Friday, October 17, 2008

Gold Fish Living in Deep Fryer (Cruel!)

I really take my hat off the Japanese, to think they can come up with this idea. If you ever fry food, you would know that crumbs might break off and would sink to the bottom of the pan. When not removed, they would cloud and pollute the oil. That's why restaurants like MacDonald etc has to change their frying oil very often, almost at a daily basis.

So, the Japanese think of a solution. Yosh~! Wakaramasu~ If the crumbs are removed automatically, then the oil will stay fresher for long period of time and less often to change it. This is what they thought of:


For the benefit of those who are unable to view the video, Japanese reared goldfish under the deep fryer. How is this possible you asked? Well, water has a higher density than oil, thus oil will natually float above the water. The heater installed near the top will heat up the oil to at least 160 degrees celcius for frying.

If, that is if, the goldfish somewhat forget and swam upwards, they will be fried alive... As a goldfish owner, I condemn this act as it violates the goldfish living rights and it is a very cruel way of treating living things!


I will never eat at restaurants that uses this kind of fryer!

Thursday, October 16, 2008

The Making of Lychee Martini Jelly (Konnyaku)

The weather was exceptionally hot these few days. I have been craving for some ice-cold konnyaku jelly to freshen up, thus decided to make some. There is no recipe pe say for making Konnyaku or jelly, basically it needed water, jelly powder, sweetener and flavour. I decided to play around with the basic ingredients to create an adult version.

Needless to say, I love lychee, thus it would be the main flavour for my alcoholic jelly aptly named Lychee Martini Konnyaku.

You will need:

1 Packet of Konnyaku Powder - Original (unflavoured)
Sweetener - Canned Lychee Syrup instead of sugar
Vodka or any clear alcohol spirit (Depending on how strong you want to taste the alcohol)
For some fizz, soda water

Measurement of the rest of the ingredients depended greatly on your Konnyaku powder.

Explaination (needed a bit of calculation) - Let's say your brand of konnyaku powder required 1000ml of water, x grams of sugar and little amount of artificial flavouring. Instead of using them, I used canned lychee syrup to replace part of the water, sweetener and artificial flavouring. I have to note that whatever amount of liquid that I used, it should not exceed the stated amount of water.

Sweetener - Instead of sugar, I used the canned lychee syrup which is about 330 ml per can. I suggest you should use about 1 and half can of syrup for one packet of powder - 450 ml. There should be no need to add further sugar unless you prefered it to be sweeter.

I also calculated in advance that I will add one can of soda water for some fizz and it is about 330 ml. This should be added lastly to retain the fizz bubble.

The total liquid content will thus add up to 780ml. The difference will be topped with plain water to make it the total of 1000 ml.

I scooped some of the syrup and water mixture up to mix in the Konnyaku Powder. It should mix with cold solution then poured back to the rest of the solution for a more thorough mix.

Warmed the mixture up in a pot to get it boiling. Constantly stiring it to prevent burning.

When the mixture thickens and boiled, take it off heat. Added in the alcohol. This is so that the alcohol would not evaporate off in the process of boiling. The amount of alcohol to add is up to your preference, as strong as you like it to be. I am still a newbie, thus only added 4 capful and it is still relatively mild. Stir thoroughly. You can also add in colouring at this stage. If the mixture appeared to be hardening, warmed it slightly.


Quickly add in the Soda water lastly to retain the fizz.


In your desired container, add in lychee meat for decoration purposes, but also for a stronger lychee taste.

Scoped in the jelly mixture using a laddle. Try not to move it after that and wait for it to set.
You can also put them in a fanciful ice-cude moulds for individual servings (or rather shots).


One packet of jelly powder can made about this much of jelly. I used different containers and decorated differently as you can see.

Konnyaku harden quite fast. It took only like 10 to 15 mins. I unmounded two of them on a plate. Somewhat, it remained me of a human part anatomy. You know how people would give cocktail drinks with naughty names? I named these jellies "D-Cups". Haha.


Another pattern. I like how the fruits appeared to be floating around in the jelly.

