Let's go on a trip!

I took Mousie on a one-way trip to Ipoh. She will be housekeeping there. :P

Safety first: Strapped in and ready to go!

We tried out a few new eateries this trip.

First there is Wong Kee Restaurant, which we heard specializes in fried frog.

There were two frogs, each chopped into half. RM48

The frogs were huge! I have never seen such huge frogs. I wonder whether they are always this big...

The coating was very crispy, and there were slices of ginger mixed in, also coated in the same batter, which were very crispy as well! At first we didn't even notice that those were actually ginger slices.

kangkung belacan, which they recommended as their specialty, but to us it seemed normal...
RM10

lamb, RM25

the same lamb dish, except that I pushed the leaves aside to show the lamb

The sauce from the lamb dish was really good, but some pieces of the lamb were not so tender. At least they weren't hard.

We also ordered from Cottage 75 Cafe, which we had visited before, with a hefty discount from FoodPanda.

We ordered the same beef burger that we had tried before, and a chicken chop burger.

Cottage homemade beef burger, where's the beef?

the beef revealed...hiding under the egg

Hawaiian-inspired chicken chop burger

We were surprised that even the pineapple was fried in batter. The pineapple's coating was soggy by the time we reached home, so that was a pity. But the chicken chop was still crispy.

Both burgers taste good, but beside the beef burger, the chicken chop burger becomes less appealing. :P

We missed the emerald seabass that we had during our last visit, so when I saw "creamy Kenmare Bay seafood chowder" on the menu, I was very tempted to try it. We ordered it despite the fact that it costs almost as much as the main dishes. And it was indeed very very yummy!

served with garlic bread, which did not have that much garlic taste :P

Unfortunately I forgot to take another photo after our first round of dipping the bread into the chowder. The seafood would have shown up more clearly! There were two prawns and two mussels, and quite a bit of squid, clams, and fish. It was just as we expected, pretty much the same as the velouté from the emerald seabass, just less thick (which is expected since this is a soup dish, while that was a main dish!)

There were other eateries...but that will be for another post.

A cat with three legs

After the treasure pot lunch yesterday (see previous post), we tried food from 3 Leg Cat for the first time. We ordered pick-up from FoodPanda because there was a discount.

red wine sauce grill chicken

red wine sauce grill chicken - plated

Unfortunately the wedges were soggy after being left under the chicken.

spicy thai sauce chicken with butter garlic rice

We were surprised to find that that piece of chicken was only half of it!

plated, with the rice left in the box

close-up

The butter garlic rice was so good, we could eat it on its own!

The red wine sauce chicken was good, but we couldn't taste the red wine. So it was just like simple grilled chicken with some sauce. The Thai mango chicken wins hands down! The portion is so big, it can feed two small eaters. The chicken was crispy,  the rice was fragrant. Only the carrots were a little too hard for our liking. Basically both the dishes were very yummy. :D

"Stay at home" treasure pot

A few days ago, I saw a Father's Day promotion on Facebook. After some consideration and discussion with the parents, we ordered a set. The company delivers from the mainland, with free delivery for purchases above RM100.

The package arrived complete with a bow. I expect the decorative packaging is part of the Father's Day set too. :P

The deliveryman even had to take a photo of me with the delivered package, as proof of the delivery (and the time when it was delivered) for his bosses. (He just asked for a photo... I was reluctant to be in the photo, so he showed me that he had taken photos of all the previous customers and gave me the explanation. :P )

Inside, it was well-packed with ice. I wish my other frozen food purchases had been kept cold this well! (my three frozen food purchases during MCO were partially defrosted when they arrived)

The seafood treasure pot set cost RM108, with a golden pomfret with spicy black bean sauce thrown in for free. The fish was already cleaned and ready to cook, with the black bean sauce in a separate packet to be heated in boiling water before being poured onto the cooked fish to serve. Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of the fish before cooking.

frozen treasure pot with its sauce

after defrosting, ready to cook

The set even came with a small packet of cornstarch to thicken the sauce. The whole thing seemed to have been put together by the frozen food company, which sells a lot of frozen seafood.

