Duffy goes to Ipoh!

We went to try Zui Le Xuan Dim Sum in Ipoh. This shop sells some special dim sum that is not found anywhere else. For example, this deep-fried "mooncake".

There were eight pieces on a place, but I only took the photo after two pieces had been taken away :P

The meat is a bit like lor-bak filling. The skin is some kind of batter that is deep fried. Overall, it was good. :D

The sesame balls were very good, very fragrant! We took another plate towards the end of our meal. (and this plate has half-a-ball already eaten, as you can see... :P )

After that we took five types of steamed dim sum:

The siu mai was not good at all. I liked the seaweed one and the bacon one, and my mother liked the dumpling thing at the back. That dumpling was a special kind; we had never seen it before.

After that we added two more.

I liked the fishballs. Didn't like the green peas that came with it... because I'm not a fan of this kind of green peas :P

Total bill was RM54.50.

And here's Duffy!

That red sign in the background is actually of the dim sum shop.

the apartment (clubhouse in the background)

the apartment (with the high-rise)

After that heavy breakfast, we had a very late lunch (or maybe we can call it tea) at Lou Wong.

Then we bought some biscuits home.

The box above is from Sin Eng Heong. The line for kaya puffs was too long, so we only bought these meat floss biscuits.

Very yummy!
(ignore the box...we had moved the biscuit to the box from another shop, not worth mentioning :P )

Making fried fish crispy again

Three years ago, I shared my method of storing prawns.

I love this method and just used it again this morning.

And then I fried some fish. I am a bit of a serial reheater, as in I tend to store leftovers to reheat later. Reheating fried fish in the microwave just makes it warm, but the fish becomes soggy, so it doesn't taste as nice as freshly-fried fish.

One day my mother told me that she reheated some "ti kueh" (some kind of fritters) in the toaster oven, and it came out nice and crispy again. After that, one day when I had fried some fish and had leftovers, I suddenly thought, "Why not reheat this in a toaster oven?" After all, it is also a deep-fried item.

So I tried it, and there's no looking back. Now my fried fish leftovers always go into the toaster oven instead of the microwave. And since I tend to shallow-fry my fish instead of deep-frying it, my fried fish is never really crispy...and they get crispier after being reheated in the toaster oven! (I'm now wondering whether I can lightly fry my fish and then transfer it to the oven to be baked till crispy...but that might be too much effort :P )

The reason I am writing this post is because of the fish I fried this morning: here it is all prepped to be reheated tonight!

A monkey thief outside a sushi shop

The other day we went to Sushi Mentai at Arena for dinner. Outside the shop, we spotted this monkey!

What did you do that was so wrong??!! :O

After that, I saw a similar monkey two more times, once hanging on the the rear windscreen wiper of a car (probably a Kelisa or Axia? I can't remember...I just remember it was holding on to the part where the wiper was attached to the windscreen), and the second time it was hanging to the back of the car roof of a Viva, on the right-hand side. In the latter case, I have no idea how it was attached...glue, perhaps?

When I posted my photo on Facebook, a friend said that the monkey was trying to steal something from the car! So the monkey thief is everywhere!

This was the second time we were at Sushi Mentai. Snorlax likes it a lot because the sushi is cheap. For me, it has a few good kinds, but the rest are not that special.

This is the best sushi plate (red plate is priced at RM2.80 before tax and service charge) for me and my mother:

salmon mentai inari, aka beancurd skin sushi with salmon and mentai sauce

We also ordered a sashimi salad for RM9.80.

It was good, but I think it was a waste not to just eat the sashimi on its own :P

And we mixed the fish roe into the salad...which made it difficult to get all the tiny bits out at the end. We said that next time we would put all the fish roe aside before mixing the salad!

A variety from breakfast to dinner

There is a chee cheong chok (pig intestine porridge, which also includes other innards) stall in Georgetown that is very famous. I had tried the porridge before when my father bought it home for me, but this was the first time I actually went to the stall.

Looks good and tastes good too!

We went there because we wanted to go to 1st Avenue to buy something.

We entered 1st Avenue through the side door (into Parkson), and upon exiting Parkson, we were greeted by this Pikachu!

Come, jump into my arms! ♥

We seldom go to 1st Avenue, let alone walk through this door, so I have no idea how long this Pikachu has been there. It is actually outside a shop that sells cartoon-themed t-shirts. There were a few Winnie the Pooh t-shirts, but the best design was for children, so they did not have my size (that's discrimination! :P ). And they did not have a single Pokemon t-shirt in the shop. :(

Since 1st Avenue is connected to Prangin Mall, we ended up in Prangin for lunch. Inside Prangin, we see the menu for Teddy Bread Bakery outside an electrical appliance store. However the bakery was nowhere to be seen...

