Prawn Crackers From Balik Pulau

Recently I bought a big packet of prawn crackers through a colleague who lives in Balik Pulau. Did I mention big? Yes, real Big packet of prawn crackers, unlike those sub-standard prawn crackers selling in hyperstore...

My hubby and I finished the whole packet within a few days! It was really tasty and once you tried it, you just can't stop eating it :P Before long, my hubby was yearning for more. So one sunny way, we hopped into our mini car and drove all the way to Balik Pulau to buy one. It was sold at the Balik Pulau new market, next to the rapid bus station.

Upon arrival at the market, we were greeted by lots of prawn crackers, hanging at the stalls. We noticed that there are many stalls selling prawn crackers...in fact, there are so many of them that you might think it is prawn cracker's market, lol :D

Generally there are two types of prawn cracker sold over there, one is with the smaller size crackers sold at RM6 per packet and the other one is RM8 per packet, which is of course bigger in size and taste better! Definitely recommend to buy the jumbo size RM8 packet, it is real yummy.

I'm getting my colleague to buy another packet for me again and will get it by tuesday.

Maxim Dim Sum Restaurant @ Taman Pekaka

Criz Bon Appetite is organizing a review and win contest, and this very first season is to review Fun Tea Garden in Penang. Anyway, I have not got a chance to pay a visit to Fun Tea Garden, but we just dined in the other dim sum house in Penang island, the Maxim.

Honestly said, this dim sum house is the one that we used to dine in. Their serve huge variety of dim sum. Furthermore, prawns are used as the main ingredient in their dim sum to replace pork. Hence, for a prawn lover like me, I really enjoy having their dim sum compared to Bali Hai and Foh San. Environmental wise, I'll choose Bali Hai instead.

If I remember correctly, Maxim started their business at the Bangunan Lip Sin, Taman Pekaka about 3 to 4 years ago. For Penang folks, Maxim is the one of the well known place for dim sum. You have to be early, otherwise you will need to spend some time just waiting for a seat. Luckily now they have expanded their business to add one more shop at the same row in order to allocate more seating.

To describe its location precisely, let's use Tesco Extra as the land mark. It is opposite to the site entrance of Tesco Extra. Maxim is the last shop at the ground floor of Bangunan Lip Sin, which is the same building as the Sea Palace Restaurant.

Let's see what we order yea... Among all the food, I just know the name of the minority of the food we order, like the century egg chicken porridge, siu long pao, white raddish cake, and har kao. Then the rest are various types of dim sum with different topping, like scallop, crab meat, pork, prawns, and still prawns. :P

You should give it a try.

Cheese Cakes From Secret Recipe

On my birthday night, after we went for dinner @ Japin, hubby bought me some cheese cakes from Secret Recipe. He bought 3 pieces of cheese cakes with different flavors.


First, we had this Cappuccino cheese cake. Layered with vanilla and topped with choc rice, it is a nice combination of creamy cheese and cappuccino. Among all the flavor, this is my favorite. I ate almost 80% of it. :P


Next will be the marble cheese cake. It is smooth creamy baked cheese on crunchy oat nut base. Nothing to shout about. Furthermore, I don't really like the nutty cake base. :(

Lastly will be the Oreo cheese cake. It is frozen cream cheese with loads of crushed oreo biscuits. It's just so so nia compared to my favorite Cappuccino's.

Of course, we didn't finish it one shot. I kept some in fridge, so that I can serve it chilled the next day. Hmm...just wonder how much weight we've gained?? Oh, no!

B'day Lunch @ Chili's, Gurney

Today's my birthday. I'm on annual leave, in order to escape from my hectic work, and to really relax and enjoy my birthday. :D Must pamper myself on this special day, right?

My dear brought me for lunch just now after our shopping at Gurney Plaza. He asked me to choose which restaurant I prefer, so I chose Chili's. Reason 1: It's a famous restaurant. Reason 2: I have not taste their food so far.

Noticed that Chili's is really a popular place to dine in. Lot's of foreigners enjoy their meals there. We chose to be seated at non-smoking area, as I really hate to be a passive smoker.

Chili's is located at Gurney Hotel, just opposite to Dome and the Manila's Place from Gurney Plaza.

We ordered their bottomless fruit juice. Bottomless means you can top up as much as you can.

