Krabi: Another Island Getaway

28th Oct- 1st Nov 2015

It's been ages since I went to any island, be it locally or otherwise. When I was prompted the idea of going to Krabi with Zera,Fiza , Ziela and her colleagues, I was like 'sure, y not?'.

Once in a while it was fun and better still,more relaxing for just being the 'passenger ' of this whole trip, after being in series of trips with me as the mastermind.

We reached the land of  Krabi in the dawn, and were brought to the hotel. The tours and activities for the whole trip was only confirmed when we we brought to the tourist agent on the way to the hotel in Ao Nang.

The first place we went on the first day was to the elephant santuary a few miles from Ao Nang. This is the second elephant santuary that I went apart from one in Kuala Gandah, Rompin. But I'm telling you the elephants here were really huuuuge. And we grabbed the opportunity to hop on the mammal for a peaceful ride around the greenery surrounding.

                                          

                                  

                                       

There was also performance show by baby elephant after the trekking, and it was fun to watch the witty baby elephant ,Didi obediently followed its master's instructions.

                               

          

The next place we went  was to the Emerald Pool.

                                            

We walked further into the bush to find the blue pool. And yes, the pool is very very blue I never set my eyes on this beautiful pool until we reached here! Stunning.

                                       

We have had our  buffet lunch before we set off to the next place, Tiger Cave Temple.

We did try to climb the steps to the top of temple, but we were even not reaching half before we surrendered.ahahh. Makcik pancits!

So, we went around the temple to snap photos while waiting some of us who were fit enough to reach the top of the hill.

 On the next day, the activities were more to island hopping. We were brought to a few island i.e bamboo island for sight seeing, as well as phi phi island. Apart from that, snorkling in open sea was also included in the itenerary, even though the under water view was quite dissapointing. No coral reef, and very little fish were seen. Perhaps acquiring diving license will be worthwhile for the purpose, yes.?

                           

Nightlife in Ao Nang was quite awesome. The girls and boys decided to hv night ride whereby the bike rentals were easy to get with attractive rental rate.

It was the final day, we decided to go for canoeing. The activity took over 2 hours for us exploring the sceneries and it was awesome experience indeed. 

On the final night in Krabi, we were brought to Krabi town night market. It is just a small night market, but it is highly suggested for souvenir shopping to be done here due to its cheaper price.

Speaking of food, It was very easy to locate halal food, not to mention its fresh seafood for all various selection of dishes.

Apart from heavy meal, one that shouldnt be missed is its pancake. It is very well known amongst tourists in Krabi, it's cheap snack but yummyy!

Baking Pavlova: Lessons to learn

It feels like it has been quite a while that I didn't do any baking. The idea to try baking a pavlova was triggered when I saw the pics in facebook, that made me drool upon seeing it.

I imitated the recipe from joyofbaking website, and yes , the ingredients are easy to find in the market. I'm not going through the details of the process , but along the process, I learned a few lessons in order to  bake the meringue successfully, and rather, it was interesting learning process!

The lessons were:

1) all 4 eggs that are beaten should be baked at once, as I tried to divide the meringue into two portions, but it has ended up that the second portion slowly dissolved. plus , my first meringue became really thin and it was less drooling. huhu
2)  use as low temp at 100 degree c all the way. This helped greatly to avoid the meringue from being overbaked.
3) as for whip cream, do not mix  sugar and other ingredient when you first beat the whip cream. It turns to buttery form. Huwaaaaa~

 

Nonetheless , no matter how ugly it looked -my ugly pavlova,  my sibling love it that it has finished at one go. But in order to get the right-almost -perfect look pavlova, I bake my second attempt on the following day. This time I used the whip cream spray, easier and faster . And it turned out the second try looked wayyyy better . So , with that satisfaction, I can rest from any baking activity for another one or two months later. hihih

Nuttela Pod

Let's talk about food some more. I've been meaning to do something new, but not so sure what to do.

 

The idea popped in my mind in one of my lazy weekend on raining Friday. It is November, means that monsoon season is starting to show up nowadays.

 

This whole idea was triggered from conversation with Ainul via whatsapp, who brought nutella pod for her officemates.  Knowing that the recipe is easy to do, and when I know that it costs RM15 for 10 pcs of them, I just couldn't wait to try it myself. As suggested by Ainul, I got the recipe from here .