It turned out that we needed to go through the store and go out the other side (to one of the entrances of Prangin Mall). The bakery is actually situated inside that entrance.

This is what we had at Teddy Bread Bakery:

belacan fried chicken, RM8.90 (actual price)
However we got this for half price with a purchase of any à-la-carte item

This was quite good, but would be so expensive at full price!

caramelized onion and garlic chicken, RM13.60

The sauce was good, but not caramelized as we had expected. The picture in the menu was darker in colour. The piece of chicken was also very small, and seemed to be the breast part. But luckily the meat wasn't tough.

sin chew fried noodles, RM5.80
(basically Singapore fried beehoon lah!)

This tasted a lot better than it looked! Snorlax even ordered another one home to have for dinner.

U.S. fries snack platter, RM28.90

This was Snorlax's must-have order. (and the reason we were eating at Teddy Bread in the first place) We didn't even know the price when we ordered it, because it was advertised on a separate card. If we had known, we would not have eaten there!

The platter contained so many kinds of fries that I'm not sure whether I can remember all of them. Let me recall them from the photo. Clockwise top-left (next to the mayo) we have chips (thinly-sliced, very crispy!), criss-cross fries, hash browns, onion rings, cheese sticks (the cheese inside could be stretched...it was probably mozzarella?), and curly fries.

My mother and I bought two kinds of bread home for dinner. One was a cranberry-almond flat loaf (lots of almond slices on top, but just some bits of cranberry inside). The other one is the one worth mentioning. It looked so interesting that we (or only I?) just wanted to try it. Judge for yourself below:

They call this a "chocolate flower". (The receipt stated it as "small". We didn't see a bigger one, though)

The chocolate is actually from a ring of chocolate chips baked into the bread. The streaks of cream outside have a slight coffee flavour. This cost RM4.80; what do you think of the price? We felt that it was probably more expensive because of those walnuts and chia seeds on top.

The tofu

*This story is based on true events.*

It is lunchtime. A takes a set lunch that includes a piece of tofu.

A asks B, "Do you want this tofu?"

B accepts. While eating the tofu, B asks, "Why don't you want to eat the tofu yourself?"

A replies that it is because tofu has cooling properties and it is not really good for health, including an explanation that it causes blood vessels to shrink.

B pauses in the middle of eating the tofu, speechless... (and probably concerned for their own health)

Nasi lemak under the flyover

After a very long time of hearing that the "nasi lemak under the flyover" was good, I finally went to try it a few weeks back. The place is called Uncle Lanz, and it also sells western food and the usual Malay-style dishes to eat with rice.

I tried the nasi lemak sotong (their basic dish). The nasi lemak is not very big (just nice for me), and the sotong was very good! I really like their sambal.

The fried egg, on the other hand, looked awful. :P

My mother tried their nasi lemak sotong goreng tepung. It came with huge chunks of squid! The sambal was the same as my sambal sotong, except that they didn't give the sotong in it (except a few strays).

Snorlax tried the chicken chop burger, which was a disappointment. The chicken wasn't crispy because the sambal had turned it soggy.

It doesn't even look good...although you can see that they did use the drumstick part of the chicken (see the bone?).

For drinks we ordered a Thai-T honeydew milk drink. It was a huge portion, so the three of us shared it. It was pretty good.

While we're on the topic of food, here is a photo of sotong goreng kunyit from Bangkok Tomyam, which I have posted about a few times before. This is the first time we tried their sotong goreng kunyit though. The other dishes we ordered were the same as before, so I didn't take any more photos of those.

The sotong goreng kunyit was very good. We were very satisfied. :D

We also made a trip to Manhattan Fish Market when they were holding a promotion of RM8.80 for a plate of fish and chips. The shop has been revamped (we went to the Queensbay Mall outlet, but I'm guessing the others have been similarly updated) to have a sauce station where we could take different kinds of tartar sauce. We also were to get our own cutlery there, instead of having them on our tables when we arrived. I guess it is easier for the staff to handle the crowd now.

The fish and chips dish has also been revamped, with crispy potato chips instead of fries. Hmm...and no salad, it seems (I didn't notice that while eating :P ). Maybe this version of fish and chips is only for this promotion.

The chips were both good and bad at the same time... the crispy ones were very good, but unfortunately some of them were soggy (some were half crispy, half soggy). But for that price, I guess we can't complain.

Meatballs and more

We went to Ikea on Merdeka day. It was our first time visiting Ikea Batu Kawan. There were a lot of people there, but it was easy enough finding a place to park, so I can't imagine how packed it was when it first opened and they said they even had to wait to enter the car park!

