Wena

a pic of the carrot cake. http://www.mum-mum.info/2003/08/kuching-fe...t-iii-well.html i think i had some more pictures around but have to dig through over 1000 pics. august is coming again. august = kuching food fest. a lot of pictures again. ciao. enjoy the site. haven't been blogging lately as still recovering from flu. check out the IMBB submissions.

now, if only we can find a cleaver that stays forever sharp. i used to own a laser cut Richardson (Sheffield, UK) chef knife that never needed sharpening. 7 yrs down the road, my cousin (who took the knife) says that it's still sharp.

hmmm... the pics are not loading?

shiewie's recommendations is usually how it's done in a chinese restaurant. should be easy to prepare at home. hmmm... haven't had deer meat in a long time. my mum in the US accidently knocked down a deer while driving back home. she called her handyman and his wife to help lug the deer back home. then, they cooked it!

hmmm... i wonder if there truly is a specific taste to sweet and sour sauce. there is a slightly different taste to S&S fish and S&S pork ribs. probably because of the taste of the meat/fish that is used. also depends on the type of tomato sauce that you used. as for cornstarch, go easy with that stuff. too much will spoil the taste. same goes for the vinegar.

gosh, so many experiences. how to list them all? well, a few memorable ones : 1)eating jungle food for the first time. doesn't quite qualify as gourmet asian cooking but it was certainly not the norm! plus, the way it was cook is similar to chinese cooking. my favourites to date (and it's not an exhaustive list, mind you) : fried wild tapioca leaves with ginger, stir-fried smoke wild boar with ginger and soy sauce, stir-fried mousedeer with ginger (a protected species i know but when one is out in isolate places, one just eats what one is served). did try some crocodile herbal soup with ginseng and fried bat meat with soy sauce but those weren't for me. 2) learning how to cook sarawak laksa with my dad while growing up! 3) learning how to cook during school holidays with granny. 4) first time eating indian banana leaf rice with so many side dishes for about RM4 only (US$1.05)!! it was in a wooden coffee shop somewhere near KLIA. not chinese food but it was great. so many other experiences. how to sort through them all?

Pan, that is the coffee shop lingo. kopi-susu : coffee-milk (direct translation). :p Condensed milk in malay is 'susu pekat manis'.

those peanut sweets that just melts in your mouth.... the big sweetened plums wrapped up to look like one big sweet! big puffballs filled with tao-sa (red bean) paste. coated with crushed pink sugar. longan jelly. leng chee kang (hot & cold)

wah shiewie.... hebatnya... just found out what you're doing. i seldom frequent egullet simply because of the massive updating it does and the slow dial-up line i'm using. why don't u do a food blog full time lah! u're good at it. i know that a lot of ppl are clammering for a KL food blog.

or buy a new top like what eddie mentioned. lift it up and let the condensation run down by the side of the lid, give it a slight shake to remove the excess water and then finally remove the lid. a few drops of water will not caused much damage. btw, spoke to granny about this. she said 'haiya! no need to worry so much one! steam fish also got water inside mah!'

hmm... a lot of shops actually use metal steamers for the steamed pau @ white soft and fluffy buns. never really noticed whether the condensation was that bad or not. think it's also something to do with the amount of holes that are on the steamer to allow the steam to float away. bettyk, don't worry about the metal steamer too much. my granny has been using a metal steamer for ages. no complaints about condensation. she's very philosophical about it. she'll also say that a metal steamer is more durable than the bamboo version. ah well.

from Cook's Thesaurus scroll down. last picture.

(slight digression) was speaking to Josh about the chillis that can be used for a cucumber salad and he pointed me to this link of the different varieties of chillis. the pictures shown looks like the medusa strain which is found in malaysia, i think. based on my observation. note that medusa is not cheyenne which has a slight sourish taste to it. worst come to worst, use the dried chilli found in chinatown but be careful when u add them into the dishes if u've never had them before. if u wanted to grow ur own hot chillis, just buy some dried chillis, remove the seeds and plant them. i know my granny does. hmm... as for jalapenos, taste might come out different but no harm trying. jalapenos has a different sour taste to it. and yes, spicy szechuan taufu is another way of making the dish spicy but u'll get a fermented taste to it. depends whether u like it this way or not. most chinese restaurants in malaysia either uses dried chilli or chilli oil because it's cheaper and it's hard to get the same chilli strain as in szechuan. i'm probably not eating the correct szechuan dishes but beggars can't be choosers. good luck on the cooking!

frying some chicken wings when the oil suddenly pops up due to water droplets in the chicken. oil flies into mid-air and hits me right smack on the forehead. ended up with 3 burnt marks on my head for days. AND I HAD TO GO TO A MUSICAL THE NEXT NIGHT!!!

my contribution : a picture. ate it at a hawker centre nearby.

i saw a fusion type of wantan once. filling was ice-cream and it was deep fried! looks extremely interesting.

some food products that are durian-flavored as still popular. ever tried durian flavoured dodol? the coconut flavoured one is nice.

pan, very exotic. the ostrich meat i mean. u're definitely going to put on more weight by the time your trip is over. hee hee... udang galah is great! pricey though. the only place that it was dirt cheap that i can recall was Sabah. seafood there was pretty cheap everywhere! as for other exotic food, well, i'm sure i'm going to offend a number of the animal activist out there. living in east malaysia, one does hear of various places that cooks meat like bat, turtles, mousedeer, snake, etc. tasted mousedeer once upon a long time ago. tasted like chicken and cooked with ginger. teeny weeny bones though.

hi shiewie, wassup? mudbug pointed me to this particular thread in eGullet.com. i still kinda get lost in this massive eGullet forem. head is spinning still. so, i'm just going to jump rite in like 'out of the pan into the fire'. didn't read all the threads as started to get dizzy after the 1st page. gosh! u're a really into food! hehehe... am now wondering if you're expecting... hee hee Anyway, speaking of the Sabah Food Fest, here is a link in the Sarawak daily today. Say that it mentioned the Sabah Food Fest Promotion so thought better put it here. one of the projects in the works for mum-mum is a flash interactive map of food spots in malaysia. yeah, ambitious huh? well, we'll see what happens a few months down the road. if and when i can figure out how to use flash. will definitely need to contact you for reference on eating spots in west malaysia. anyway, will see how it goes.

i prefer green tea mooncake. easier on the breath.

mudbug. haha! see that u like the mooncake. interestingly enough, i know of 2 ppl who have sworned off mum-mum only to come back again. i do good advertising for food manufacturers. should actually start collecting money for it. :p anyway, thanks for the mentioned of mum-mum.