Krispy Kreme Thursdays

The things we do for our kids! Erin came home from kindergarten and told me that the younger class had doughnuts for break while her class got porridge. She was quite let down about that, so I promised her a Krispy Kreme doughnut after she had her nap.

I chose a box of 6 at the Subang Parade outlet - two glazed originals, peanut butter, the chocolate iced one with sprinkles Erin asked for, an Oreo cheesecake and cheesecake. The Christmas variants were a thing of the past, which was sad, because the gingerbread ones were great!

I had a very nice surprise when my box cost me RM8.60! That's cause it was Thursday and Citibank credit card holders got a free doughnut with every one purchased! The catch is that you can't buy more than three at a time! That was fine with me, since I know full well the calorie bombs they are! As it was, I ended up finishing Erin's doughnut. Like me, she's attracted to the look of food, before the taste. Unlike me, if she does not want to, she is not going to make herself finish her portion. A lesson I would do very well to take to heart!

Almost Paradise

How do you know if a person is a true blue foodie? Chances are, if they read Mao's Last Dancer and their imagination strays not to grand jetes or great ballet, and rest instead on traditional Chinese food, they're about as food-mad as one can get.

Which is why, despite the tale of wrenching poverty, of indigestible dried yams and China-America love connection, the thing that struck a chord most in me reading this gift from my friend May Ying, was the frugal peasant fare which Li Chunxin described his loving mother scrimping for a year to present to the poverty stricken family.

It was, therefore, a bit of a joke to be ordering those very dishes in a restaurant that the Li family would have thought ever so opulent and capitalist. Ever since dining there with my Japanese family, the Katos and my heart sister, Jade, I have harboured a great love for the food at Paradise Dynasty. I like the quasi-Zen interior with the yellow mood lights (horrible for photography though) and big Buddha water feature. I enjoy the service, though all the local staff speak only Mandarin or some Chinese dialect.

Erin  was completely taken with the show window and kitchen. This was live action TV! A cooking show where the chefs waved back! She loved it, and the chefs were very gratified by her attention.

She looked at the menu and promptly ordered the La Mian with sliced pork (RM17.80). She ate with gusto, and I discovered why when I was finishing her leavings (it is a very hearty serving, good for five peasants at least!). The broth is milky with all the goodness and richness of pork bone boiled til every last bit of marrow is extracted. It is hearty, sweet and nourishing - pure comfort food. The egg in the noodle dish was hard boiled in soy sauce so the exterior is brown, while the yolk is still wobbly and liquid and delicious. The goodly amount of seaweed and vegetables make it a complete meal.

My peasant leanings urged me to order a plate of Japanese cucumber in garlic (RM8.80) and marinated jelly fish (RM13.80), both cold appetizers. Such simple fare, but so good to eat! The cucumbers were crisp, with the perfect blend of sesame oil to balance the sharpness of the garlic. The jelly fish was topped with crunchy spring onions and a dash of chilli oil which made the dish sing.

I don't know why I keep doing it, seeing how much vegetables I can buy at the cost of one of these restaurant servings, but I also ordered the sauteed spinach with garlic (RM16). Since you can louse up vegetables that badly, it was a so-so dish whose sole existence was to keep Erin occupied until the food came.

The reason people flock to Paradise Dynasty, however, is the dumplings or siew loong pau. The restaurant does mini versions of this soup-filled dumpling, and offer an exclusive selection of flavoured dumplings. The eight-piece steamer offers one each of the original, pink peppercorn (amazing, if you like and understand the sensation of this Szechuan spice), crab roe, cheese, garlic, ginseng, foie gras and black truffle. All of them have culinary value and will have their own following. This is attested to in the menu which allows diners the opportunity to order multiples of a single variant. At RM25.80, the eight-piece sampler is one of the must-haves when dining at this strictly non-halal restaurant. 