steamed pomfret with spicy black bean sauce

treasure pot ready to serve

The instructions were to heat the pot of ingredients, then drain away the excess liquid before pouring the sauce over it. While draining away the excess liquid, the arrangement of the ingredients got messed up a bit. :P

the full set

There were 12 ingredients in the treasure pot:
1. 冬菇
Mushroom
2. 干蚝
Dry Oyster
3. 凤爪
Marinated Phoenix Claws
4. 鱼漂
Fish Maw
5. 红烧鲍鱼
Brine Abalone
6. 日本北海道干贝
Hokkaido Dry Scallop
7. 蚝皇汁灵芝菇
Braised Bailin Mushroom
8. 白灼鲜草虾
Cooked Tiger Prawn
9. 红烧素狮子头
Braised Vegetarian Lion Meat Ball
10. 日本黄金豆包
Golden Japanese Toufu
11. 白切鸡中翼
Chicken Wingette
12. 王牙白
Chinese Cabbage 
(ingredient list copy-pasted from their Facebook post)

every type of ingredient

I didn't expect that the "phoenix claws" would refer to chicken feet!

They even called it a "stay at home" set on the bill, hence the title of my post.

Besides that, they were selling salmon head at only RM4.50 each, so I ordered two heads. It wouldn't have been worth it to buy only those and get charged RM10 for delivery!

Less than perfect

The other day I wrote about a show with a messy plot. That show was Less Than Evil.

Now I've finished watching it, and I really feel that it has a good plot. They reveal just the right amount of information at just the right times.

Besides the little things that I mentioned in the earlier post, towards the end, there were a number of inconsistencies. Probably because they had to keep all these details totally hidden in the beginning, and it was difficult to make everything fit in nicely in just a few episodes.

I also liked that they had "normal" cases alongside the main plot, and that cases can happen alongside each other, instead of new cases coming in once the detective is freed up. :P

So all in all, I would recommend it for crime fans.

A fruitful Sunday

Some time ago I roasted some pork belly.

I thought I wouldn't attempt it again, because even though it might not be very difficult, it seems that we need to spread a lot of salt on the skin (see this recipe from RecipeTin Eats). But I suddenly recalled the oven-baked crispy wings that I had tried before, and which only used a little bit of baking powder.

So I searched for recipes for roast pork belly using baking powder.

I found only one recipe that uses baking powder. But it involved first boiling the pork, then poking holes in the skin, putting it in the fridge overnight, then spreading the skin with sesame oil and baking powder before baking.

Most recipes use baking soda instead of baking powder. And I have already decided not to buy any more baking soda... (I always replace baking soda in baking recipes with baking powder)

However, I found another recipe that uses either baking soda or vinegar. What's more, they say that vinegar works better! So I decided to try this one out with vinegar. This recipe doesn't require boiling the pork first. However, we also need to poke lots of holes in the skin, refrigerate overnight, and then spread vinegar and salt on the skin before baking. But at least this recipe doesn't ask for a whole lot of salt!

The first problem I faced was with poking the skin. They say that a fork would work fine, but I couldn't manage to get my fork through the skin at all. In the end, I settled for scoring a criss-cross pattern on the skin (and hoping for the best). In my earlier research, I had seen a number of western roast pork recipes using this scoring method instead of pricking.

After that, things went pretty much as expected, and the salt crust on the skin formed pretty well too (except that it fell apart easily and a bit fell into the side of my foil, beside the pork, making the pork saltier. Good thing I didn't salt the pork too much initially...so it still tasted okay) But maybe because my pork had areas where the fatty layer was too thick, there was a lot of fat accumulated inside the foil!

After removing the salt crust, I turned the heat of the oven to the "top-only" setting, and broiled the skin. (the recipe says to "boil until the skin pops", but from all my research I think they mean "broil" :P ) And guess what? The skin really pops! Maybe because one piece is taller, it popped first. And it also turned black...

