Shiewie

Breakfast - slice of wholemeal bread with smidgeon of Marmite and a glass of soy milk. Still hungry though .

Dinner tonight was out with friends. Had a seafood salad of mixed greens with slices of peppers, alfalfa, diced tomatoes, orange segments, grilled salmon, squid and shrimp dessed with a vinagrette. Also deep fried pigeon served with a sweet Thai chilli sauce plus 1/8th wedge of a naan. Drank some Jack Daniels and Coke.

Sambal is a spicy condiment that one would eat with rice or noodles. In the case of nasi lemak, the sambal is a cooked mixture of dried chillies, shallots, belacan (shrimp paste), tamarind and onions with some salt and sugar.

Late afternoon snacks: - 1 handful of unsalted roasted cashews - 1 small piece of marble cake - yet another Granny Smith apple

Lunch: - 1 small starfruit - 1 orange - Yong Tau Foo (translates to stuffed tofu). Yong Tau Foo is a Hakka dish where a fish paste mixture is stuffed in soft tofu, lightly fried and served in a soup. There are also stuffed tofu puffs, deep-fried stuffed bean curd rolls, fish balls, stuffed bitter gourd slices, stuffed okra, stuffed aubergine slices, "sui gau" (soup dumplings - you can have these deep-fried or in a soup) and long beans weaved into a little ring and stuffed with the fish paste mixture. It's served with dips of a sauce that's similar to hoi sin sauce and chilli sauce. My "Tai Yee Ma" (mum's eldest sister) who married into a Hakka family says the true-blue version must be a mixture of fish paste, minced pork and salt fish. The best Yong Tau Foo in KL is in Ampang. Sadly you get a lot of inedible food court versions around too. Edited - After all that, I forgot to post which Yong Tau Foo items I had for lunch - 1 piece of tofu, 1 fish ball, 2 deep-fried Sui Kau, 1 soup Sui Kau, 1 slice of bitter gourd, 1 tofu puff and 1 deep-fried tofu roll.

Following up from Tonkichi's explanation, Sar Hor Fun (or Hor Fun for short) or Kuay Teow are names for flat rice noodles. Ipoh Style Noodles (Yee Poh Sar Hor Fun in Cantonese) refer to the style in which they are cooked - flat rice noodles in a light but intensely flavoured soup made from from pork bones, chicken and prawn heads and topped with shreds of poached chicken, shelled prawns and chives. Another Ipoh style of serving sar hor fun is with a plate poached chicken and a separate dish of blanched bean sprouts dressed with some soy sauce, oil, oyster sauce and pepper. The hor fun is served in a separate bowl either with the chicken soup or dry, tossed with light soy sauce, dark soy sauce and some oil. Ipoh is famed for its sar hor fun which are thinner, smoother and springier (or more elastic, doesn't break as easily). As explained by Tonkichi, this is due to the higher alkalinity in the water in Ipoh caused by all the limestone hills around it. The same goes for the bean sprouts - fatter healthier sprouts. Some restaurants in KL supposedly truck the superior sar hor fun from Ipoh daily. (Was watching a program on Discovery Travel & Adventure on the weekend which featured congee, rice noodles in Guangzhou and it mentioned that a certain restaurant in Guangzhou has spring water delivered to it daily for its hor fun making.) The Hor Fun dish that you refer to which is stir-fried with the eggy gravy and seafood is know as "Wat Dan Hor Fun" (Smooth Eggy Hor Fun) or "Kwong Fu Chow Hor Fun" (Cantonese Style Hor Fun). Malaysia Restaurant in Melbourne's Doncaster East does a pretty good Cantonese Style Hor Fun (and KL Style Hokkien Mee too). Char Kuay Teow is found all over Malaysia. Char Kuay Teow is a Malaysian Hokkien dish and Penang is predominantly Hokkien so the Penang style is the preferred version. You can get the Penang style Char Kuay Teow in KL. My mother, the KL native, biasly thinks that the Penang style portions are smaller as Penang Hokkiens are notoriously thrifty (or stingy as my mother would say). There is a slight difference between Penang style Char Kuay Teow and the KL style - the KL one is darker than the Penang one as there is dark soy sauce in it. Whichever style, it must have wok-hei in it as mentioned by Tonkichi. As far as I know all Char Kuay Teow used to be fried with lard albeit Penang or KL style (even better if there is "jue yau char" - pork crackling in it). But with health concerns and halal versions, some are now fried with vegetable oil. Tonkichi - do you mean "see ham" (cockles) when you mention mussels in Char Kuay Teow? Corrected typo

Wednesday Breakast was muesli with soy milk and home-made yogurt. Drank warm water.

Yes!! Do come and visit . I'll take you to lots of makan places here if you do!

