Apiwon

Apiwon was my top fav place for Sabah's most famous noodles, ngew chap. Ngew chap is similar to the Vietnamese pho, but not quite. Instead of thin slices of raw beef, bean sprouts and Thai basil, Sabah ngew chap is less fancy and consists of two types: the darker beef soup noodles where the meat has been stewed for hours with soy sauce and some spices and the other, a soup noodle where there's no color because no soy sauce is used. The non-soy sauce one is more authentic to Sabah and common, the darker ngew chap being a version of the Hong Kong ngoe nam meen.

I wonder how many of you remember the 'mobile' ngew chap stall at Victoria Cinema in what is now Wisma Tun Fuad? An old man used to sell ngew chap under the large raintrees (which are still standing). He'd carry his ngew chap in two wooden boxes on a pole across his shoulders, something vendors did a long long time ago. His ngew chap soup was clear, lightly flavored but very delicious. It was very 'ching' or light and refreshing without too much spices. In fact, I only remember the tung choi flavor and the sweet springy meatballs. After the old man passed on, his recipe was gone. Or maybe not, as word has it that Apiwon bought the old man's recipe from his children, including the recipe for making the meatballs.

When I first tasted Apiwon's ngew chap, I went mad with joy. It tasted just like the old man's ngew chap! I became a regular at Apiwon, so much so that my kids and Hub wouldn't let me make the final decision on where to eat our Sunday lunches. It wasn't just the taste of the ngew chap that drew me there like it was my second home. The place is everything I wanted in a coffeeshop: it is the cleanest coffee shop in KK, with clean floors devoid of used tissues. Chopsticks and spoons were held in wooden boxes that have lids. The tissues provided were serviettes, not toilet tissue (toilet tissue as napkins is truly truly atrocious, just think about it). They served their noodles in ceramic bowls. Their meatballs were the biggest in town, so that you can bite it into half before chewing it whereas all other meatballs have shrunk to pea-size and you don't even get to bite; you chew straightaway. Their beef meatballs also tasted of beef while all other shops' meatballs taste neutral, bland. Their fish balls too very tasty and springy and smooth. Apiwon also had a tasty, thick chili sauce that I could tell was grounded by a stone mill, not processed by a machine. Other pluses are the shop is located at a corner lot, so that even though it isn't air-conditioned, it is cool. Parking is easy and shaded because of the big trees around and the area isn't jammed with cars. And one of the biggest thing they got right was the bosses were involved in the every day running of the shop. The lady, her hub and their son were nearly always there and their standards were the same day in and out, year in and out except for the unfortunate switch from ceramic bowls to melamine ones sometime last year.

When at least two different people told me a few months ago that they weren't impressed with my recommendation of Apiwon, it was like an insult to me, since I love Apiwon's food. Then my daughter came back for a visit last year and Apiwon was one of the first places she headed to. She came back very disappointed. I went one morning after that, and it was very good. Another visit around CNY turned out very disappointing. The last time I ate there was in February, and it was so disappointing too that I've not been back until today. I was hoping that whatever led to the drop in quality had been corrected.

Unfortunately, after today's visit, I have to regretfully and reluctantly take Apiwon off my list of places to eat.

When I complained, the employee who now seems to run the place (the bosses are never around now) gave me a dour look and said, "Tell the boss!" Well, boss is never around now, that is the problem I think.


Ngew chap, RM6.50

The star attraction, the beef meatballs, have shrunk in size and number (only 3!) and the stewed beef slices were stingy and thin while the price has gone from RM5 to RM6 to RM6.50 for a regular portion (RM8.00 for large) which by any standard is small. The chili sauce is so watered down that when I dipped my meatball in it, the sauce runs off and doesn't cling to the meatballs.


Seafood soup with tossed noodles on the side, RM7.50

The seafood noodles too suffered similar drop in quality and quantity, with only 2 tiny fishballs, 2 small prawns, 1 slice of fish and 2 slices of fish cake floating in a soup that taste distinctly different because it didn't have the zhou cai /preserved veg anymore. And instead of Emperor's veg, they are now using chinese cabbage. At RM7.50 for a regular portion (RM8.50 for large), I'd be crazy to eat their seafood noodles again. And the ngew chap too.

