Cream of the crop

We can do it! We really can! (This exultation is not about 100 storey buildings in Malaysia.)

Rather, it is the fact that we have gotten one small thing right and delivered something good to the masses. And that is good ice cream at a fair price.

Laydeez and genteelmen, I hereby confer on iscream, the Greediguts We Can Do It medal.
Iscream is a new ice cream kiosk at Tropicana City Mall on the Ground floor at the mouth of the escalator. Lot G-11 to be specific. Its brands itself ‘the most affordable premium ice cream at RM3.50 a scoop’. While not very punchy or clever, I am thrilled to say it delivers! Yes it does!

While it lacks breadth of choice (the two freezer compartments mirror the selections, so ice creamers only have about a dozen flavours to choose from), it holds to another important marketing element: do what you do well.

There was an opening promotion where a purchase of either a two or three scoop entitles the buyer to a free single scoop of their choice. I went for the Delightfruit (good try at punny), Goma Indulgence and Strawberry Bites. I got a free scoop of their coffee based ice cream (I don’t like coffee so I forgot the name!).

Delightfruit is iscream’s version of rum and raisin, I think. And it’s lovely. A rich vanilla bean flavour infused with rum essence and plump golden raisins. The raisins get a bit annoying after a while, but that’s to prove there are quite a few of them.

Sesame ice cream has never been a strong point for Kit. It’s his least favourite thing on a Japanese menu. I like it, and I like iscream’s version as well. Traditionally what makes black sesame or goma ice cream so expensive is the quality of the sesame seeds use. The old fashioned, traditionalist method is to dry roast black sesame until the oils within the tiny seeds escape the hull, making them shine with a silky patina. The moisture generated is used to help crush the seeds into a paste which is then added to ice cream for an authentic goma dessert.

I don’t think iscream uses this traditionalist method as it is very labour intensive and uses no preservatives (oil derived like this goes rancid very quickly), but it is nonetheless a great treat, though I must say it is a tad bit sweet.

The Strawberry Bites with its fruit bits is a close runner to a leading premium brand, though I am sure my ice cream connoisseur friend Yazrul would beg to differ. It’s a tangy confection, just tart enough to be real strawberries, and not garishly pink.

All in all it’s a great effort at better ice cream for the Malaysian public. I’d like more flavours, but I do understand the need to keep inventory lean for a bit. I hope they’re a local company and I hope they do well, cause everyone needs a bit of a scream now and then.

Peace porridge

Porridge is the domain of the sickbed and palliative care as far as my friend Eileen is concerned. She is pretty easy going about food, but cannot be persuaded to eat porridge if she is well. In fact, even when ill and retching her guts out, she turns to porridge only after everything else has been upchucked a few times.

My other pal, Sharon Lee, on the other hand loves the stuff. She and I had porridge feasts with kimchi while working in Brunei. We both share the same liking for egg beaten into thick congee, with lots of bits in it.

Jessie, my sister in law, being Teochew (like half of me) is fond of traditional Teochew porridge, which is very watery rice gruel which is eaten with a smorgasbord of savory dishes ranging from fried dace with black beans, pickled lettuce, pig intestines in a soy sauce and fried egg with diced pickled radish. Her husband can’t stand this part of her culinary tradition, so she and I plan Teochew porridge meals when he’s away on business. Some women spa and pedicure. We slurp and burp.

From my Hakka mum-in-law, however, comes my new tradition of porridge. She’s famous in her church circles for her congee. She uses shredded chicken, groundnuts, century eggs and salted eggs to make hers. I have adopted a similar style. I like lots and lots of stuff in my porridge. I feel it makes it a complete all-in-all meal. While my offering looks like stodge in a bowl, it really is a kind of Chinese comfort food.

Today, because a friend of the family was taken ill, I got Kit to dice up some pork and I put in a can of braised peanuts, lotus seed, sesame oil and diced pickled radish (chai por) with rice in the crock pot which my dad used to make my meals in when I was a kid. He gave that to me when I became a home owner and I feel that the decades of good food vibes have infused this orange pot with some magical power.

I served up the porridge at dinner with my folks and both were appreciative. I think dad also got a warm glow at seeing the battered old crock pot in pride of place in my designer kitchen. Whatever it was, it was good stuff. Slow cooking ensures everything is consistently cooked and the flavours develop amazingly under slow, constant heat.

