First and foremost. my apologies goes out to all my readers for not posting up anything for quite awhile. I would have loved to tell you that I did not have the time to post up anything on this blog because I was too busy with work or that I have been out a lot, travelling, eating at nice fancy odd looking restaurants or simply been busy cooking exotic gourmet dishes in the kitchen.
But the sad truth is, for the past 3 months, yes, you read right, for 3 months, I had been busy trying to remember my password for this blog. I know, embarrassing right? Age is definitely catching up on me. Yet, I don't think being mid 30's is that old.
I don't know if this has ever happened to any of you, but let me tell you now the experience is excruciatingly ANNOYING. Losing your password for anything can be a real life lesson and quite frankly, pardon my language, a real Bitch! It is especially annoying when you need to update your blog so desperately, and yet what you get at the back of your mind is BLANK, BLANK, BLANK.
Anyhow, God-willing I'm back! Hopefully I will not forget my password again. As for my readers who have been waiting patiently for my latest post and wondered if I did give up on my New Year's resolution. Nope, I'm still on target and thank you for being patient and sticking by me.
There are days when one goes craving for really good food on a sloth day. If you are wondering what a sloth day is, it is one of those days where you crave for big things but you are too lazy to move. It gets worst if you're having a sloth day and you're hungry at the same time, but cereal just doesn't do it for you.
I recently had one of those days, but it's torture when you keep on thinking about good gourmet food but you just don't want to spend that much time in the kitchen. So, cracking my head, I decided to make an almost gourmet like luncheon burger sandwich.
Luckily for me, I'm one of those who likes to pick up strange new food that pops up on grocery shelves. In my recent outing to the local market, I came across a halal lamb luncheon meat in a can. Now, there is quite a selection of luncheon meat or spam sold in the market, but most of them are non-halal. Heard from people that spam taste like a cross breed of sausages and burger in a can. Hmmmm .... I just had to try it.
I bought this El-Dina Halal Luncheon at Jaya Grocer for RM11.50.
It says Mutton Luncheon but in truth, it's a combination of mutton and chicken.
You have to use a can opener to open the can. It doesn't have one of those pull out can toppers. Maybe El - Dina should consider having one of those instead.
At first sight, the meat doesn't really look that appetizing. But the smell that came out of the can was very aromatic and it does make you hungry :-P
OK, now we are going to assemble that sandwich. The first thing that we need to do is to slice the luncheon meat into a pile of nice circular patties, almost resembling a burger. Seems like a short cut to the homemade one.
Melt a teaspoon of butter in a pan and pan fry the luncheon meat for about 4 minutes on each side. When the luncheon meat has that nice golden crispy layer to it, you know its done.
Fry it for 4 minutes on each side.
The meat is cooked when you have a crispy golden layer around it.
While the meat is cooking, this is the best time for you to prepare your bread and your garnishes.
Spread some butter to the bottom slice of your burger bun and toast it in the same pan as your luncheon meat, butter side down. Cook it for 1 minute only until you see a thin golden crust. Be careful and place the bun at the dryer part of the pan away from the meat oil. If you don't do this, the bread will become soggy and burnt.
A perfectly pan fried bun.
After the bottom part of the bun has been pan fried, start piling on the garnishes for your sandwich. Here, I use 2 slices of buttered lettuce and slices of tomatoes with a drizzling of creamy mayonnaise and a dash of pepper. You may choose any other type of garnish to your liking. Since it was a sloth day for me, this was good enough.
When all the garnishes have been arranged, just place the cooked meat on top of the prepared garnishes.
Next, fry an egg in the pan and top the luncheon patty with the fried egg.
Here is a video on how to fry the perfect egg! Who knew that the best method to fry an egg is to use clarified butter :)
To complete the luncheon sandwich, spread some wholegrain mustard to the bottom of your burger bun.
Now, your delicious luncheon sandwich is ready!
Mutton Luncheon Sandwich recipe
1 burger bun sliced
1 slice of pan fried luncheon meat
1 fried egg
2 leaf of buttered lettuce
3 slices of sliced tomatoes
butter for spreading
wholegrain mustard for spreading
Drizzling of creamy mayonaise
Dash of Pepper
Now I know that the sandwich is ready to be eaten straightaway but I had to have mine with some nice fried Nori Fries.
To make the Nori Fries, you just need to deep fry your ready made frozen crinkle cut fries in a deep fryer till golden brown for 3 minutes.
I find that frying your fries at exactly 3 minutes gives the right texture and colour to your fries. They are not soggy with oil and have that nice crispy texture outside and smooth, silky texture inside. Perfect!
To season your Nori Fries, all you need is a sprinkling of sea salt, a dash of pepper and a good sprinkling of Japanese Nori Flakes.
Just give the seasoning a good mix with the hot fried fries and there you have it, Nori Fries.
