Chatime mania

At last, I tried Chatime that has just opened near my office...Just to find out what the fuss is about...

Ahhh..refreshing, but taste-wise...not my favorite...as for the pearls, they're too chewy!

My pearl white milk tea

Carrot cake

Aha! In an attempt to clear off my stock (I'm going home in another 2 months!! Yippie!!)..I've decided to bake yet another cake for breakfast...mind you, I've been consuming only Jacob's crackers & Quaker Oatmeal alternately each week, and the mere sight of them make me wanna puke now! lol!

Carrot cake has always been my favourite cake and back home in Malaysia, whenever I do drop by Secret Recipe Restaurant, cheese cake was never my selection (although it was hubby's favourite) and I never fail to pick the carrot cake instead..Somehow, I love this cake for the nutrition in it(it has carrots in it anyway) and if we don't take so much of the cream cheese frosting, it is not that sweet, definitely a much healthier choice!

I googled for some carrot cake recipe, and since this one uses only vegetable oil and no butter, I thought I would give it a try. As usual, I don't follow exactly the recipe when it comes to sugar...guess what? when I'm in the midst of preparing the ingredients, I realised that my fine sugar has ran out, and I have only about half cup of brown sugar left...No choice,brown sugar then..but the recipe asked for 1 cup of sugar, my only alternative is to include more of raisins instead! Also, I've omitted the cheese cream frosting part. Thanks to my horrible Hungarian language, I've bought buttercream instead of cheesecream. Sigh..

Anyway, here's some pictures of the outcome of the cake..Surprisingly the cake turned out pretty good, but it is not as moist as I wanted it to be.. I'm still struggling to learn to use the oven properly, I can't seem to bake a cake without overbaking the top layer! How to ensure that the whole cake bakes consistently? Any suggestion?...

The mixture..I guess it's too oily!

Preparing to bake!

Done! But look, the top layer is slightly burnt again! :(

Sliced into half..one for distribution to my fellow colleagues, another half for own consumption! :)

Curry puffs- my first attempt

My mentor actually decided to throw a "surprise" birthday party for me at work tomorrow. But guess what? Instead of a "surprise", he had accidentally sent me the birthday invitation instead last Friday! lol!

But it was all good as I have already decided to bring some food to office tomorrow too. As my marble cake failed, I decided to make some curry puffs instead. Curry puffs should be a good introduction to my Hungarian colleagues as it is a popular Malaysian snack.

It took me  a total 6 hours to make these curry puffs! Boy, it sure is alot of work but definitely worth it when we eat them! :P

 Started with the dough. I kneaded the dough and rest it in the fridge for half and hour before I started. I've been told that the dough must always be in cool temperature!

 I cooked the fillings the day before. It was potato curry with minced meat.

 Next, flatten the dough. As I did not have a rolling pin, I used a flask instead! lol!

Well, as long as it did the job well!

Next, make the circles. I used a glass mug.

Here's a view of my "workstation"..basically this is on my dining table! :P

Put in the fillings into the dough, seal the sides and roll up the sides, voila, here's my uncooked curry puffs!

Deep fry them...and absorb the oil with napkins and left them to cool.

After the puffs cooled down, I packed them into tupperwares and they were ready to go! :)

My first banana walnut cake

It's a lazy weekend. Rather than doing nothing, I decided to bake a cake since I have all the basic baking ingredients needed. While scouring through the web for some ideas of what to bake, I decided to bake a banana walnut cake since I have a few over-ripe bananas sitting in the fridge. Also, since I am a novice in cake-baking, banana cake seems like a good choice since it is touted to be one of the simplest cake to make! haha.. Luckily, a friend of mine actually bought a hand mixer and creaming the sugar and butter with mixer definitely help to speed things up!
Recipe has been adapted from here. I have reduced the amount of brown sugar by at least 10% of the recommended amount since I dislike the cake to be too sweet. I didn't have much confident when I stirred all the ingredients in, but I guess this is indeed a no-brainer cake to bake after all ..Here's the outcome of the cake, not perfect but definitely edible! hehe...

Fresh from the oven! Love the aroma!

Cooling down..

Removed from the loaf pan.

Tada...my banana walnut cake!

Note: The slightly burnt area you see were actually that of the skin of the walnuts.
A lesson to learn: I need to embed the walnut into the mixture next time rather than exposing them since the thin walnut skin gets burnt easily. Either that or I will have to remove the flaky skin on the walnut.