Last but not least "D-cups" with the smaller shots of lychee martini jellies.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Who says Bishan don't have good chicken rice?

I walked passed one of the Bishan S-11 coffee shop and the slogan on a poster caught my eye, "Who says Bishan don't have good chicken rice?" highlighted in big, bold red writting. The second line says "Here is one, Bugis - Ming Kee Chicken Rice!" I peaked inside the coffee shop, trying to locate the stall and indeed there was a queue forming at the Chicken Rice stall. Of course, I cannot just pass-by without trying, so off I joined the queue.


Somehow, I find neon light signboard familiar, think I saw this stall at some other places before. Then I somewhat recall that it was at the old Long House Hawker centre prior this place. As if the queue did not exsist, more people joined me and none of them was put off by the possible long wait.

Strangely, the stall do not hang their chickens like all other stalls, but instead they were staked up high in a tray. Though looked ordinary, the pieces of the chicken still looked plump and juicy enough. Their pale yellow coloured chicken skin gittered under the lights looked inviting.

I ordered a large packet for sharing. The wait was worth it. The essential chicken rice, though not as firm as I like it to be, was very fragnant with a nice balance of chicken and ginger aroma. The un-interesting looking chicken pieces , mostly breast meat, were surprisingly juicy and tender. I usually do not eat the skin, but the boiled chicken tasted especially rich in the skin.

Do try out their chicken rice if you happened to be in Bishan area. Btw, that coffee shop has a lot of other heavy weight hawker stalls, such as You Kee Braised Duck Rice and Gao Ji Yong Dou Fu. I must also say that their Zi Char stall looked promising too.

Friday, October 10, 2008

No Kissing in Taxi or Else...



Hey see this, we were in a taxi at Kuala Lumpur and saw the above sign. My friend who is versed in Malayu translated that it meant " No Kissing in the Taxi".

I guess it was due to the fact that Malaysia is an Islamic country and people are somewhat restricted to display affection publicly. Not sure if this is the exact reason... but this is the first time I heard of this.

How come they only restricted to taxis only? What about other places, like public area?

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Absolute Vodka Collection


Capped in beautifully-crafted bottle, inflused with fanciful flavour, mind you some of them are even limited edition. Don't be fool though, they looked innocently pure but are dangerously fiery. These swedish vodka are like grown-up boys' version of trading cards. These are my brother's Absolute Vodka collection. He don't intend to drink them, but wanted to keep them as collection.

As you can see in the picture, there are :
  • Chinese Mandarin
  • Raspberry
  • Pear
  • Ruby Red
  • Original
  • Mango (new)
  • Vodka 100 (which contains 50% of alcohol content compared to the normal 40% ones)
  • Vokda limited Silver Shaker edition bottle

Hmmm... Looking through the flavour, I wondered why there is no lychee-flavoured Absolute Vodka. Can the company consider producing it? It will be so cool... I know I will be the one buying it for his collection.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Charcoal Bread !

I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. Look what I discovered at Johor Bahru weeks ago... Black and soft and smell nice too.

It's charcoal bread! PS: It is not burnt, but normal bread added with bamboo charcoal powder.

I noticed there is this bamboo charcoal craze in Malaysia years ago and now they are putting it into bread. Apparently charcoal, especially the bamboo charcoal, is good for you. They claimed there is a lot of health benefits and healing propertises. From what I know, doctor would prescribe charcoal tablets for you if you had food poisoning as charcoal tablets can neturalised the toxin in your body. There is also ornament charcoal in various design for sale. They claimed that it could soak in harmful UV rays emited by the computer screen and purify surrounding air and water.

Anyway, I found this bread selling at Lavendar, one of the famous bakery franchise in Malaysia, akin to BreadTalk in Singapore. There are 3 thick slices in each packet and cost RM$3.20. After conversion, it cost like 40 cents sing per piece.

I lightly toast it (not that I can tell if I have burned it... ha ha) and stuffed with this leftover sweet potatoes mash that I happened to have. I supposed it should taste nice with Kaya or any fruit jams.

