuey tiao, I also made some cheong fun (rice rolls) by increasing the amount of wheat starch to give the noodles more bite. You can adjust the amount of flours to get the texture you want.


Flat Rice Noodles
150 g or 1 1/2 cups rice flour
1 1/2 T wheat starch (tang mien flour)*
2 T cornflour
400 ml or 1 3/4 cups water
1 T veg oil
1/4 t salt (I reduced this from 1/2 t)

* increasing this to 2 T will give the noodles a stronger bite.

1. Mix all the above ingredients well into a thin batter and let it rest for an hour. Do not be impatient like me. I tried steaming 10 minutes after mixing the batter and the rice pancake was soft and sticky. Just before the hour's up, get ready a steaming wok of water.

2. Ladle into a greased pan and steam 3-5 minutes, depending on the thickness and size of your pan. I used a tart pan with a removable base which was stupid because the batter ran through the sides into the water. I think a non-stick cake pan's best but you still have to oil it the first time. It's helpful to remember the amount of batter and size of your cake tin so you can get the same thickness for each pancake.





3. For kuey tiao, make thinner pancakes. When cool enough to handle, peel it off the pan, roll it up loosely (no need for neatness) and cut it with an oiled pastry cutter into 1 cm pieces. Unravel the flat rice noodles by fluffing them with your hands gently.

4. For unfilled cheong fun (as versus cheong fun with fillings, which should be paper-thin), you can make thicker pancakes and roll the pancakes snugly, then cut into 2 cm slices. Do not unravel. Top the cheong fun with: hoisin sauce (Lee Kum Kee brand is good), Maggi soy sauce, sweet chili sauce, toasted sesame seeds and chopped spring onions.