Do try asian greens. You can get a good variety of asian greens at the asian grocers / supermarkets in Australia, especially if you're in Melbourne or Sydney. I had the pak choy blanched last night with a bit of salt and sesame oil added to the water to blanch it for some flavour. We had it as a green on the side ... or rather as the green dish of a meal with rice. I was too lazy to stir-fry it in the cast iron wok last night so I just blanched it in the stainless steel wok that I was going to steam the fish in. You can have it blanched and dressed with oyster sauce, stir-fried with some minced/slices of garlic (and some slices of ginger if you like) or add some chicken slices, pork slices, chinese roast pork, char siu, uncooked shelled shrimp or dried shrimp when you stir-fry the pak choy. We sometimes poach some chicken and then blanch asian greens (sometimes broccoli or cauliflower) in the stock once you remove the chicken and there you have it, dinner is done all in one pot.

this sounds really yummy. Nasi Lemak? It's one of those Malaysian dishes that are sort of eaten all day long. It started off as a breakfast item but it's now eaten at tea breaks, as something to tie you over to the next meal or for a late night supper. What I had was the take away kind - little packets of nasi lemak are sold at roadside stalls or set in a pile at long common tables at Malay and Indian-Muslim eateries and tea stalls. It's also sold freshly served where you can add other dishes to it apart from the basic "ikan bilis" (anchovies), "kacang" (peanuts), sambal and "telur" (egg). Here's a link to a FriedChillies site where you can read more on the Malaysian obsession with Nasi Lemak.

is preserved bean paste the same as fermented tofu? (Cantonese: foo yuur) No not foo yuur - I meant "tau cheong" or "meen sii" - the kind you can get in whole beans or a mashed up paste. I'm not sure whether the Chicken and Potatoes with Preserved Bean Paste Gravy is Chinese or Nyonya though, just something that mum says my gran used to cook. Will check with friends who have Nyonya grans too. It's a really simple recipe though - just stir fry some minced garlic with slices of ginger, add some tau cheong once the garlic and ginger are slightly brown. Once the tau cheong smells aromatic, add chicken pieces that's been marinated with some salt and pepper to brown with some light soy sauce. When the chicken is brown, add water and potatoes to simmer till all is cooked.

Ate half a slice of lemon choc chip cheesecake (made by a friend who got a lift from me today) while driving home from work. Dinner: Leftovers - Chicken and Potatoes with Preserved Bean Paste Sauce - Stir-fried Lotus Root New dishes - Steamed "Wan Yue" (grass carp) with julienned young ginger, Kikkoman's special fragrance soy sauce and sesame oil - Blanched "Pak Choy" - Brown rice Corrected typo

USD1 = RM3.80 (easier to equate it to RM4) A Granny Smith is around RM0.70 to RM1.20 each or approximately US 17.5 cents to 30 cents an apple. The apples could be from the US, Australia, NZ, South Africa or China.

I steam using a perforated metal insert in a stainless steel wok covered with a stainless steel cover. Like Hest88 and Wena's grandma, I just remove the cover really quickly away from me (so that the steam doesn't hit you in the face) and tilt it to the side so that the condensation drips from the cover back onto the wok and not onto the food. You could also try placing a tea towel on top of the steamer before covering it to abosrb the codensation from the steamer cover when steaming buns.

I eat a lot of green apples (generally one a day) as there are always some in the house - my mother needs to watch her blood sugar and green apples are lower in sugar than most other fruits. The fruits we eat on a fairly regular basis are Granny Smiths, starfruit, papayas, guavas, Chinese pears and bananas (Berangan, Rastali or Cavendish). Granny Smiths are about RM.70 to RM1.20 each depending on their size and where you buy them. I love rambutans too and probably can eat a whole kg by myself in a day . However too much rambutans makes one "sup yeet" (heaty is the best I can translate this too) and it can be quite a chore for the bowels when one is "sup yeet" .

Snacks in the afternoon: - 1 Asian pear - the crispy yellow kind - 2 handfuls of "keropok ikan" (fish crackers) from the common food stash at work. Fish keropok are like prawn crackers except they're made with fish of course. They vary in colour from a pale beige to brownish depending on the type of fish they're made with. The keropok I ate were the brownish kind and shaped like fries. There are some from the east coast that are coin sized and covered with a sweet sticky chilli sauce - yumm! The east coast also has large thick cut ones called "keropok lekor" which you buy freshly fried and dunk into a chilli sauce dip - they are crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside. - 1 Granny Smith apple Drank lots of water.

Come visit KL again and we'll take you to lots more good makan . Unfortunately, think a New York visit will be quite some time away .