Butcher Heng’s pork was soft, but with a good texture; the salt from the radish negated the use of any more sodium, the lotus seeds provided interesting mouthfeel and the groundnuts gave the porridge depth. We finished most of the pot, but there’s a container full for the midnight munchies still.

Porridge, to me, is warm comfort. It’s so flexible and can be varied to suit different tastes and occasions and budgets. Hmmm, I suddenly am hankering for the oyster porridge served at the corner eating shop…

Milk it for all it’s worth

I didn’t drink Milo growing up. We had Ovaltine and Horlicks and a great decaffeinated coffee drink called Postum (which always reminded me of the scene in Bambi where a family of possums hang upside down by their tails and greet Bambi with, “Good morning young prince!”).

I’ve never been into any drink other than water. Even as kid, when it was almost expected for a kid to guzzle soda and pop, I never developed a taste for the stuff. Until today, water is my beverage of choice. I used to drink any kind of water, but having had water from Amway’s e-Spring filter in the time I married and move into Kit’s parents’ house, I just had to have one in my own home.

I digress, however. (That was not a plug for Amway, by the way).

Just recently I have developed a taste for chocolate cereal. It began when my dear friend Ying May was away in Singapore. This gal loves Koko Krunch. She could it eat from breakfast, lunch and dinner. When I missed her too much, I bought a box of Koko Krunch, to show solidarity.

The surprising thing was that I liked it! And so, I progressed to the Milo cereal. I bought the jumbo pack as it was for sale. The first time I had it with my usual low fat milk, I thought it was so-so. Today, because I was out of low-fat, I had it with full cream milk. And wow! Whoever would have thought it would make such a difference?

I could not believe it was the same cereal. It took on this deep, velvety texture, with a rich aftertaste which stunned me. What a heavenly match! And what a dastardly discovery.
I’ve tried to delude myself that there was absolutely no difference between the taste of full cream and low fat milk. To further subjugate myself to this fantasy, I drank only low fat. Even dunked my Oreos in them.

Will today be a turning point in my milk purchasing decision making? Only time and Nestle will tell.

The p(r)awns of fate

It’s only been in this year that I have come to grips with prawns. Literally. I love prawns as an ingredient, and there are some prawn dishes which remind me so much of the love that can be conveyed via food. In the Eighties, my dad would make us kids prawn cocktail, presented the way they used to do it in the iconic Coliseum restaurant - complete with shelled prawns hooked over the rim of a stemmed glass, shredded lettuce at the bottom and a wedge of lemon.

However, it was only after Kit and I wrote and shot the Genting 45^th anniversary recipe book that I became actually interested in working with prawns. I have always thought of them as a little macabre. All those long feelers and sharp ridges are just an accident waiting to happen to hands which deal with keyboards and pens.

Still, we were served some fantastic prawn noodles by a chef from Awana Genting Highlands, who turned in his recipe for the book. Kit is a huge prawn noodles fan and itched to try the recipe out. But it turned out to be the squeamish wifey who collected shells, shelled more prawns and actually turned out the dish.

My folks were the guinea pigs and they deemed it quite a success. It was a bit of a backhanded compliment, as dad came to the dinner bearing a lot of prawn noodle stock which he made from a pre-prepared mix. I have to say mine was better! But I would, wouldn’t I?

Still, it was enough of a coup for me to do it again, and this time I had Yazrul, Sharons Tan and Lee, Vin and Jessie to bear witness to my labour of love. They all thought it rocked, so I feel quite vindicated for those hours of stock boiling and the constant taste, taste, tasting.

Thanks chef Kenny Wong, for starting me down the path to 'har'-dom.

I’m sharing chef Kenny Wong’s recipe here. I add a lot of other stuff to make it taste the way I think it should, but as a base, this is a great start!

Classic Prawn Noodles

Ingredients

50 g        Sugar

30 g        Salt

60 g        Prawn paste

150 g      Oil

100 g      Fried onions

60 g        Prawn stock powder

50 g        Chilli powder

35 g        Garlic

20 g        Tamarind

200 g      Prawn shell (grilled till crispy)

5 lit         Water

Method 

1. Heat oil in a pot and sauté all ingredients for about 10 minutes.

2.       2. Add water and simmer for 1 hour.

3.       Blanch noodles just before serving. Place in serving bowl and cover with soup. Add garnishing of choice (usually fish cake, whole prawns and steamed vegetables, topped with deep fried shallots).

A thing of beauty should also taste good!