Nori Fries Recipe
150g of frozen crinkle cut fries
Cooking Oil for frying
Dash of sea salt
Dash of Coarse Black Pepper
Dash of Japanese Nori Flakes
Note: All the serving for this recipe is good for 1 serve.
There you have it, my version of a Gourmet Luncheon Mutton Sandwich with Nori Fries. Yummy! And it just took me 10mins to prepare this.
Since it was the first time for me to try the El-Dina Mutton Luncheon, I would say the luncheon meat was very good. It tasted almost like one of those gourmet sausages that you can find in the market.
A good meal for a sloth day :-)
PS: Do try it. If you have other ideas on how to make this sandwich better, do share your comments with me. Would love to hear from you. Bon Appetit!
If you think about it eggs, it would be one of the most popular type of food eaten by many across the world. You can cross the world's border each day and trust me, an egg would somehow be served to you on a platter one way or the other be it fried, boiled, poached, scrambled and baked. Eggs are actually a very big thing.
Right about now, you might be wondering, why am I writing on such a mundane topic. After all, it's just an egg, What's the big deal? An egg is an egg.
The real truth is, my interest in eggs came a few months ago when I came across a local news article about people in Penang bought fake eggs. The news article was such a big sensation that it got the local authorities off their behinds and actually going around from one market to the other, hunting for fake eggs.
Now, I can understand that you can get fake Prada and Chanel at your typical China Street, but fake eggs? Now that's a first for me. How would I even know how a fake egg looks like and how do you fake an egg to begin with? Doesn't all chicken eggs come straight from the chicken? You would be surprised ....
Here is a new's report on the fake eggs.
Here is a video on how a fake egg is made. You would be surprised to see how simple it is to make your own fake eggs.
Now, for the benefit of everyone reading, here are a list of actual real eggs that can be eaten:-
Here are some good kitchen tips for you on what to look out for before you start cooking your eggs:-
1. Make sure that your eggs are fresh.
2. Choose a method of cooking. Note : DO NOT, microwave your eggs as it can be pretty dangerous.
3. When you have sorted your eggs from the fresh ones to the rotten ones, you can start cooking. Here is a video on how to boil an egg perfectly.
3. Don't you just hate it when you can't peel your eggs as cleanly as you want it to? Here is the best kitchen tip by far at least for me and knowing that you could do it that way is kindda fun.
If you guys are ready to cook an egg, click on the tab here to assist you in your cooking process http://www.eggwatchers.com/
Food in Malaysia, I dare say is a very, very, big thing. If you mention Malaysia to anyone that comes from abroad, I dare say the highlight of the conversation would be about food. Even Malaysians love talking about food.
You can find food anywhere in Malaysia. I mean, literally, anywhere. Food stalls nearby the bus station, food stalls under the bridge, food stalls at the back alleys of shops, food stalls operating from behind the cars bonnet. Yup! You heard me right and it's very popular, food stalls at train stations, restaurants in shopping malls, the list goes on and on. And if they don't have basic food stalls, there will be people with baskets going around selling food.
Now, there are a lot of up and new trendy restaurants mushrooming in the whole of Selangor and KL but one of the places that I think is worth mentioning is a place named "Serai". I recently had a meeting at Empire Shopping Mall in Subang and I had the opportunity to have lunch there.
Serai @ Empire, quoting from them directly, features a range of food with Malay, Thai and Western specialities. Now, I'm not a big believer in restaurants that feature many types of food from different regions as they end up not specializing in anything. Most of the time, when I'm done dining at these restaurants, I usually end up feeling confused and unsatisfied. But with Serai, I was surprised.
Readers, get ready to be hungry from reading this blog, I warn you now!
For my first order of the day, I started with an appetizer called Serai Tasting Platter. It consisted of 6 sticks of chicken and beef satay, roasted capsicum dip with crisp bread, deep fried squid and sautéed garlic Mushroom. Priced at RM30.
The chicken satay was divine, the big chunky meat was soft, wonderfully flavoured and juicy.The beef satay, I found it to be a bit tough, but the flavours were good. Just need to keep a good eye on it and it would have been perfect. The fried calamari was cooked perfectly, it was not a hard chew but soft and succulent and had that crispy crunch to every bite . It's not always you get good fried squid as people tend to overcook it. The roasted capsicum dip had that nice smoky flavour to it, it was not sweet but had a good balance in terms of sourness and sweetness and the texture was not too chunky or runny. As for the sautéed garlic mushroom, I would have wished that it was not that runny, but slightly more creamier. However, they are forgiven as the flavours blew me away.
The picture from the Menu.
As for the mains, I tried their Crispy Skinned Salmon, a selection from their continental platter and a loved one had Middle Eastern Medley from their Serai Specials as this came highly recommended from the waiter.