As for the taste, still as yummy!!

I will definitely be making this again :)

Jo Reggelt! (means Good morning! in Hungarian)

Got up pretty late today after a tiring trip to Budapest yesterday (will blog more on that later!). This is my brunch for the day.

Leftover fried rice & tiny portion of leftover stirfried chicken&potatoes.

Hungarian Snack

Turo Rudi!

Nope it's not a greeting, but a snack!!
Yep, this is one of the most popular snack/junk food here in Hungary.

Thanks to my manager here, he purposely bought one of this from the vending machine in the company to let me try it.

What's in it you may be wondering?

Hehehe..it's basically like a snack bar but the fillings consists of Cottage Cheese coated in Chocolate!!!
Eww!!!! What a weird combination! And you may be wondering, how can cheese go well with chocolate right?
My initial reaction was like this too and I'm kind of reluctant to try.
But let me tell you, this stuff is really good! Ok, it's a little too sweet for my liking actually, but what the heck, indulging in this once in awhile is still satisfying! :)


This is how the packaging looks like..actually there's many other different flavors..apart from this, you can have hazelnut choc with cheese, strawberry flavoured choc with cheese and etc etc..


This is how it looks like after a bite! The white stuff is the Cottage Cheese..

Yumm!

What's cooking?

Over here, I cook at least two meals a day. 1 for lunch, the other for dinner. Sometimes I prepare some simple meals for breakfast too.

As my shipment has yet to arrive, I have to cook with just basic ingredients. Looking at the bright side, I've realised that food taste as good in its basic form.
I've learnt to appreciate the natural taste and sweetness of the food and not to rely so much on "flavoring' like soya sauce!

Here's what's being prepared over the past 1 week.


My first meal is none other than the unhealthy Maggi Mee, curry flavor!! My favourite!Slurrp!!! Everytime I eat this,it definitely reminds me of Malaysian food as I pratically grew up eating this!


Sometimes, I'll have a complete meal. A must have steamed lettuce, black pepper chicken and the no-brainer omellete with onions.


A simple ham and cheese sandwich for breakfast + a cup of hot Milo.


The easy to cook colorful tomato and carrot omellet


Finally, a simple 1 dish wholesome meal of chicken cooked with fresh tomatoes and carrots. :)

Cholestrol level out of spec

On our annual medical checkup, I was shocked to find that my cholestrol level has gone up yet again to 5.7. As for BS,' his was even worse at 6.6! The limit is only 5.2! Both of our LDL levels are too high as well, way off the limit..gosh, what went wrong?


Alarm! Alarm! Time to do something....


One of the lifestyle changes for myself is to try to cook and eat at home more rather than eating out all the time. Perhaps the food outside is too oily..I'm not sure, but nothing beats a home cooked meal right? So for now, I'll try to learn as many simple dish as possible so that I could be home after work and whip out some edible meals! Tiring yes, but for health sake, some sacrifice would have to be made. Also more exercise!! I have not give up my yoga session, but apart from that, I should hit the gym perhaps? My yoga instructor has just opened a yoga and dance center nearby to where I stayed and I am really tempted to sign up for the Belly dancing class. It should be able to help to tone up my abs! :P

Anyway, just some sharing here on my home cooked meals.

Here's just one of the many dishes I cooked for the past few weeks, very healthy one indeed.

On the left was steamed lettuce with oyster sauce and on the right was steamed fish with sour plum sauce(the fish was all covered up by the gaarnishing of spring onions and tomatoes). Looked delicious eh? :)

Old Town White Coffee--The origin

I still remembered my last trip to Ipoh. That was around May when I went for a short trip to Malacca and KL with BS. On our way home, we decided to stop by Ipoh to try out the famous Old Town "white coffee". You know, that super famous Old Town trademark with its kopitiam (restaurant with old charm) sprouting out at every nooks and corners in Malaysia these days.
However, we're looking for the original "Old Town" in Ipoh, where these white coffee craze first started. A catch was that we do not know the place (streetname) nor the name of the place(a coffeshop).