The ingredients are easy to get, and it doesn't require so much time to bake a tray of them. Just 10 minutes at 180 degree C. I use chopstick to make an indentation and icing pipe to insert the nutella into it. Smudge- free.! Nevertheless, every pod is "vanished" just when nuttella is inserted in it. All my siblings are at home, I barely able to save a container of them by the time second round of the mix is baked. Ho ho.

I kept doing the same process from 11 o'clock in the morning until last tray in the oven at 7 o'clock in the evening. Thankfully the few last batches were successfully saved to be brought to office on the next day. I finished full jar of nutella, and left another jar at home for the next weekend's plan. I came home 5 days later just to see an empty jar, the nuttella was exhausted by siblings due to prolong starvation in the past raining days. Bertuah!

Normal nuttella pod I saw was just plain nuttela filling in it. But I chose to use crush almond on top it, just to add some cosmetic value on it. Hi hi.

Jeruk Mempelam Asam Boi- the recent craving phenomenal.

Skimming newsfeed on my FB page, it seems like many of my friends are 'talking' about this jeruk mempelam asam boi. Looking at the pictures that were posted, I didn't care less, initially.

Until one day when one of my officemates brought it to work. I started to get a taste of one piece and the rest is history. (Ok this might sound a bit drama la kann).

Yes I can opt for buying the ready made from the other friends at office (I'm telling you this jeruk is phenomenal at our place nowadays), but I decided to be rather thoughtful. Heh heh.

So I went to buy the mango , guave, asam boi ,chilies to give some hot flavour in it.Small chilies are the right choice, actually.

It is not that hard to do it, just chop and mix everything with some sugar altogether. The water from fruits will settle overnight, which will add flavour to this.

And I brought it to office, and voila! It lasted by lunch time. The mango that I bought were enoug for three days supplies of jeruk mangga asam boi for the team at office. I didn't actually eat much of them, for preparing and serving them to friends are enough to make me feel content about it. hi hi.

Girls' Date at Victoria Station Steakhouse

24th August 2014

I've been meaning-or shall I put it as craving for enjoying delicacies at Victoria Station for months, but the right time has just arrived when Zera and Fiza agreed to tag along. Fuh! Saved myself from being lone diner, again in posh eatery.

As for starter we were served with bun and butter while waiting for our meals to ready.

I was having myself lamb barbeque blah blah  and Fiza was having chicken chop.  Zaira? She has actually arrived earlier than us, ordered and finished her salad before we even reached our table. Super speedy, huh!

Our meals came with salad too. And believe it or not, I started enjoying and appreciating bowl of salad from there on.

Thankfully I was only have myself roti canai throughout the day before this dinner, because the portion is super large for my normal intake. And I still practically can taste the lamb everytime I burped in the following morning. So worth the RM, I`m telling you.


We had small chit chat while waiting for the meal settled in our tummy (yeaa.. maybe just partially). And as always with phone in our hands. Don't you see anything familiar from these sight nowadays?

It is cozy dining spot every once in a while with vast selections of lamb and beef based meals and steaks, including chicken. Featuring British-inspired deco, you can also opt to dine inside the train, which is a bit more intimate. Well maybe I can try it next time, perhaps.

Cooking Project in Ramadhan 1435H

I don't regard myself as a good cook, but I have a belief that cooking is one of the therapy to shut my mind from things that didn't turn out  the way that I have expected. Some things.

In Ramadhan this year,I decided to go back and forth to Mak's for breaking fast. So most of the days I arrived home quite close to iftar hour, so all I have to do was to get things ready on the table, plate, drinks,mugs and all.

When weekend arrived, I decided to cook something I like,for all my family member were around for the iftar. They were sweet sour siakap and chicken paprik!

There were 15 of us under one roof this evening, so I cooked sweet sour gravy for 3 fishes! I mean, year in year out, this was the most noble efforts of cooking that I have done so far. heheh.. Ok, that's totally an exaggeration.Forget it.

When I get older these days *cough*, veges are one of primary dishes for my menu, apart from ulam and stuff. So I cooked chicken paprik, that was the early intention, but I only remembered to chop the chicken when all of veges and ingredients were mixed on the kitchen. Lousy cook. Hmmph..

