Chinese New Year Reunion Dinner 2010

It's the 10th day of Chinese New Year and I'm so glad it's coming to an end. Chinese New Year is the one festival that I least look forward to even when I was a child, and now as an adult. The spring cleaning is the bitchiest part and I never really fancy the visiting ritual as well. However that being said, I do have some salivating pictures that I took during the reunion dinner to share. :)



I'm a very "domestic" person so I've always love my family reunion dinner to be a private affair. You know, just me, my sister and both my parents. We had so much prepared for the dinner and it was definitely more than enough to feed the four of us!



First dish was, abalone and limpets served on a bed of kyuri and lettuce in garlic and chili lime sauce. It's actually my first time eating limpets - a type of shellfish and I didn't like it. It kinda looks wrong (go google the de-shell picture ;p) and I find it to be too soft. Both are from New Moon (the brand , not the movie. lol) with the abalone costing RM 70 per can and limpets RM 22.



A feast is not a feast for the Chinese without shark fin soup. So, shark fin soup we had! You can actually get the shark fin(uncooked one) easily from the wet market. Don't know how much is the market price but my parents got 500g for RM 170.



One of the many huge pieces of shark fin! We each had 125g of shark fin! :P I just hope the people from PETA won't come bashing me after I post this. :P



Braised sea cucumber and fish maw is another dish peculiar to a Chinese feast. My mum had it braised in dried scallops and Chinese leek. She cook quite a pot of it but we serve it on a smaller portion. And while it tasted great, I'm not a fan of anything braised.



We also had steamed fresh water tilapia. While most families have the best fish during reunion dinner, my family don't. Reason? Fishes during the Chinese New Year season are at ridiculous prices and it's also the time when it is the least fresh. My dad is very particular about the freshness of any seafood he put into his mouth so we have fresh water fish instead. The tilapia is from Batang Ai and this is the only fresh water fish we eat. No "weird smell" that most fresh water fish have, I guarantee!



I just realize that my family actually had quite a lot of dish from the seafood family. Hehe. But yes, we do have meat as well! The steamed chicken is something we have every year. I ate quite a bit of it because...



I have the great home made chili sauce to go along with! Orgasmic! :p

Using the stock from the steamed chicken and the canned abalone, my mum made fish maw, mushrooms and crab meat balls soup. We're suppose to eat the meat balls during Chinese New Year (affectionately called lion head) so that people will respect us. Heh.



Lastly! We had the beef curry with potatoes. We cook this in a big pot (I love curries!) but only took a bit during the reunion dinner cause we had so much dish already!



And of course, we did have rice. I know my "chicken plate" seems to be making a lot of appearance in my blog yea? Haha. I love classic Chinese plates. You can hardly find them these days!



Since there's 15 days in Chinese New Year, here's to a prosperous and auspicious Chinese New Year to all my readers! Thank You for reading! (Actually feel really bad not updating for a while when I see the un-dropped traffic. Thank You again!)



Have a great Chap Goh Mei weekend!

Starbucks Honey Orange Frapucinno

First and foremost, Happy Chinese New Year all! :)

I really love how Starbucks usually come up with seasonal drinks during different festive season. For the Tiger year, they came up with Honey Orange Frapucinno (or the latte version if you have it hot). I was a bit sceptical at first, but to my surprise, the tangy orange flavor blends really well with the coffee!

They also have this limited edition tiger key chain in conjunction with Chinese New Year. I thought it was quite solid and very detail. For just RM 6.50 (with the purchase of a venti), it's definitely a steal since Starbucks merchandise are usually quite costly.



I've always been very loyal to my macchiato in Starbucks, but I really like this one that I had it a couple of times in just a week!



I'm not too sure when the promotion end (or whether it is gonna be permanent in the menu) but do have a try! It's good! :)

Flying back to Happy Land!

After almost missing my flight for countless time (which usually result to speed packing), I decided that it is safe for me to pack a day earlier this time. It's almost done, except for the liquors that I have yet to decide whether I want to have it hand luggage or not.