Another nod to Mao's Last Dancer was the pork dumplings with chili oil. This dish is evilly good. It's so bad because it swims in chili oil infused with Szechuan pepper, but the marrying to the down to earth minced pork, and the tingly, sweet-hot oil infusion makes this so difficult to resist at RM12.80 a plate. I ended up dragging the noodles from the La Mian into the sauce just so I could savour it again!

I can safely say this was my best meal of 2013 so far! The bill came up to RM112.75 (RM2 per head for tea and 50 sen for wet towels). Certainly better value and freshness than Watami!

Paradise Dynasty
1F-15 Level 1 Paradigm Mall
1 Jalan SS7/26A Kelana Jaya, PJ
Tel: 03 7887 5022

Cool comfort

When I despair about the state of our Malaysia F&B industry, I drown my sorrows in funny little combinations from Chatime and soak in the warmth of the Kwa family who own and operate the Chatime SS2 Mall kiosk.

Kit will nearly always have his inevitable Grass Jelly Milk Tea. I choose Pu Erh with pearls and aloe vera, as well as a Strawberry Yogurt with rainbow jelly, just for the color contrast in the photos!

The Grass Jelly Milk Tea is a top seller for good reason: it really is delish - full bodied, creamy, with the best grass jelly to be had anywhere. The Pu Erh was a tad too strong (and dare I add, too Oriental) for my tastes. The fact that I asked for the least amont of sugar also made it a tad more like medicine than chill out drink!

The Strawberry Yogurt was pretty good: fruity, a little tart, but creamy. The rainbow jelly made a a good counterpoint to the sharpness of the drink too.

Because I feel piggy

After a pork-centric dinner, I thought it would be nice to resurrect a food which has absolutely no nutritional value, but which brings great joy (and girth).

Apart from scrummy little pieces of lard in Hokkien noodles, the best use for pig skin has got to be the Filipino street snack, chicharon! It used to be only available from street vendors in the Philippines, but it has now gone commercial. The Filipinos sell chicharon in a bag like instant popcorn, ready to be nuked in the microwave and relished out of the bag!

Wata Waste!

Two strikes and you're out! In this city when eateries mushroom everywhere, there is simply no room for error or shoddy service. Most time, the first strike out is the last. Loyalty is a dead thing when food is concerned, especially when the price of eating out has so skyrocketed.

The last time I ate at Watami was just before Christmas 2012 when I entertained my good friend from Sunway Putra Hotel, Lee Meng Hong. We both like Japanese food, and since he was in my home territory I thought it would be nice to treat him to a meal as opposed to him signing another meal for me. As such, I took him to Watami.

I shriveled up with mortification when the 6 kinds sashimi moriawase came out reeking. We smelt the odour of dead fish the moment the platter arrived. I protested and a new portion was brought out. The other dishes were less than stellar but it may have been the noisome smell of off fish which spoilt it.

Today, in celebration of Erin's first day at her new pre-school, I got our great family friend Evelyn over to Watami for lunch as I had some vouchers to off set the meal with. Wary of the last sashimi episode, but needing some high quality protein, I ordered the 3 variant sashimi which comprised of scallops, salmon and sweet prawns. Again, what was delivered was a portion that obviously the chef thought was being delivered to a food fool. It reeked of decaying brine - the kind of smell you get after the hot sun beats down on a beach at low tide. A complain, a re-presentation, but the only thing that was changed was the salmon. Are they really so inept in the kitchen? The scallops were this close of spoilt, with the ammonia-tinged bitterness which made me gag.

I ate one of the prawns and it tasted as if it had been soaked in ice water. No flavour, not even the muskiness of decay. I left the others. It was the worst waste of RM34.90 ever.

The Caesar salad was the same, still RM20.90.

The Saba Hiraki was a tad dry but overall edible at RM25.90, and Erin enjoyed her Gyuniku Udon at RM19.90.

Service was friendly and warm, and the Filipino manager, George, very apologetic about the sashimi, but Malaysian establishments do not give their staff autonomy to make decisions which can make or break a client relationship.

The staff are really sweet and the place is really nice, but sashimi coming out half rotten is despicable and a real game breaker. As Kit puts it: passable can be got elsewhere.