The Middle Eastern Medley is a Moroccan lamb shank as they claim is cooked to perfection, spiced rice, cucumber raita and their signature Turkish relish priced at RM42.
Was the lamb shank cooked to perfection as they advertised, you may ask? And the answer to that is, Yes! The meat was practically falling off the bones like hot knife to cold butter. Their signature relish was wonderful, it was not overpowering like most tomato based sauces would. The sauce was paired perfectly with the meat and it made a good combination. What I can say more in matters of description would just be ... Yummy! As for the cucumber raita, it complimented the lamb and gave that nice cooling balance next to all that tomato based flavours. As for the spiced rice, I was a tad disappointed. I felt that the rice was a bit dry. Too dry in fact, at least to my taste. Now, this is not a good thing especially with rice, if the balance of moisture is lacking to the rice, the spices in the rice would become coarse and overpowering. Such a shame as it would have been perfect if the rice is moist. But all in all, to rate it overall, the dish was delightful. I would consider it as having Four Seasons on a plate.
The cucumber raita is cooling like winter, the spiced rice was dry like autumn, the lamb and the turkish relish is as warm as summer and the sprinkling of roasted cashew is sweet like spring.
Middle Eastern Medleyfrom the Menu.
The Crispy Skinned Salmon is served with potato cakes, sauteed asparagus spears and crips bread with roasted capsicum dip priced at RM35.
Now to rate this dish. The salmon skin was crispy but unfortunately, I found that the fish was a bit dry. I would have wished that the fish was moist in the middle and crispy outside. It would have made a good fish, as the original oil from the salmon fish would have made the fish tasting more buttery, and the flesh would be soft and silky, steaming with all that goodness. The capsicum sauce made a good combination to the fish. The potato cakes was wonderful, crispy on the outside, soft and steamy from the inside. The seasoning to the potato cakes was perfect. But all in all, it was a good experience eating it especially when you combine every flavour on the dish, i.e. crispy bread, potato cakes, touch of asparagus, crispy salmon and capsicum sauce and eat it all in one bite. The combination of flavours was great.
Crispy Skinned Salmon from the Menu.
After the mains, we then moved on to dessert. Our dessert were Nutella Ravioli and their house special, Pavlova.
The Nutella Ravioli is an Asian ravioli filled with Nutella, drizzled with chocolate sauce and served with vanilla ice cream priced at RM15.
When I read the menu, this was something that I had to try. The dish sounded different and it perked on my gastronomical curiosity. When it arrived, what was a nutella ravioli is actually a chocolate hazelnut fried wanton laced with chocolate sauce on top served with vanilla ice cream. I was looking at the dish and wondered, why on earth didn't they just call it chocolate wanton with ice cream. Sceptical still because I was really waiting for a ravioli.
Tuck away I did ... now I have to eat away my words. The chocolate fried hazelnut wanton, when cracked had the most delightful chocolate hazelnut filling with some chunks of real roasted hazelnuts. The crispy wanton together with the ice cream and chocolate sauce, when eaten all together, was just heavenly.
We were really full at this time and could go no further. Hands up, hands up, we've had enough. I must had been quite a sight in the restaurant, clicking away with my camera, reading the menu, writing away my reviews when Miss Qistina, the owner of the restaurant came over to check on us. A nice lady indeed. I found out that the main head chef is her husband who had been working in the food industry in Melbourne for 10 years before coming back to Malaysia. It is a family restaurant under the Serai group of companies and they do catering as well. She insisted that we try another one of their house specials which is their Pavlova. I was about to kick in the towel because we were already sooo full. But in the end, what the hell, why not.
So Pavlova it is.
What can I say, the Pavlova indeed was a house special. The Pavlova, when eaten simply melts away in your mouth. The fresh cream and strawberries, grapes and blueberries made a great combination. It was not too sweat and it was not too creamy. The combination was a blast.
The Pavlova from the Menu.
Among the drinks that we had were Honeydew Blast priced at RM10.50 and the Milky Bandung priced at RM8.50.
Honey dew Blast.
Ice blended fresh honeydew, lychees & lime.
Milky Bandung.
Rose Syrup Soda, fresh milk & pandan.
Hot Cappucino.
Overall eating at Serai was a wonderful experience. The décor and ambience were clean and classy. It is a good place to bring loved ones for special occasions or to seal business deals. The service was fast, the staff was friendly and accommodating.
I truly had a wonderful time dining at Serai. Be warned though that the portions of meals are big, so if you are not a big eater, order a dish or two and they are good to be shared for a family of four. The price is a bit on the high side but the food is good, thus it makes for good guilty pleasures.
Do I recommend Serai @ Empire .... Yes, most definitely. For my next trip, I will go Asian all the way. To know more about Serai, please do check them out from this link.
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