You can have your cake and eat it too

I told you I was not overly fond of sweating it out in the kitchen on food which needs fiddly preparation. By fiddly I mean, too much maison plas in the form of dicing and shredding – basically anything which shows how slipshod I am in the kitchen and how useless with a knife. 

However, because I did not feel inclined to hunch over some writing assignments, or worse, edit someone else’s work, I thought I’d assuage my guilt about not working by doing something. So I whipped up a cake. From scratch. With no help from my dear friend Betty Crocker or the Pillsbury Dough Boy. 

Kit sourced the recipe and was quite surprised I did not want help mixing it up. I figured, in for a penny, in for a pound. Plus, I’ve a packed week and there’s no gym time available.

Butter cakes are so popular. They’re so basic but it’s hard to get the right consistency. One aims for fluffiness with bite. Sort of like a well-groomed Poodle with a big sense of territoriality. Butter cakes need to have some sort of density so that the flavour of butter has something to cling to. But it needs to be airy as well, to make it more-ish.  My beloved friend, the late Chan Luck Seh of Expomal International used to love my mum’s butter cakes. He was a butter cake fiend and found fault with any other kind of cake. 

I guess not having chocolate chips or cocoa in the house, and the fact that I am feeling his loss a little more keenly today, I made this the first kind of cake I’ve personally baked in this house. 

Not much to look at, but Kit did not have much time to spend on this.

However, as befitting a woman who prefers Baskin Robbins to Haagen Dazs because of all the fun bits in most of BR’s 31 flavours, I had to include cherries in the cake. Well chelory, to be exact.  If you Google the word, you’ll find a lot of the searches have it in relation to diapers! The cake-making version is actually diced papaya, sugared and coloured red or green with food dye. 

I prefer chelory because it is not as dense as glazed cherries. I’ve also found there to be a distinct camp for and against glazed cherries, with the nays outweighing the yeas sharply in my friend circle.  Additionally (and perhaps this is the more truthful reason) I hate dicing up those sticky things, and I am way too proud to present a cake with soggy whole cherries sunk in the bottom and half burnt. 

As a first-time effort, I guess it’ll do. I do wish Mr Chan was around to critique it.

To Korea with love

I like Korean food. My first taste of it was at a Korean barbecue restaurant in Taman Megah called Manna-2. The restaurant featured brass grill pans on gas stoves on which diners cooked their meats and vegetables on. Each pan had a rim which was filled with oil and water and we’d dabble our raw food in them before putting them on the grill. The groove also caught the juices of the grilling meat as it cooked, and made great demi glace at the end of the meal. 

When that joint closed, there was an eat-all-you-can Korean barbecue buffet in Ampang Park Shopping Centre. After that there was a dearth of places like that. Korean was out of vogue. Or else the greedy, grabbing Malaysian consumers were deemed to be bad for business since they had the nasty habit of piling way too much on their plates and wasting food. 

Happily, the last few years have seen a resurgence in the popularity of Korean barbecue. Most of them seem to be stand-alone places, owned more than not by hardworking, enterprising Korean folk. The last eat-all-you-can Korean barbecue place I visited was an outlet in IOI Mall which was pretty good, and Malaysia owned, as far as I can tell. 

Real Korean barbecue is not cheap. I eat at one in SS2 and come away at least RM120 poorer for two people. Same for the one in Tropicana City Mall. Of course, one can always eat Korean food for much cheaper at the very same restaurants, where a bowl of bibimbap (rice topped with seasoned vegetables) is only RM12. 

Today at Cinnamon Coffee House at One World Hotel I did not have to fill up on rice. Crystal Koh, Assistant Public Relations Manager of the hotel invited me to sample the Korean food promotion called Seoul Good which runs until October 23 2010. 

I’ve known Crystal since the hotel first opened. She was a young executive at the time, but I had the feeling she’d be an asset to the Malaysian hospitality industry and time has proven me right. She’s blossomed into a very capable young professional and I like the way she still enjoys her food. It’s really embarrassing to be going for seconds, thirds and ninths when your host has stopped after salad, so I was mucho glad when she gamely walked the buffet line with me. Again and again.

Cinnamon has won a Tourism Malaysia award for best all-day dining. Even without it, (and I’ll be the first person to say that many awards aren’t worth the paper they are printed on), I feel it has one of the best spreads in both the capital and Selangor. 