I'll be in KL for a couple of hours to do some shopping before flying back to Kuching. Haven't fly Air Asia for some time! But don't get me wrong, I have no problem flying Air Asia - I love Air Asia!



In fact it make me sick that people (especially those who hardly fly or never fly) compare Air Asia a lot with MAS when they don't understand one is a full service airline, one is a budget airline. You can't compare an apple and an orange do you?



I find it hard to believe that the next time I'm packing, it will be me leaving this place for good. It's been way too long and I can't tell you how eager I am just thinking about it. Sure, there's a lot more hurdles to go through, but I can only tell you that, I don't belong here.



Ah, just can't wait to sit at this favorite place of mine in the house - It's my second living room. :) My house has a very Chinese architecture but apparently non of us read or write Chinese. I am proud to say I am the only one who can speak Mandarin (not exactly fluent, but good enough :P) Lol.



I miss the feline and canine family a lot! Misha, Boy, Tom, Tiger and Bruno, I'm coming back! For now, Please say Hi to Misha! :P

Update : Spring clean the room, finish packing everything! Finally decided to have the liquors by hand, transferred the PDF version of my air tickets to my phone, transferred some nice series to the phone ... I'm ready to go!! :D

How to Cook Delicious Instant Noodles

Despite the fact that I am constantly on a tight budget in Uni, I hardly ever resort to instant noodles. It's not that I don't like eating instant noodle, I do. It's just that I find instant noodle without any add-on is beyond edible. However when I am at home, it's a whole different story. I have access to fresh ingredients and I really enjoy experimenting cooking instant noodles with different ingredients!



Other than a packet of instant noodles (I use Maggi - Chicken), we're going to need pork, prawns, dried shitake mushrooms, spring onions and a little green of your choice.



First, stir fry the pork,mushrooms and the ends of spring onion (the most flavorful part of the spring onion) with the three amazing sauce - light soy sauce, mushroom soy sauce and fish gravy. I can't tell you the amount to put as the portion might vary, so make it up to your own taste, ya?



Cook the noodles in boiling water and drain the water when it is done.



Then, mixed the noodles with lard, lard crisp, onion oil, white pepper, dried chicken stock, salt and mono sodium glutamate.



After it is well mixed, top it up with the stir fry pork that you had prepared earlier.



For the soup, add in some of the seasonings (from the packet of Maggi), fresh prawns and vegetables in boiling water. Once cooked, put the dried seaweed in, then sprinkle some spring onion on top as garnishing. Done!



Delicious instant noodle meal!



Ah, man just wish I can have something like this in hostel!

Caffe Ritazza KLIA

Caffe Ritazza is an International coffee bar chain and globally, their menu ranges from all sorts of ciabattas and paninis - Something I very much prefer to eat. However the branch in Malaysia has a little twist. More than half of their menu consist of Malaysian food.



If you've been to KLIA (which I think everyone have lah) and had spend some time walking around, I'm sure this place won't be a stranger to you.



This plate of Nasi Lemak cost roughly RM 18 - definitely a steep price to pay for nasi lemak (Heck, I just had a RM 1 Nasi Lemak this morning.Lol). The great thing that comes along with paying more for your food is that they always come well presented. Taste wise, it was nothing above edible.



I know Ice Latte and Nasi Lemak is not exactly a brilliant combination but they claim to "serve the finest coffee and handpicked their premium coffee beans". I'm a sucker for tag line like this and I just have to order their coffee to you know... authenticate the tag line. :P



If you ask me to rate the latte from one to five (five being the best), I would rate it one.The major faux pas for me was that the latte was neither hot nor cold. (It should have been cold since I ordered Ice Latte!) It's a definitely bias judgement because I find it hard for my taste bud to gauge the taste of a drink when it is hanging in between hot or cold.



If you're in KLIA and looking for a place to have a quick bite, I would suggest Caffe Marche (review coming up soon!) - just about a stone throw away from Caffe Ritazza.