Oven-baked dinner and dessert

Tonight I baked my dinner, followed by dessert (well, I wasn't really planning for dessert, but since I was already using my oven, I decided to continue baking my cookies)

For dinner I had garlic butter salmon with broccoli.

The broccoli was overdone :( Or maybe it was simply because I left the tiny tiny ends intact instead of chopping them off. Those thin ends are the ones that got charred.

I actually left space in the middle of the tray for my salmon, because it was to be added later. I baked the salmon for only 10 minutes, and was glad it was cooked just right. But unfortunately the skin stuck to the foil, and I could only scrape some parts of it off to eat. I had buttered the skin side before adding it to the pan, but maybe it wasn't enough?

On the plate, the salmon had already lost its skin. :P

I think I put too much garlic... Since the broccoli was also baked with garlic, my whole mouth feels garlicky after dinner.

As for the cookies, I made oat cookies because my oats were expiring. The cookies were chewy inside. I'm not sure how they are supposed to be, but the photo from the recipe showed thinner cookies, so I expected them to be crispy.

In any case, I think I would prefer the cookies to be crispy. Maybe next time I'll slice them thinner. I still have half (a bit less than half, to be exact) of my dough left, so I can just slice them and bake next time.

By the way, these oat cookies are filling! I guess it's not surprising because the main ingredient is oats. But what I mean is, it's not so much something that we can take as a snack; instead it would be more appropriate for breakfast. I guess I can make my own oat breakfast cookies now, instead of buying stuff like Oat Krunch? :P

Rice oh rice

I'm getting tired of the hoo-ha about rice-cooking. Even companies are using that joke in their advertisements; it's getting pretty stale. It wasn't even that funny to begin with...

I'm not sure whether the majority of people really think that draining rice after cooking it is worth ridiculing, or maybe it's just that the minority are noisier. But if you think about it, so many foods are boiled and then drained. If rice weren't such a staple in Malaysia, if it were a foreign food only available at high-end restaurants, don't you think you might buy a pack of rice and try boiling and draining it to cook your "high-end meal"? I'm not saying we can't have a chuckle when we see the way "foreigners" cook rice, but hey, didn't they make it edible?

I remember the first time I cooked rice with a French friend (don't remember why we were cooking rice :P ), and when I asked her whether she had washed the rice, she stared at me and said, "We have to wash rice? Why? We don't wash pasta." I didn't have an answer at the time, but after that I did think about it and figured that pasta is processed from washed ingredients, whereas rice isn't. (I hope I'm right about the pasta :P )

As for draining the rice...some packets of rice that I saw being sold in France really had those instructions on their packets!

The smoked duck series

smoked duck aglio olio

smoked duck salad

smoked duck and eryngii pasta

Why so much smoked duck all of a sudden? Because I bought some seafood and smoked duck from a frozen food seller.

The smoked duck only cost RM7 a packet! (normal price is RM9, which isn't really that expensive either, considering how much you pay for a smoked duck dish in a restaurant), and a kg of salmon cost RM30 (normal price is RM32, which is also cheap!)

1kg of salmon turned out to be four pieces, with three slices and one tail part.

I also bought some fish and squid flower. I thought that "squid flower" was a nice name for the head (though come to think of it, the nice name is "squid crown"), but it turned out to be the squid flesh, scored to roll up into a nice "flower".

squid flower

Searching online, I found that "squid flower" is really the common name for it!

2020 posts in 2020

I just noticed that two posts ago (the mystery music) was my 2020th post on this blog!

Some time ago, I had noticed that I was inching closer to the 2020th post, and it did cross my mind to post something like this as the 2020th post. But I forgot...and only noticed after publishing my previous post.

So here's just a post to celebrate the "auspicious" (?) numbers. :P

Note: I similarly missed the 1000th post nine years ago!