Xia Mi Chong Mien

Xia mi chong mien, dried shrimps spring onions noodles

It's been so so hot recently. I wish I am in the northern hemisphere, where "spring has sprung" (lifted that from flickr). Don't you think the world is wonderfully made, when you can live half the year enjoying spring and summer in, say, Australia, and then the next half year in, say, Maine, so you always have nice cool days? But how many people can afford to do that? The perfect weather IMHO (thanks, David) is cool days all the year through, no winter or hot sizzling summer days. I wonder if it's true that Kunming in China has spring weather the whole year through. Lucky.

Hub and I don't like eating out, especially lunch. He doesn't like the food outside while I don't like to go out into the hot sun, even if it's a short ride in the car. By the time we park, I'm already exhausted from the sun and glare. Another reason I don't like eating lunch out is because the most common thing served for lunch is noodles. I love soup noodles,but not in 33 C weather. It seems so crazy that we slurp hot soup and noodles in sizzling tropical weather. We should be eating leng mien (cold noodles) like they do in China, Korea and Japan in the summer. A good salad or sandwich isn't easy to find here. Instead we eat piping hot soup noodles meant to be eaten in wintry conditions.

I had to whip up something fast (but not instant minute noodles) for lunch yesterday and there wasn't any time to defrost any meat, so I cooked one of my MIL's standby, xia mi chong mien.

Xia mi chong mien (dried shrimps spring onions noodles) is one of the simplest and cheapest bowl of noodles (instant noodles notwithstanding) you can cook. Any respectable Chinese kitchen should have ingredients such as dried noodles, dried shrimps and spring onions (I have pots of them in my backyard) so count your kitchen disrespectable if you don't have these 3 items. Unless your mom or granny is Shanghainese, chances are you have never heard or eaten this noodle before. In Shanghai, xia mi chong mien is a popular and humble bowl of comfort noodles. My MIL often makes a large bowl of xia mi topping and keeps it in the fridge for the hungry stomachs that drop by her house unannounced. She just needs to boil some noodles, add the topping and some soup and that's one meal. Her soup can be chicken stock or it can be jiang you tang (soy sauce soup), which is a very common home-style quick soup for pot stickers or wontons or noodles in Shanghai. Just throw a splash of light soy sauce, sesame oil, finely cut spring onions and a dash of msg (optional) into a bowl, add boiling water and that's jiang you tang. Xia mi chong mien is not exactly highly nutritious unless you use a home-made stock so I usually have a side dish of blanched greens. Xia mi chong mien is great when you are tired of being a carnivore. Dried shrimps aren't exactly meat are they?

I've had several requests for quick simple meals so this should shut up those who complain that my recipes are 1) complicated 2) costly 3) greasy. Yes, I've been accused of all that. And I haven't even started on my greasy, expensive complicated dishes yet. Like dried oysters wrapped in pig omentum (visceral layer of fat that looks like a piece of netting), something my Dad made once and forever stored in my mind because it was like eating something from an operating room.


Xia Mi Chong Mien

1 cup dried shrimps/xia mi*
2 T garlic, minced
1 cup spring onions, finely diced or in 1 cm lengths
1 T shaoxin wine (optional, I don't add it)
1 t sugar
3 T light soy sauce
1/4 t salt
freshly ground pepper
3 T veg oil

noodles, fresh or dried

*choose dried shrimps that aren't too red. The red ones are usually farmed shrimps.

1. Put xia mi into a bowl, pick out any dirt from the xia mi. Wash it 2 times, then add enough water to cover the xia mi and leave it for 20 minutes. Drain and reserve the soaking liquid. Cut or chop the xia mi until fine, or to your liking.

2. Put oil into a hot wok or frying pan. Add the garlic and dried shrimps and fry over low heat until fragrant and dried, about 5-7 minutes. The longer you fry the xia mi, the better the flavor. The xia mi should be browned and crisped outside.

3. Add the sugar, salt, soy sauce, wine and pepper and continue frying until the shrimps are dry again. Be patient. Now add the spring onions and toss to mix, frying until the spring onions are wilted. Remove into a bowl. You can keep the fried xia mi in the fridge for at least a week.

4. When ready to eat, just boil some noodles, drain and wash off the starch and drain again. Put noodles into serving bowls.