It tasted normal I guess, if I hasn't got this psychological mentality going on. You cannot taste the charcoal and it is not grainy. In fact, I think it got a bit of miky taste to it. Anyway, while writing, I was thinking that it would looked very pretty if we smeared some mashed shrimp meat on it and fry it. Imagine this pinkish and light coral coloured spread on crispy black bread. Decorated with a hint of coriander's green, it would be perfect!

*Snap fingers...

Ok, back to reality, you can read about the wonderful healing propertise of charcoal if you are curious. Well, the next time you ever go JB, get one and try it. Lavendar can be found in City Square. :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboo_charcoal

http://www.pyroenergen.com/articles/bamboo-charcoal-medicinal-benefits.htm

http://www.greenyarnstore.com/benefits.htm

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Big Sucker Fish Left Us...

Don't why, anything related to us is BIG. The same goes for our goldfishes and the sucker fish. I guess the sucker fish has reached the end of its' time and left us on Monday night. We had it for years and it grown from like 2 cm in length till about 16 cm in length. All we ever feed it was normal fish feeds.

I remember it was pretty aggressive when it first came and would chase around my small small goldfish as they were young. I threatened by telling it that if I find him trying to eat any of the goldfish, I would steam it. Somewhat, it got the message and got tamer after that. Like my goldfishes who would splash around trying to alert me to feed them, the sucker fish would swim to the surface when I got near for feeding time... It has been a very diligent fish keeping the tank clean.

I promised all my fishes that I would bury them when their time is up, thus in the middle of the night, armed with a shove, I frantically dug a hole at a grass patch trying to give it a final resting place. Then, the stray cat which I would sometimes feed, spotted me. Yes, the cat recognised me. I was trying to avoid it as the last thing you want is to see a cat with a dead fish in your hand.

Luckily, I bought with cat food with me, thus lured it far away from the hole I was digging.

May the soul rest in peace and had a better next life if there is really one.

Friday, October 3, 2008

KL Trip - Shopping at Kuala Lumpur

Had struck with this entry for weeks. Not that there is nothing to write about, but there are just too many things to write that I don't know where to start with. In my opinon, KL had too many outstanding shopping centres and on top of the Great Malaysian Sales, the bargain is just too hard to resist.

Day One

As I have said, there is nothing much to buy at Pertaling St, mostly sightseeing and local food tasting. We spend about 1 and half hour there before dropping off at Jalan Bukit Bintang which is equvalent to "Orchard Rd" of KL where streets are linedwith endless shopping centres.

The first stop we went to is Berjaya Times Square. One of the supersized shopping centres in KL. We did not manage to buy much from there, but I would strongly suggest to stop by. There are quite a number of stores located at the first few floors - Metrojaya, a FOS at the basement, Mango, G2000, Dickies Jeans etc. For those who has never went there before, there is even an amusement park with indoor rollar coaster located few floors up.

However, the shopping centre is no longer as glamour when it first opened. I had read that it had even attracted an UK shopping centre chain to set up store there when it had first opened, but it have since closed down. Most of the stores located upper floors are either vacant or filled with weird shops like handphone stores you would see in the neighbourhood centres. I find that a pity.

Then we walked over to the main shopping district at Sungei Wang area which has Sungei Wang Plaza, BB centre etc. It has only been one year since I last went, but there are a lot of changes. Always crowded, the street just attracted more and more people with the opening of a new shopping centre - Pavilion at the end of the street. What's more interesting was that the old shopping centres have also underwent so facelift to attract new customers. For example, the very small FOS store at Sungei Wang plaza had moved to the basement and revamped. It became bigger, almost comparable with the one at Mid-Valley! I bought most of my tops there.


Outside Pavilion - the newest shopping centre in KL city area. It was one of capital land investment and there is a Tangs outlet in it. Very posh settings. Not sure how different the prices are, but as the exchange rates is in our favour, things might be slightly cheaper compared to Singapore.

As it was Malaysia Sales, all the shopping outlets offered great discounts. I find the difference between Singapore sales and Malaysia one was that Malaysia offered bigger discount to newer items, whereas Singapore's sale items tend to be from older collection.