Talking to Harith

I've just got to brag a bit here: Harith Iskander replied to me! (I suppose he replies to loads of other people, though :P )

The thing is, he posted this video of a creature in his aquarium, saying

I had my sea water aquarium installed in my home in 2015. Today, when I got home this little guy was gallivanting around. First time I have EVER seen it. I asked my aquarium guy, he said he didn't put it in.
Dari mana si dia datang eh?
Answers below please :

Since he requested answers, I gave one...and was pleasantly surprised very excited when he actually replied! Sometimes we would just get a Facebook "like" or "haha" reaction.

Mystery music

Recently I have been hearing the same music being played again and again somewhere near my house. At first I thought it was someone practising the piano. But today I finally found the source of the music!

I suddenly heard it louder than usual, and looked outside to figure out where it was coming from. And lo and behold, right in front of my gate, was a child on a toy motorcycle/tricycle. The music was definitely coming from that toy! (a parent was also present, in case you are wondering)

Let's steam everything!

I should probably write about my steamer. I finally bought one after thinking about it for a long time. It was on sale (6.6 sale; nowadays there's a sale every month) at RM149 (normal price being RM199, but with these online sellers, probably the normal price is never used). And during a flash sale, the price dropped to RM109! An additional 10% off, and the price was below a hundred.

stacked up

The white dish is for steaming rice.

stacked...down? For storing

The steamer being transparent, I thought that it would be easy to see whether the food was done, but turns out it was not the case. The whole thing steams up and we can't see the food!

Today I finally tried steaming rice. It turned out pretty well.

this photo was taken after fluffing it up with a fork...also to check that it was really all cooked!

So if I am steaming only one dish, I can steam my rice as well, instead of using the rice cooker separately.

Black

I just watched Black. It is very interesting! I think I haven't been so impressed with a plot since Nine.

So many people die, and there are at least three different parties who are responsible for the deaths.

However, the ending disappointed me because I feel that there is something there that really makes no sense... (more on that later)

The main character being a Grim Reaper, there are of course supernatural stuff in the plot. But even though some of those strange stuff are handled well, some are not...

*** Spoilers ahead ***

For example, the Grim Reapers can teleport by going through a door (every door is a pintu suka hati!). So when this Grim Reaper goes into a human body, that human body can do the same. Then after some time, he finds that his teleportation sometimes works and sometimes doesn't... so he still has to drive a car sometimes! That, I can accept...because they admitted that it sometimes doesn't work! (Side anecdote: At one time, this Grim Reaper's police team needs to go somewhere urgently. Grim Reaper says to them that he will go by himself because it would be faster. His team leader asks him, "What, are you going to teleport there? What else would be faster than taking a police car with a siren?" It is funny seeing the Grim Reaper's face here, because teleporting was exactly what he was planning to do! :D )

But then there is a part where they say that the Grim Reaper's numbers are the date of their death. For example, 416 died on 16th April. But the main character is 444... so what does that correspond to? And also, what happens with people who die on the same date? (they didn't explain) So this part annoys me...they shouldn't have come up with a significance for the numbers if they couldn't handle all the numbers well!

At another point, they revealed that there was another character who was actually a Grim Reaper in a human's body, before he died. This Grim Reaper somehow managed to continue the life of the human being without drawing suspicion to himself. But when our hero is taken over by the Grim Reaper, he doesn't know how to do some human things, and only relies on the bullet in his brain to explain his memory loss and his inability to do some basic things.

The way they make the Grim Reaper know how to do some things, but not know how to do others, is really inconsistent. The premise is that he has been observing humans, but not doing what they do, like driving cars (the first time he drives, he mutters that "it looked easier when watching them". He doesn't know he needs to wear pants, but for some other things, he seems to do just fine... (there are loads of examples, but let's stop here :P )

They say that if a Grim Reaper kills a human, he would be dissipated (the soul disappears, it seems, and cannot go to either paradise or hell, and cannot be reborn). At first they said that this was the maximum penalty for a Grim Reaper, and then our hero suddenly discovers that it wasn't, and that the maximum penalty was actually that you would cease to exist, and that no one would remember you.