After calling and checking the location with Ipoh friends we tried to scour round and round Ipoh looking for that famous place. As we do not know where we're heading, we went round and round in circles. Frustration got to us eventually and after few more hours searching, we gave up. Somehow, Ipoh folks don't know the street name of "Old Town" kopitiam.. and even with my handphone GPS, we cannot find the place :(....sigh

This time around however, I make sure I do my homework beforehand. I was determined to find the place by hook or by crook!. As I will be heading to Ipoh again for a wedding this month, I wanted to try finding this coffeeshop again! Thankfully, a few bloggers mentioned about this place and blog about its delicious food and drinks served. This time, equipped with a better GPS (mobile GPS) from a kind friend, CW (thanks mate!!! :)), we're ready to roll!

Guess what?
This time, we could easily find the elusive "Old Town Kopitiam" which was located at Jalan Timah. I was surprised how close the place was to the old bus station at Ipoh (Medan Kidd). I used to frequent the place alot when I was heading home from uni during my studies at UTP! Funny, I have never been to the coffeshop despite having stayed at Tronoh (45 minutes from Ipoh) for 5 freaking years!

The name of the shop was called Nam Heong. And it was right opposite the so-called "only flat in Ipoh". Oh yeah, you hardly see any high-rise flats or apartments in this land abundant Ipoh.
Once we're there, we need to wait for a seat as the shop was really small, barely fits 10 tables.
And the place was packed as usual. Apart from coffee, they serve tea too (my favourite!) as well as some pastries (like egg tarts, taro balls and other dimsum varieties). There's other stalls selling Penang favourites like char keow teow and Hokkien Mee. Of course we'll give those a pass, but we did try the pastries, the coffee and tea and of course the famous Ipoh Prawn Noodle (It's something like keow teow soup).

The verdict:
Boy, their white coffee was really aromatic, thick and tasted just heavenly!
I love the tea too!! And best of all, their egg tarts!!!!!!! Wow..that's the best I've ever tasted so far and I really recommend it!

Here's some snapshots I took with my cameraphone...

The trusty "GPS" loaned from CW :)

The flats in front of the shop

The corner coffeeshop, Nam Heong

Wit and gf,PN enjoying their meal

KH looking happy, just finished his satisying meal


My prawn noodle

My tea!!

The sinfully aromatic ORIGINAL OLD TOWN white coffee

Delicious egg tart!!!!! *drooolll*

How we celebrated Raya?

Well, this year, Raya fell on a Wednesday, which unfortunately is a workday here in the UK. Worse still, it was our busiest week. CT had to rush for her Pretest while I had to rush for a special process setup. So we had to postphone the celebration to the weekends.


CT being a great chef whipped out a great Nasi Lemak dish again. Check it out!



CT's trademark Nasi lemak....it's just too yummy ...

Weekend Cookout#3

This week, we cooked a sinfully delicious meal of authentic Nasi Lemak, with sambal, ikan bilis, eggs and acar! Fantastic!!

Menu:
1. Acar (cucumber, onion,carrots)
2. Fried ikan bilis
3. Masala chicken
4. Sambal for ikan bilis
5. Boiled eggs





Nasi Lemak Apt no:11 ..Any takers ? :)




Ratings: 8/10

On top of that, we also baked our first chocolate cake!!!! The cake looked horrendous on the exterior but thankfully, it tasted good! What an achievement! :D











From left to right: Chocolate cake fresh from oven; that's me trying to save a slice from falling out, we forgot to snap a picture before we cut it! lol!

Weekend Cookout#2

On the 2nd weekend, here's our Menu:

1. Brinjal with Sambal
2. Tumeric Chicken
3. Fried Ikan Bilis
4. Sambal (for Ikan Bilis)

Ratings:6/10

[Top left]:The super spicy sambal brinjal, not a very nice shot..
[Top right] :A horrible presentation of the tumeric chicken, looked gross right?

Weekend Cookout

Today, we were supposed to go to the Malaysian booth at Holyrood Park, hoping to sample some Malaysian delicacies! When CT checked the internet, the roadshow actually ends yesterday (22 Aug 2008)..No!!! We've missed it! :(

So that's why we're at home today, and since we have no other agenda lined up, we decided to cook something nice for lunch and dinner!









CT the chef posing while cooking!


So what's on our Menu today?

Lunch/Brunch

• Chilli/Sambal prawn
• Bean sprouts
• Steamed Rice

Milk tea with our sumptuous lunch!






Rating: 6/10

Dinner

• Tumeric Cod Fish
• Broccolli
• Leftover Chilli/Sambal prawn
• Steamed Rice

Our ever so appetising dinner!





Rating:7/10


There's still room for improvement of course, and we're working on it!

All in all, it's still yummy!! :)