5. Use home-made chicken stock if available, but if not, use Swanson's chicken broth diluted 1 part broth to 1 part water. Add the reserved liquid from soaking the xia mi. When the soup boils, pour enough of the soup into the bowl of noodles to just cover the noodles, top with 2 spoonfuls of fried xia mi. Sprinkle with extra spring onions if like.

A Very Very Good Cottage Pie

How good can it be? Try it, especially on kids. I haven't met a kid who doesn't like cottage pie.

I didn't know until today that shepherd's pies have lamb or mutton as the meat filling while cottage pies have beef. Hmm, I've always called my ground beef mash pies shepherd's pies. There you go, something learnt.

I made half a dozen mini cottage pies along with the two jumbo pies for the Kg K kids and when E dropped by this afternoon, I gave her a couple to bring home. She just messaged to say that her hub and son loved the pies and she has to have the recipe, so I am happy to oblige since I am running low on materials to blog. I have the total opposite problem to Jo's. I can write and publish a post in 20 minutes but I don't have enough photos to support my ramblings. These days we've been getting afternoon thunderstorms (and mornings are so hot the sunlight sears) and there just isn't enough natural light to capture photos good enough to blog.

You can do the mash the night before to break up the steps and make work lighter. These pies freeze well too although in my house we never have enough left over to freeze. My mash are not super smooth because I don't have a ricer and my helper Vero uses a potato masher. Some people recommend the processor but that would make the mash sticky most of the time. Anyway, for cottage pies I prefer to have some lumps in the mash.

This recipe has been with me forever so I can't remember where it's from. It's the only cottage pie recipe I like. In fact, when I eat other cottage pies, I secretly feel pleased that they aren't as good as mine. Now you can secretly feel pleased too next time you eat somebody else's less-than -perfect cottage pie (as long as she doesn't read this blog too). E said most cottage pies have a ragu style filling with too much tomato puree whereas my pie filling tastes more like the beef steak pies. When something's so good you don't want to change it much except I've added parmesan and cheddar in place of butter and also mixed Italian herbs and more garlic to give it extra flavor. Here's the golden recipe.



Cottage Pie

The Mash
1.5 kg old potatoes*
50 g tasty cheddar, grated
30 g parmesan cheese, grated
6-8 T milk or skimmed milk
salt and pepper to taste

* I like the potato layer to be 1 1/2 times the height of the meat layer for a more substantial meal but you can decrease this amount to 1 kg if you don't want such a thick layer. Make sure the meat layer is not too thin or nobody will like your pie.

1. Peel, cube and boil the potatoes until soft. Drain and mash while hot, adding the cheeses, milk, salt and pepper. I like my mash lightly salted to go with a saltier meat base but it's up to you. Add some butter if like.

The Meat Filling
700 g fresh lean ground beef
3 tomatoes, in thin slices (optional but recommended)
4 T tomato puree or 2 T tomato paste
1 big onion, diced finely
3 cloves garlic, minced
freshly ground black pepper (to your taste)
1-1 /2 t salt (to your taste)
1 t dried basil
1 t dried oregano/Italian mixed herbs
1 beef stock cube*
2 T ordinary flour

* My fav is Korean beef granules that come in 300 g and 500 g packs, with the picture of a large piece of uncooked steak on the packs. Very flavorful, better than Oxo and Maggi.

1. Preheat oven at 250 C.

2.Heat a pot up, add 1 T olive oil and fry the onion and garlic until soft (not brown) and add the beef. Fry the beef until the color has changed. Add the puree, basil, oregano or Italian mixed herbs, salt & pepper and flour, stirring all the time. Break the stock cube, taste and season if necessary.If your mash is not too salty, you can make the meat a little saltier. Add 1 1 /4 cup water, stirring well until all the water is absorbed.

3. Spoon beef mixture into an ovenproof dish of about 9" square (you can also use small individual foil pans), arrange the tomato slices over the meat and spread the mash on top. Drag a fork over to make a pattern. You can sprinkle a tablespoon of grated tasty cheddar or parmesan all over the mash too.

4. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until mash is crisped and browned here and there.