The hotel dedicated a whole counter to the Korean offerings and I must say, working with the limitations of needing to be necessarily pork-free, what was served up was authentic. This was due to the two guest chefs from Seoul Palace Hotel, Korea, who were flown in to ensure the food was as authentic as it could be. 

The beauty of Korean food lies in its simplicity. The Koreans of the southern peninsula and Manchuria were nomads before they were agrarians, and so when they finally set down roots and founded homesteads and farms, they brought with them the philosophy of eating food which rooted easily, and sprouted quickly – things they could eat before they left a particular hunting ground or campsite.

Because of this need to eat what was grown, the tradition of banchan developed. Banchan is a variety of side dishes, most of them vegetables, which is served at most meals. I believe the small portions of banchan has its origins in the fact that sometimes crops were sparse and the hunter-gatherers had to make do with what was available. Today, banchan is constantly replenished when dining in a Korean restaurant and most popularly comprises of spinach, bean sprouts, diced tofu, kimchi, sliced potatoes and whatever is in season.

Oyster mushroom salad - simple and refreshing.

Kimchi -the essential Korean condiment.

Of these little side dishes, there were two different types of kimchi – the common white cabbage with fermented red chili paste (gochujang) and the less pungent variety, the mul kimchi which is white cabbage marinated in soy sauce, salt, garlic and ginger, with no chilli. There was also a mushroom salad which utilized oyster mushrooms marinated in sesame oil with julienned red, green and yellow capsicums. Most side dishes are very neutral in flavour, as main Korean dishes are very flavourful. 

The exception to the rule are dishes like sweet walnuts which have a brittle sugar caramel coating and are sprinkled with sesame seeds. Another is the robust garlic with red beans with honey which is simplicity perfected, using perfectly roasted garlic coupled with just cooked Adzuki beans and honey. 

Chefs Jang Yong-jun and Jeon Dai-hwi from Seoul Palace, Korea.

Glass noodle salad - yummy, but a tad bit heavy on the kicap manis!

Another aromatic dish was the glass noodles with wood ear fungus and capsicum shreds which had a lovely smoky taste. It’s very easy to pig out on these sides, to the extent of forgetting the real stars of the show. 

The beef short ribs were worth the buffet price!

Beef and pork are standouts on any Korean menu and this was demonstrated to great effect with the short ribs. Usually pork is used for this dish, but beef short ribs were substituted and they were excellent. Moist, tender and perfectly seasoned, it was a perfect bite each time.

The bulgogi rocked! Thank you, God, for cows!

The famed bulgogi is a notoriously difficult dish to manage in large quantities. It is always seared and cooked in small portions with the finest fillets and to find an entire chafing dish full of it was a bit startling. There was some dryness but truly I have to say that the dish was very well represented and did the chefs credit. 

Poultry and fish are not on the hit list of most Korean restaurants or chefs, but there was a chicken dish served, which was stir fried in fermented bean paste (passable but nothing to write home about) and a mackerel dish whose time sitting in the chafing dish did it no good at all, rendering it fishy and hard. 

Crystal; Assistant Director of Communications Florence Leong; Kit and I had a good giggle over the desserts. As Kit put it, “Korean dishes are sweeter than their desserts.” And in this case it was true. I have a suspicion that the guest chefs were not pastry chefs so to speak and as such their prowess was more to the entrees. Still, it was great fun to sample the range of pretty looking desserts, even if only one found favour with me.

Korean desserts are nearly always made from rice – either pounded rice, pounded glutinous rice or rice flour. Ming beans, red beans, Adzuki (kidney) beans, pumpkin, sesame seeds and honey are the main additions to the sweetmeats (I use that term very liberally). There was a cake (again the term is loosely used) which had a crumbly texture akin to semolina and which tastes like the Chinese fatt koey which is a rice flour sponge cake coloured pink and used in prayer ceremonies. This was the only similarity I could find in the seven desserts presented. All were uniformly not to our tastes, but looked very pretty. The most palatable was a fried honey dipped cake which I think may have been yakgwa which is a combination of honey, sesame oil and wheat flour.

Even with the desserts taken in account, I have to say I enjoyed the meal at Cinnamon. Both Florence and Crystal are good lunch companions, and I had another Korean boost when I saw golfer Se Ri Pak as I was leaving the hotel. One World Hotel is hosting the players who are competing in the CIMB Asia Pacific Classic. I did not ask for an autograph. I like Korean chefs more than Korean golfers. Or any golfer. I prefer my birdies spitted and barbecued, thanks!