Hi Pan! Am back from my makan tengahari (midday meal) which was thankfully better than yesterday's. Had pork noodles today - wheat vermicelli ("meen seen" in Cantonese or "mee suah" in Hokkien) with balls of minced pork and bits of "tung choy" (preserved napa cabbage), slices of pork, pig's liver, pig's intestines, "choy sum", bits of spring onion (the green part only) and "jue yau char" (crunchy pork crackling) in a porky soup. It's served with a dip of soy sauce and cut fresh red chillies and/or bird's eye chilles. You can have it dry (tossed with dark and light soy sauce and some oil) or in the porky soup with your choice of noodles - "yau meen" (fresh wheat noodles), "mai fun" (rice vermicelli), "kuay teow" / "hor fun" (fresh flat rice noodles), "loh shue fun" (tadpole shaped rice noodles and it translates to rat's tail noodles) or "meen seen" (wheat vermicelli). There was a brief shower so it was kind of nice to have something soupy. On most other days, we'd be sweating by the bucketsful if we have something hot and soupy in a local coffeeshop for lunch. I also had a fresh popiah - a Nyonya spring roll with a filling of romain lettuce with some "teem cheong" (sweet sauce), chilli sauce, cooked jicama, bean sprouts, strips of omelette, "tau kwa" (firm tofu), fried shallots and garlic. Home-made versions usually have pork, prawns and crab meat. Local coffeeshops ("kopi tiam" in Hokkien or "koh pee char poh" Cantonese) in Malaysia (and Singapore too ...but it's more foodcourts there now) are eateries where a row of stalls are set up along the side of the shop. The shop proprietor usually runs the drinks stall (as it's the most lucrative) and sells a couple of breakfast-type foods - soft-boiled eggs and toast with butter and/or "kaya" (coconut jam). The rest of the stalls are rented out to stallholders who sell a variety of hawker-type food. Corrected typo error

No significant difference that I remember clearly. The Aussie sweet potatoes we get here are mainly the orange-fleshed ones (kumara I think they're called). The Indonesian ones can be orange-fleshed, white-fleshed or purple-fleshed. There are also Japanese ones which have purple skin but are white on the inside. Edited for typo

Think our dinners at home are fairly similar to herbacidal's - typical Chinese family's dinner though ours might sometimes be slightly more Malaysianised. My mother's got a problematic digestive system and spicy food is a problem so we tend to eat a lot less chilli than the typical Malaysian Chinese family - I remember a plate of sambal belacan at almost every meal at my gran's. We get quite a lot of our dairy, fruits, beef, lamb and some fresh produce from Australia. It's definitely more expensive than the local stuff (if there is a local alternative which isn't always the case, for example there's no Malaysian cream, apples, oranges etc.) and not necessarily available at all supermarkets. Quality - hmmm I guess it differs depending on the item. The Aussie milk that we get here is marketed under the Farmhouse brand - it's definitely thicker, richer and sweeter than the local fresh milk and cost probably around RM1 (USD1 = RM3.80) more - the difference is minimal to most consumers for the quality (guess this could be from a Klang Valley perspective) and I guess as a result it sells quite well and is available at most supermarkets. On the other hand, there are sweet potatoes - there is an huge price difference between Australian sweet potatoes and the Indonesian ones we normally get. The Aussie ones cost something like RM14 a kg while the Indonesian ones are like RM1.40 a kg. As a result, Aussie sweet potatoes are sold only at the Cold Storage supermarkets in the expat areas of Bangsar and Ampang while the Indonesian ones are sold everywhere else.

fine, but what does larnin' mean? larnin' = learning =R= All this larnin' to be done. I now feel compelled to have lunch at the local coffeeshops this week so that there can be some larnin can be done here . Some of the Malay and Indian Muslim places are closed at lunch this week (or rather for a month) though as Ramadan started yesterday. I usually try to minimise the eating out so that I can cut down on the carbs. SE Asian food involve a lot of carbs. I love carbo - unfortunately it makes me put on weight as I can't stop piling on the rice when there's a dish with lots of curry or gravy.

Hmmm...couldn't get onto the forum last night. The home page was fine but got an error each time I clicked a link to the forum. Strange. Had a pre-dinner snack of a Granny Smith apple. Dinner (Monday night) - Chicken and potatoes in preserved bean paste gravy - Stir-fried lotus root slices, celery, carrots, dried shitake mushrooms and ginko nut - Stir-fried julienned chayote with dried shitake mushrooms in eggy sauce - Fried luncheon meat (like Spam) cubes with baked beans - Brown rice Had a navel orange and some soy milk after dinner. We normally have soy milk at home as my mother is lactose intolerant. Anyway, the milk here doesn't taste that good unless one buys the fresh Australian stuff. Tuesday Breakfast was a slice of wholemeal toast with leftover baked beans and luncheon meat cubes from dinner last night plus a glass of soy milk.

Yupp!! They live happily in my desk drawer though and are mighty handy when hunger pangs strike! I actually like them better than the other muesli and granola bars here.

huh?? This is what I wanted when I tagged Shiewie, more about food in SE Asia. Are you in KL or Singapore or somewhere else, Shiewie? I'm in KL.