So now here's the major SPOILER (don't blame me if you continue reading; you have been warned): The hero that was the Grim Reaper was actually the first love of the heroine (haih, why do they like this kind of first-love storylines so much), who had died and become a Grim Reaper. So now, in a human body, he had fallen in love with the heroine (and she with him), and he felt that she would be sad to lose him and find out how her first love had died. So after killing all the bad guys to keep her safe, he decides to go and accept his punishment. Instead of dissipation, he requests for the maximum penalty, so that the heroine would forget him and go on living her life happily.

I would have been okay with this ending, except that at the very end, they show the heroine having lived to a very old age, and when she dies (of old age, of course), our hero's soul was there as the Grim Reaper to take her away. At that point, she remembers him, and it's like they manage to get together after all! WHAT?!! This is your maximum penalty? You are erased from the memory of living people, but souls remember you, and you get to continue being a happy soul? Doesn't that "ceasing to exist" part get added on top of your dissipation? I just cannot accept this ridiculous ending...

And what's more, this ending means that some people's deaths might not have happened, and that means rewriting time! What do the Grim Reapers do, bring back the souls of people who have died, and tell them they didn't die after all? *eye roll*

Anyway, the whole drama was still very enjoyable (with the exception of the second episode, where I feel they dragged on the funny antics for too long), and the plot was awesome, so I still like it. But the ending made my opinion of it drop A LOT!

I actually think that this plot would have made a great drama without the Grim Reaper arc. It's a pity that they felt they needed that for a unique selling point.

Noodles, noodles, and more noodles

To continue from my previous post,in Ipoh we visited Cong Yin noodle shop. We had found out about it the first time we searched online for good food in Ipoh, but we had yet to visit it because there is nothing there for WW to eat. Since he didn't join this trip, we went to try it out.

pig stomach and intestines pepper soup (not sure whether I got the name right, but those are the main points)

The bowl was served with only the slices of stomach in plain view, so I rearranged the ingredients a but so that we can see the intestines too. The darker piece is chicken. This dish is only available on Sundays, and since we went there on a Sunday, our timing was just right!

pork mix noodles

The pork mix noodles is the first item on the menu. I think it is their basic dish...with all ingredients mixed in. There were pork slices, minced pork patties, pork liver, and bamboo fungus (not sure whether I missed any other ingredients).

Each bowl of noodles cost RM9. I guess there were more ingredients in the pork mix noodles because the ingredients are less costly.

A special mention: Their barley-foochuk is very good! It comes in a bowl (like dessert) and is very creamy! I didn't take a photo because I didn't expect it to be special...and also, it looks very ordinary.


Another day we planned to try Xin Quan Fang curry mee, which was in town and we never had the correct timing to try it. But it was closed when we got there, so we tried the hakka mee beside it instead. It seemed quite popular; there were plenty of customers. We didn't really know what to order, so they gave us a bowl of noodles each, and a mixture of ingredients.

The price list states that each piece of ingredient costs 80 sen, apart from the tofu that costs RM1. In total, these ingredients with three bowls of noodles cost RM30. We noted that it was even more expensive than Cong Yin! But if we had known what to order, we would not have ordered as many pieces of fishballs/meatballs/etc, so it would have been cheaper.


We also went to Bercham Point Cafe, which we had visited before. We had been there for dinner and then breakfast, but this was the first time we went there for lunch.

I discovered a pan mee stall which was not bad.

dry chilli pan mee

The pan mee was supposed to cost RM6.50, but when they brought us the noodles, they told us that they had run out of fishballs and wood-ear fungus, so they charged us RM5 instead of the normal price of RM6.50. 

dry curry noodles (we chose kuey teow)

kai si hor fun

The hor fun was quite good (but unable to rival Moon De Moon's), but the dry curry noodles were a bit sourish, and we didn't like it much. We recalled that WW might have ordered this same curry noodles before...

By the way, I realize that I have not posted about Moon De Moon! It is our favourite place in Ipoh now, with its awesome hor fun and another stall that sells shang mee (and this trip we tried its fried lou shi fun which is very good too!)

This is what the hor fun from Moon De Moon looks like:

The two bowls on the right are add-on ingredients. They also sell dry curry noodles, with this curry chicken.

Just looking at the soup, you can see that it is thicker than the one from Bercham Point Cafe!