I ordered my Fire-Grill Chicken Portobello. It's the Fire-grilled chicken breasts with a marinated Portobello mushroom served over zesty peppercorn sauce with loaded mashed potatoes and fresh veggies (cauliflower, broccoli, carrot and onion). I'm very satisfied with this meal. It's not oily and yet it's so flavorful. It's definitely a good choice for me. :)

One thing that I noticed about the peppercorn sauce. With Chinese parsley added, the sauce is very tasty, and it enhanced the grilled chicken. To my surprise, the smell of Chinese parsley is acceptable to me. This is totally a new self exploration. :)

Well for my dear, he ordered a set of Crispy Honey-Chipotle Chicken Crispers. Strips of chicken hand battered then breaded and fried to perfection for the crispy crunch. It's then topped with Chili's spicy and smoky honey-chipotle sauce and served with sweet corn and homestlye fries.

We have not taking any deep fried food for quite some time due to our stomachs already get used to my healthy home cooked meal. However, found out that we still able to accept these deep fried chicken strips. It's so delicious and not greasy as well.

Well, we spend about RM87++ for my birthday lunch. I would say it's a good choice.

California Cherry

Few weeks back, my colleague treated me one fresh cherry. Yea, just one, cuz he bought only a few to try out. Most of us have not even tried a fresh cherry. But we are hooked once tasted it. I bought 200gms from uncle, the fruit seller who would come to our factory once a week. 1kg of fresh California cherry cost RM50.

With RM9, only 21 small cherries. My hubby and I gobbled all of them while watching TV.... expensive snack, isn't it? The cherries were sweet and juicy....love it!

Restaurant Buddy2 @ Auto-city

Autocity again! This time we went to Buddy Buddy for our weekly-coming-home dinner. At first we was planning to go for other place at Autocity but that day was crowded with people as they are having live party 712 there. So we detoured to the nearest place away from the crowd.

Buddy2 is an oriental food restaurant serving steamboat, rice and noodle.

The interior decoration features buddy2 cartoon wallpaper which is nice.

Hubby ordered orange juice....but it is a bit sweet

Bento - Black pepper chicken with steam rice. It's served with fried egg, tofu, cucumber slice, cabbage + carrot salad and 2 small pieces of nyonya kuih. The chicken was deep fried before stir fry in black pepper sauce. Ingredients included capsicum, red chili, onion, and soy bean paste. It's quite flavorful, but serving is too small. :(

Bento - Oyster chicken with steam rice. Same as the bento described above with nice oyster sauce chicken. Again, the serving is too little for us....we are so hungry and finish it up in no time at all. :P

A bowl of free soup is served together with each Bento set. The soup is boiled with ginger, pepper, and it's warm to stomach, but taste a bit weird with 2 fishballs added.

Almond Cookies From Macau

My colleague just back from his Hong Kong and Macau trip. He bought us this famous almond cookies from Macau. I know, not everyone like the smell of Almond. However this cookies is acceptable to me, cuz it doesn't contain strong Almond flavour. It's almost similar to peanut cookies.

This is the cookies in the small version. It's made into chess piece. so call 棋子餅. It's made of peanut powder, Almond powder, sugar, green bean powder, and sugar.


How does it look? Put one in your mouth, and it melts. :)

Steamed Egg With Kadok Herbs

See my smooth and silky steamed egg? Aha, after failing few times to get a good result, I still not giving up, but to get a secret from my mama. Needless to say, the outcome of smooth and silky texture will definitely taste better than rough surface steam egg. ;P

The other day, my colleague passed me some kadok leaves which she plucked from the river side near her house. Instead of using it to cook perut ikan or make some otak-otak, I carried out a series of experiments to discover new recipes. Steamed egg with Kadok herbs is one of them. If you like the smell of the Kadok herbs, you'll like this version of steamed egg.

Ingredients:
1. 6 of Kadok leaves
2. 2 Omega eggs
3. Some water

Seasoning:
1. 2 tbsp of light soy sauce
2. dashed of pepper

Method:
1. Wash the Kadok leaves and get it thinly sliced.
2. Beat eggs in a porcelain bowl. Add estimated amount of water, light soy sauce, dash of pepper and the Kadok leaves. Mixed well.
3. Steam under low heat for 10 minutes.