Kg K

Once every 4 months, it's my turn to provide lunch for about 30 kids of Kg K (let's just keep the place anonymous). My church has adopted this village in Penampang by building a small community hall and employing two wonderful uni students to teach the kids Malay and English daily. The community hall is like an overheated oven and I wouldn't have lasted two days if I were to teach there, so I am really impressed by the two teachers. The residents of Kg K are local Kadazans-Dusuns who are illiterate and because of their ignorance, their kids are not registered with the relevant department and so they can't get their identity cards which means they can't go to government schools. A vicious cycle. There's been some positive results so far and the kids may be getting their ICs soon. Anyway, the church's idea of one nutritious meal a week for those kids below 12 is great, don't you think.





Nov 08: I cooked chicken stew, fried french beans and rice, and bought butter cake for dessert. After lunch, the kids and I played a game which my daughter called "Buying the kids' affection." I was just giving them small change for telling me the names of the things in the classroom in English. I think I am most comfortable teaching 3rd graders. They are old enough to interact with, yet young enough to impress. The kids reminded me of the summer I was teacher's aide to my Aunt Lucia, a teacher in Langley, Whidbey Island USA. Those 3rd graders in Langley were the ones who decided I should be called 'Terri' but that's another story for another post.





Dec 08: My home group got together to wrap the presents and cook for the Christmas party for the kids. I have a slight fear of going to the kampungs (village) because of the dirt and gravel roads and it seems like every visit ends up with some car getting stuck in the road, even in dry weather. Did I tell you a miracle happened to me when I visited a kampung in the heart of Sabah about 4 years ago? No? That's another post then.





April 1, 09: This morning I made shepherd's pies for the kids, then decided to add homey beans omelettes cooked like a frittata, to go with rice, just in case they didn't like the pie. Dessert is watermelon since it's so hot there. The kids don't eat very much (most are about 5-9 years old) and the first time I cooked for them, I cooked enough for 60 and there was plenty of leftover so some of the kids tried to discreetly pass the food through the school's windows to their parents. It was touching to see that.

It's time to send the food to the kids at Kg K. This time they'll have to come and carry the food up the hill. Me, I'm heading off to a ladies' brunch after that. Remember, don't sweat the small stuff, really, give thanks for all that God has provided!Have a great day everybody!

p.s. I'm told the pie was a big hit.

Chinese Restaurant At Winner Hotel

Winner Hotel's Chinese restaurant is one of the oldest restaurants in town. Even after bigger and fancier hotels came up, those who preferred taste over ambience would still chose Winner's Chinese restaurant for wedding banquets. But over time the place became really shabby and small compared to TABH, Pan Pacific and Magellan Sutera, which are now the top places for wedding banquets. With the preference for ambience and grandeur first and food last, wedding banquets are terrible gastronomic experiences, and I have not heard of one good wedding banquet dinner in any of these fancy hotels. People just accept the fact that hotels can't do good banquet dinners, with their constraints such as no pork allowed, no msg and no big burning burners and woks and lack of good Chinese chefs. Not only that, with wedding banquets now at 100 tables compared to the modest 20-30 tables in my time, if you arrived late, you don't even get to meet the bride and groom. You are treated to a boring slide show of their youthful days before they met each other, then the mandatory picture of their university graduation, then pictures taken during their courtship and finally, if you are still watching, pictures of their wedding. You make small talk with people you don't know sitting at your table and maybe you can catch a glimpse (if you haven't yet escaped through the side doors) of the couple with their parents on the stage far away doing a general toast and wave to the crowd like the Queen or the Pontiff on special days.

Of all the restaurants for wedding banquets, the best in KK was the now extinct Borneo Hotel, out in the second beach of Tanjung Aru. Borneo Hotel banquet food is legendary in this town. Even at 40 tables, the hotel's restaurant turned out exceptional dishes like deep fried stuffed crab claws, seafood gratin in crab shells, crispy fried chicken, abalone kailan and many more. What a pity this generation is growing up eating substandard banquet dinners. When I was a kid, I looked forward to those dinners because wedding banquets were special occasions thrown by parents to to fete their friends to the best money can buy. In those days, sharks fins were real and the ingredients were of top quality.

The Chinese restaurant in Winner Hotel has recently re-opened after renovation, and I was told that the food is very good. I agree with A, who directed me to Winner, that it is impossible to find a restaurant that serves Chinese-Cantonese food like the old days and Winner is probably the only one left. So with a lot of expectation, 12 of us dined at Winner last night.