Parkson is a Malaysian household shopping centre name. Their store at Pavilion was giantic! I spotted two nice looking Liz Claiborne handbag at 40 % discount, thus bought one for my mum and one for myself. :) My friends were shocked when saw the shopping bags. They have earlier scolded me for buying too much and that how am I going to bring them back home.

My friend got a better deal. United Colours of Benetton had 70% off some of their collection! She bought 7 tops for like $60 sing dollars! Also, there was 40% discount at Marc Jacobs store. She was wondering whether to buy their jeans or not. It cost $200 plus sing dollars after discount almost comparable to Levis, but its more branded than it. If only, I could carry more, I would have get some tops for my brothers!

They got a lot of stores, some of which not available in Singapore...

I like the layout of the stores. It gave the impression that they are spacious and the whole place is brightly lited.

Sad... KL Plaza F.O.S is moving out.

Streets at Jalan Bintang was lited with lightings. It is not Christmas, but some middle-east festival. We almost could not get a hotel room as it was Middle-East Summer Holiday. Speaking of which, KL attracted a lot of Middle-East tourists and it is common to see a lot of women with vail walking in the streets.

There are a lot of newly opened bars at KL. Planet Hollywood is one of the oldest pub on the street.

Day Two

Mid-Valley Shopping Centre
is one of the must go shopping centres in KL. It is supposedly one of the biggest shopping mall in South-East Asia and needless to say the variety of shops there are endless.

I particularly love their F.O.S as it was one of the biggest in Malaysia. Walked past Bobbi Brown counter, I realised that some of their products cost cheaper than Singapore due to the conversion rates! They even carried items not available in Singapore e.g. 2 way foundation powder.

I was also very touched by Bobbi Brown KL's service quality. While recommending their products, the make-up artist also gave me a simple make-up, something which I was very grateful of. I only had my eye brow and concealer on then and was very concious about it. Most importantly, she taught me a few tips that I realised I had put on make-up wrongly. (Will share some with you all next time.)

I was particular impressed when the lady corrected me when I told her that I applied concealer on my top eye lid because of dark circle. She said " Bobbi never teach people to do that~. The concealer is too heavy and will make your eyes looked droopy. You should correct it with eye shadow. " Speaking which, she introduced me to pearly pink shade which really lighted my eye lid's dark circle and gave a more natural effect than apply concealer on. Someone in Bobby Brown should give her a raise, please! I was so impressed by her professionalism and service. Btw, her name was June Tea.

Then next to the mega-mall, there was another newly-opened mega-mall named "The Gardens". Different from Mid-Valley, this shopping mall is much more "atas"and is aiming towards the very high-end direction. The decoration is magnificant and there are a lot of branded names stores. One of the interesting thing is that they charge $5 dollars RM per entry into their washrooms.


The Gardens and Mid-Valley Mall are linked and are within walking distance.

As it happens to be sales period, look at their sales decoration. As we have been walking non-stop for like 4 hours, we stopped for tea at one of the cafe.

Eat. Drink. Break. and then shop again~! Not a minute should be wasted in KL...

I ordered chrysthemum tea to quench thirst.

Then after much needed break, we went to KLCC aka Petronas Twin Tower - One of the tallest building in the world. As my friends had not been there before, thus we stopped there. There is nothing much to buy there, I find. I will probably skip the area the next time round. Btw, did I mention that I saw some people protest inside the building? Not sure what they are protesting about as I cannot see their banner. A whole row of people held poster and stick it to the window at the foodcourt. The demostration was not chaotic and was quite peaceful. They disassembled after a group of security guards came.

In comparison, see how "atas" The Garden is. KLCC only charge RM 2 for their premier toilet.

Interesting architecture in the building. I remembered National Geographic reported that the concept of KLCC was based on Islamic art.

Instead of printed directory, they have intereactive building directory. Perhaps some of our shopping mall should have install this.

The creme la creme of branded names, Louis Vuitton. Don't know why, their decor just looked so chic~.

Took picture of the store for design inspiration...

KLCC at night. So beautiful.

The famed twin tower... Until next time... I guess.