Out of the blue, I feel like eating karipap sambal ikan, and I told Mak about it.No,no, the craving was DIY curry puff, not ones from  bazzar or whatsoever. At the end of the day, it was me who were doing the dough and whatnot. Ok this was the first attempt, and it looked fine, no? Thanks a million for Mak's supervision and great guide.:))

Cooking project on Eid Adha break

I`'ve be meaning to cook heavy meals for so long, other than the meals that Mak have served us. Recent Eid Adha happened to be a long stretch of holidays and I must say the longest days in a row of the  year that I was at my Mak's home. And it was perfect for experimenting the recipe that randomly found in the internet. So I decided to make Laksa Johor. I won't go into the details of the recipe, for it was just another version of Terengganu Laksa with 'Kuah Masak'. If it is not exactly the same, but still, it is quite close.

Considering it was my first attempt, I guess the finishing was not  that bad. My siblings will be automatically picky eater when it comes to trying food that I made. It left me with only loyal food tester, with good motivation, my Mak and my reliable food finisher, chubby Zulaika.


Kih kih kih.

The next day, my eagerness still remained good. I planned to try roti jala, or some called it as 'pukat buruk'. Whatever they named it, Mak has never served this to us before.  But I have tasted the delicious version of roti jala, and I was hooked to this meal since.So why not give it a try!


I googled and  found a demo of doing roti jala and I was intrigued to start it there and then. It was fun initially, but, I never expected the work is not as easy as eating it. Let alone enjoying doing the 'jala' thing.  But my mak, as expert cook as she has always been, showed my the right way to so that the roti jala can be rolled as close to perfect. Mind you, the curry was yet to be cooked. Ah -haa...

After a while, I fed up. Perhaps that was not good time to continue with curry.( Alasan.) In the contrary my little two sisters, Fatihah and Zulaikha were so eager to do it. I left them to finish  my initial enthusiasm, and apparently they enjoyed it so much that Zulaikha repetitively asking me for next attempt of roti jala almost every time I went home. And I believe she will ask again when I go home end of this week, and sure enough, she will not stop asking until I can find my time to suit her request.That girl...

The long break has ended. We received bunch of Qurban beef ,  so I requested  Mak to make rendang so that I can bring to the office. And definitely fresh beef rendang tasted nyums!

Lontong, anyone?

Another cooking attempt in the kitchen with Mak was to serve pressed rice with  vegetable gravy , or we call it as lontong.

For the past decades, Mak has been serving the pressed rice with peanut sauce, or kuah kacang. So, I suggested to Mak to try another way of enjoying the pressed rice with lontong gravy.

Here are the items used for the lontong gravy..

1. cocunut milk 
2 . Garlic and shallots
3. Spices i.e anise, cumin

4.Galangal
5. Long beans
6. Cabbage
7. Tofu (to be fried beforehand)
8.Tempe
9.Soohun
10.Turmeric, to add  natural yellow to the gravy
11.Carrot
12. Lemon grass,
12.Salt


 This is the how.

1.Blend the shallots, garlics and galangal together into a paste. Fry the anise and cumin and followed with the  paste. Put the lemon grass to get the aroma comes out.
2. Add the coconut milk and insert some water, followed with the tumeric, let them boil.
3.Add the vegetable i.e cabbage, long beans, carrots until they are softer.
4.Add the tempe, fried tofu, and soohun and lastly, some salt.
5.Now the lontong is ready to be served!

And voila!~Some boiled eggs are also nice to have, with sambal tumis, and definitely with all-time family favourite, peanut sauce! Slrrpp~!

Mee Soto for Beginner

It was one of my fasting days when I suddenly craving for mee soto. Normally I had the dish only in certain occasions at office. Surely I can't wait that long to enjoy another delicious bowl of mee soto. Driven by the hunger, I decided to make my homemade mee soto.

Nevertheless, it was not complete without inventing some catastrophic incident by an amateur cook like me. I was carried away in the conversation with my Mak while the other hand was frying the sliced onions. And it was Mak who noticed that my kuali was hangit! Haiyoo!~

                                                                  Complete disaster!


The ingredients are as follows:


-1 chicken, boiled in water and and shred it when it is cool
-noodles, boiled until they are fully cooked
-100g bean sprouts, boiled and tossed them from the water
-spices, as in ketumbar,jintan putih, bunga lawang and kulit kayu manis
-red onions, garlic(to blend)
-salt

Methods :

- put the chicken into pot with water and boil until it is cooked
-toss the chicken and use the remaining boiled water for preparing the soup stock
-fry all the spices with blended items until the smell of the spice comes out, and pour the soup stock

Almost two hours racing in the kitchen, and tada..this is it!~