I shall call this dinner The Good, The So-So and The Ugly.

The Good



This came steaming hot and the fish maw was flavorful while the soup was not too starchy. Like my FIL said, it was the best fish maw soup so far.



Crispy skin chicken. I could hear the crunch when Wey bit into the skin. Also, unlike many places where the chicken is precooked and re-fried, this was not so the meat was moist and tasty.



This was my favorite of the night, steamed white pomfret Teochew style. Although the pomfret was from the freezer not the tank, it didn't have that frozen smell and taste. The tomatoes, tamarind seeds, ja cai and all made the sauce slightly tangy and sweet while the fish was tender and smooth. Very well done.



Sabah veg with garlic, done nicely leaving the veg crunchy and delicious. As L's mom pointed out, this is a dish that can never be replicated at home, simple as it looks. I agree. Unless you have an inferno for a burner, you will end up with a plate of wet and soft stalks.

The So-So



The hot and cold platter was made up of good and bad appetisers. The jellyfish was good, not overly soaked with bicarb or whatever, the processed fish and prawn fingers were okay, I'm not sure about the duck, the salad prawns was tasteless except for the mayo and the sharks' fins scrambled egg was heavy and wet, ugh.



I am often wary of ordering braised pork leg because I have not eaten any that comes near to my MIL's. Again, I was disappointed. The leg was done soft and tender, which was good, but the taste was somehow 'just almost there'. It was like they either didn't use enough soy sauce or didn't sear it at the beginning. Wey, for whom I ordered this dish, was the first to eat it and he whispered to me, "There's a plastic flavor!" I took a bite and knew what he meant. It was really the flavor of Chinese rose wine, a wine that is so highly scented it can spoil a dish if you use more than say a teaspoon. I once stewed pork belly with an overdose of Chinese rice wine, and Wey made me promise to never cook that dish again. The rose wine Winner had used was lighter in flavor, but still, it was there and I think they should have used Shaoxin wine instead.



Maybe because I like my lotus leaf rice simple, with just the flavor of the lotus leaf infused in good rice, I didn't like Winner's version which had peas, carrots, corn niblets (that trio of frozen veg which spells cheap ingredients), Chinese sausages, ham and I don't know what else. It was like a bad fried rice in lotus leaf.

I really feel that the next dish is at the borderline, between so-so and ugly.



I was looking forward to taro ring with mixed veg, one of my favorite dishes and something I've tried cooking recently without satisfactory results. Winner's taro ring is just as bad as mine, edible but not impressive. A good taro ring should be light, lacy and crispy outside and the mash inside should be soft and tasty. Winner's taro ring has a tasty mash (but would've been better if the ring was thicker so that it'll taste 'meatier') but the exterior was not lacy and crunchy. What made the dish taste even worse was the mixed veg inside, a lapchap mix of baby corn, celery, carrots, peppers, mushrooms, chicken all cut too fine and made too jook (overwhelming in taste) by the addition of 5 spice powder and too much cornstarch.

The Ugly





The much awaited 8-jewel duck. This was a dish I hated as a child, but have grown to appreciate with time. I can do a pretty mean version, but the last time I did one was 15 years ago. The duck has to be deboned, seared and then steamed until even the bones are soft.

What was wrong with this dish? First of all, I will remember when I next cook this to turn the bird upside so that when diners dig into it, they will end up with a spoonful of duck skin, meat and some 'jewels'. This was served with the breast facing down, I think, so the first round for all of us was just skin and jewels. Because it wasn't particularly tasty, or because we were too full by then, nobody went for a second helping. The jewels in the duck were also not my kind of jewels. I didn't count the number of jewels, most of which were lotus seeds, cashew nuts (instead of chestnuts) and pork. I sure didn't taste any Chinese ham. But what really put us off was the ducky smell. I know it wouldn't be a duck without that smell, but it was quite strong and offensive. It reminded me of my goose down pillows which gave me horrible nights of imsomnia until I threw them away.

The total bill came to RM367/US$100 only, which was very cheap since the meal was for 12 diners. Winner doesn't add any tax or charge so rush there before they do. I will be back, but I will stick to certain dishes only.

Winner Hotel
Level 1
Kampung Air
Tel: (088) 243 224