As such, despite the Salt card which gives me points with every bill, and their nice birthday gesture to me in November where they presented me brownies and a song, a restaurant is about food. If that fails, you can sing till the cows come home. This cow ain't coming close to Watami again.

Watami Japanese Casual Restaurant
Lot 01-07 First Floor Paradigm Mall
Kelana Jaya SS7/26A
Petaling Jaya
Tel: 03 7886 9661

House, Heart And Tummy Warming

In these days of economic instability, it is very heartening for me to hear when my friends decide to buy themselves property. If one has a roof over one's head, everything is a little easier. As such, I was more than happy to get myself lost trying to find Sharon Tan's new apartment block.

Luckily I took a quarter of the time my other friend, Jo-Lynn did. She took the grand tour of Subang, Kelana Jaya and back, which lasted a good two hours!

Still, it was time well spent because there was a lot of good feeling at this event. Sharon was surrounded by people who loved her and wished her well, including her mother, father and brother from Melaka, as well as friends from college and work.

All the bounty of a new beginning.

Sharon's chicken curry.

Sharon's mixed veggies. Loved the bamboo shoot!

Sausage platter with Sharon's mum's otak otak on the left.

She insisted on feeding us all, so she actually cooked on her first day into her apartment. She made chicken curry, pork vermicelli, mixed veggies and a platter of sausages as well as her mum's home made otak-otak. She also bought a tray of sushi. Needless to say it was quite a feed!

Platter of sushi.

 One of Sharon's bosom buddy's mum contributed a special touch - abacus balls. These are fantastic rice flour dumplings stuffed with minced meat and vegetables which are a real challenge to make. These were amazingly good and 100 percent home made. Yum!

Abacus dumplings.

With food and friends like this, Sharon's new house is bound to be filled to the brim with love and luck!

Lekor Chips

An-Nur Food Industry is a little manufacturer of local snack food which is doing Johor proud. The brainchild of Ghazaley Ayub, whose half Chinese parentage is possibly spurring on to bigger than cottage industry business, An-Nur produces a wholly Malaysian snack called keropok lekor. This is an East Coast delight which has found much favour with Malaysians on the whole. It is essentially a fish cracker, which can be done in a variety of styles. The ones that KL-ites are most familiar with is the long, think, elongated oval ones. These are crispy, if sometimes a little hard because they are thick.

The other style is the smaller, softer, squisher kind, which is called 'lekor lembut'. These are chewy, and tend to be oilier than the long ones. Both are now sold by most lekor traders.

Ghazaley did a survey of the lekor industry and found that 20 tonnes of lekor was used by the Johoreans in a day. This got him thinking, that if he could pare off one percent of the pie, he would be on to something good. And so he began by sourcing fish from Sabah, Mersing, and Kuala Selangor.  He brought these frozen 10 kilo blocks of fish back to his factory in Kampung Serkat, and began making lekor.

His lekor is frozen and bought by many traders, canteen operators and restaurants in the area now, and he is quite happy that 20 sen can buy someone a taste of his wares.

Lekor chips fresh out of the fryer.

Like a true innovator, Ghazaley developed another use for this lekor mixture. By adding pepper and onion, he has turned the mix into what can be called 'muruku'. He brands them 'lekor chips' and they are great! They are so good that one of Malaysia's so-called celebrity chefs, Jaafar Onn, actually endorses the product with no endorsement fee. That coming from a market where RM7,000 a month is usual for an endorsement, this is a real coup.

Amazingly addictive snacks!

Truly, the product is fantastic. They are crunchy and tasty and very addictive. It's really hard to stop munching them. It is not just a Malay taste, it is an all-round Malaysian taste, since I bought tubs for my family, neighbours and friends and all of them love it.

The factory cum store and cafe.

An-Nur has a cafe which it recently opened, so people can enjoy the fresh lekor and lekor chips with some drinks. The shop front also offers all the products for sale.

An-Nur Food Industry
161 Kampung Serkat
82030 Pontian
Johor
Tel: +607 696 0115