Actually here I have the baking powder recipe to thank...because she cautioned us to check on the skin so that it is crispy but not charred. And I suddenly recalled that while the pork was broiling, so I went to check on the skin. She also said to use a uniformly thick piece of pork belly, but I didn't. :P

the tiny white pieces on the tray are bits of broken salt crust

The photo above is when the skin is done. See the foil pockets? There was a lot of oil inside!

So I removed the pork slices from their pockets and spread them out to roast for a while more, to dry them out a bit. But I didn't dare to roast them very long either...because I was afraid the skin would get charred.

Probably next time I should make foil boxes for the pork slices to stand, but poke holes at the bottom of the foil boxes so that the oil can flow out to the rest of the tray. (lining the tray with another layer of foil of course!) But I think I should just avoid roasting pork belly that has too much fat.

Do you notice a difference in the seasoning of the two slices? Actually one of them is seasoned with black pepper and salt, and the other one has thyme added. Though I think a bit of thyme also got on the other piece. :P I didn't try making Chinese-style seasoning because I have run out of Chinese cooking wine, and I also have no five-spice powder at hand (and I don't think I will buy it specially for this, when thyme already tastes so good...)

this last photo is just to focus on the skin :P

I am actually surprised that scoring the skin, instead of pricking it, also results in air bubbles like this. I thought the bubbles might be concentrated on the scored lines! As it is, I can't even see the lines on the skin after baking. (actually, even after taking it out of the fridge, I already couldn't see the scored lines)

The skin was really crispy, which means this was successful. But there was one end of a strip that was a little less crispy. It was like the top of the skin was crispy, but there was a non-crispy later beneath it. (We get that sometimes in purchased pork belly too.) In the first recipe that I shared in this post (the one from RecipeTin Eats), they caution us against poking too deep because it can cause the skin to be less crispy at those areas. So there is a possibility that this was caused by my slicing totally through the skin. I know I did that on one end of one of the pork slices...but I can no longer remember which one, and like I said, we cannot see the lines any more!

The same recipe also tells us that we can skip the pricking of the skin, and the skin can still be crispy, just without those puffy bubbles. But since they use so much salt on it, I wonder whether we can also skip the pricking/scoring if we are using vinegar and a thin layer of salt. If I make this again, I should probably leave one end unscored, and see what happens.


Besides the pork belly, I also baked a chocolate cake! (which is what makes this Sunday so fruitful)

I had found this recipe for chocolate depression cake some time back, but with my overripe mangoes and even bananas, this had been taking a back-seat.

After trying it, my reaction is: How can a cake without dairy taste so good?

I only used around 3/4 cup of sugar, instead of 1 cup as the recipe states. So the cake is not very sweet, but still very chocolatey, which is good! I also replaced the baking soda and vinegar with 2 teaspoons of baking powder. Not sure whether it was my stirring or just the substitution, but I had a few air pockets at the bottom of the cake, and also in the cake itself.

The recipe says that a toothpick should come out with a few crumbs, instead of clean. In my case, my pan is larger than theirs, so I baked it for only 25 minutes. But the toothpick already came out clean. So I guess the cake is supposed to be moister than this? Anyway, it is still good, so I have no complaints.

 
Note: The title of this post is actually the title of a short story I had read long ago. Somehow that phrase came to mind suddenly...making me recall that story. I couldn't remember who had written it though, nor the actual details of the story. Luckily Google (ever-reliable) informed me that the story was written by Agatha Christie, and even refreshed my memory a bit as to the plot.

Messy show

I'm currently watching a show that has quite an interesting plot. But what I can't stand is that the villain seems to recover from his wounds just a tad slower than Wolverine!

He falls down from a great height and enters a coma. The suddenly he wakes up and it seems like he has no injuries at all!

He gets into an explosion and is expected to be burnt to ashes. But he reappears, looking none the worse for wear other than having some burn scars!

Maybe more time has passed between those events... but it doesn't seem that way. If months have passed, the scenes should show it better!

He gets a leg injury that seems very painful... and yet he can walk around like a normal person. Then he gets stabbed in the leg. And then he walks perfectly normally during a police inspection... and limps later when going after hostages. *smacks forehead*

I've watched 20 out of 32 episodes. Let's see what happens next...