I don’t know what to call this dish and will settle for the name Spicy Beef. It is going to be rather lengthy if I would call it based on what I did to the beef. I had the inspiration to cook this based on what I had in Golden Mansion Restaurant in Melaka, Malaysia. What I ate in the said restaurant was essentially tender pieces of beef lightly boiled in steamboat. It tastes really good and I was figuring out what went into the marinade. With some suspicion here and there, I reckoned that it involved the use of preserved bean curd and sesame oil. Since I don’t have steamboat feasts at home on a regular basis, I decided to give it a stir-fry instead.

The stir-fry turned out really nice and “exotic”. It has a slightly spicy taste to it due to the use of the preserved bean curd. The preserved bean curd and fragrance of sesame oil matched well with the natural taste of the tender slices of beef. I would say that it tastes quite unusual from the common beef stir fries. Then again, it depends on one’s preference for preserved bean curd (which are sold in small bottles). I used the spicy preserved bean curd which is different from the red preserved bean curd (which has deep-red coloured preserve). If you are adventurous enough and can get your hands on these ingredients, give this dish a try. After all, cooking time is around 3 minutes or less only.

This is my recipe for Spicy Beef Read the rest of this entry »

I need to work on an urgent affidavit and hence, am unable to update with a recipe at the moment. As per usual routine, I will highlight one of the other food reviews I have previously done and this time, it’s Gong Pian aka Gong Pia aka Kwang Ping aka Shining Biscuit. For purposes of this post, I shall just call it Gong Pian.

Gong Pian is Foochow in origin. You can get these in Foochow, China or in Sitiawan and Sibu in Malaysia or wherever else the Foochow people decide to make this. So folks, let me take you on the Gong Pian journey. Interesting pictures for you to see as well.

An unassuming corner lot holding the best secret in town

During last Friday’s recce to Swiss-Garden Resort & Spa, Damai Laut, we stopped by in Sitiawan to buy some famous Foochow confectionary - Gong Pian! We were brought to this corner shop “somewhere” in Sitiawan and told that this shop is famous. Apparently, the gong pians sell like hot pias (literally). Read the rest of this entry »

One of my favourite dishes at Chinese restaurants is the Sizzling Tofu. Tofu is first pre-fried before being laid on a hot plate. As the minced pork gravy is poured over it, the hot plate sizzles and hence, its name. Over at home, we don’t have a hot plate. So, sizzling tofu is out of the picture. But we can always do something similar in taste, can’t we?

I use Japanese Tofu in this recipe. They come in tubes and I have chosen the tofu which has eggs as part of its ingredient as it is more flavourful and has a nice yellow colour to it (though I wonder whether it is colouring or natural colour from the egg yolk). Anyway, you can always buy them from the supermarkets and are readily available. The other ingredient is minced pork. Extras include chinese dried mushrooms / shiitake mushrooms and carrots - both to boost up the flavours and colour. I have omitted eggs in this dish (usually sizzling tofu would have an egg broken over the tofu as it sizzles on the hot plate).

This is my recipe for Japanese Tofu with Minced Pork Read the rest of this entry »

Those of you who tried to access this site between midnight till 2pm (Malaysian time, +8 gmt) would have noticed that this blog went missing or been served with some Wordpress techno piece of notice. Well, the last couple of days was kinda alarming to me as the Wordpress dashboard has been acting strange and so was this site.

After further discussions with my host, this site has been upgraded to a server with higher specification. Thanks to my host, I think this site should perform better now.

Sorry for the small mess on the table served over the last couple of hours.