The highlight of our visit was the lunch. It was expensive! And yet there were so many people queueing up for it. It was also difficult to even find a place to sit. So we had Snorlax line up while the rest of us searched for a table, then my father stayed at the table while my mother and I joined Snorlax in the queue.

The menu was flashed on a few screens near the food counters. We couldn't see much from far away (when we started queueing), but as we approached the serving counter, we had more than enough time to decide what we wanted to order. (That is how long the queue was!)

Snorlax had signed up as an Ikea Family member (it's a temporary membership unless if you buy something and convert it to permanent membership...something like that), so we could take some special sets for members.

This was the spread on our table:

almond cake, RM6.30

We saw the poster advertising the almond cake when walking in from the car park, when Snorlax was signing up for the free membership. It looked really interesting, and later when queueing up for the food, we saw some people taking a similar but chocolate-coated cake. We debated which one to choose, and ended up with the original. It was really good! :D

chicken wings (6 pcs), RM16.50

So many people bought this. And it looked really good too! So it went on my to-try list. And it was really good, nice and crispy. The wings are big too, so at least they are quite worth the price. These first two are my favourites (the cake and the wings).

Then we had meatballs which were on Snorlax's must-have list. It was the reason he wanted to eat at Ikea! We had had it once during this year's Chinese New Year open house, but it wasn't that good, so the rest of us were not interested. So we ended up taking a member set of meatballs and mussels for RM29.90.

meatballs (8 pcs)

Since Snorlax wanted meatballs, and he said 8 pieces were not enough (they sold it in different numbers... 8, 16, and 20? 24?), we told him he could have almost all of it. The rest of us took one to try (3 people sharing one meatball...lol) We all agreed that the meatballs tasted better than those that we had during CNY, except Snorlax who said they are all good :P

mussels

The mussels are good enough...nothing much to say about them though.

salmon fillet with vegetable medallion

A lot of people took this! At first we wondered what those two green pieces were...until we saw the menu. We took a member set again for this one, RM24.90 with mushroom soup. I think the à-la-carte price was 2 or 3 ringgit less, and the mushroom soup cost RM4+.

The mushroom soup was in a pot and we scooped it ourselves into a bowl. There were a lot of mushroom chunks in the soup! Taste-wise, it wasn't that special though.

The salmon was good, and so was the sauce. I just wish that the vegetable medallions had been more charred (meaning the edges would be more crispy?). Some pieces were darker than these...but I wasn't sure whether I could ask for those when the server put them on the plate.

We could either choose hot drinks or cold drinks at RM2 or RM2.10 respectively, and that meant taking a mug or a glass (again, respectively). Then, after paying, we could go and fill up our mug/glass at the drinks station. The drinks are refillable.

As you can see from the first photo, we took one cold drink to share. There were a few fruity fizzy drinks to choose from. They were okay...nothing to shout about.

Total damage: RM79.70. Still okay because we ate light!

Mooncake variety

The other day when we were at 1st Avenue Mall, there was someone selling mini-mooncakes in the lower-ground floor. There were at least 18 kinds of mooncakes, with different shapes and/or flavours. The vendor said that they were homemade.

We bought six for RM10.

Flavours from left to right:
First row: mint, coffee, lotus
Second row: pandan, chocolate, yam

After cutting:

In the above photo, we didn't notice that the yam mooncake was the wrong way up. So I turned it around and took another photo. But since the angles are different, I decided to post both photos in case we want to see what the other "side" looks like...

The mooncakes were in general quite good, although the flavours were not remarkable. I liked the lotus and mint ones best. The mint one had a nice fresh mint taste. The pandan one did not taste very much like pandan (it was not even green!); it just had a tiny hint of pandan taste in the lotus. The coffee one similarly did not taste much like coffee. The yam one basically just had yam in the skin...we didn't expect that, we thought the filling was yam-flavoured! So it was nothing special. The chocolate one was so-so, not bad but there was nothing special about it.

I would buy them again, but would probably choose only the original lotus and mint ones, and maybe try some new flavours.

After cutting, we had some pieces left, so I just put them all together to have a six-flavoured mooncake! lol

On an unrelated note, my parents bought some cempedak pastry at the Batu Lanchang market (at the famous no.76 drinks stall). It was special and tasty too, full of cempedak taste. Very good!

Partners in sleep

In my previous post, I showed the cute creatures that I brought back home. After a while, I realized that my sleeping bear had the exact same posture as Snorlax's sleeping Pikachu!

Don't these two sleepyheads look similar? :D