What's Cooking

Perhaps a change of subject from what's happening, events, politics, traveling & music festival and let's move on to another favorite subject of everyone i.e cooking. Interesting yeah ! ...so what's drawing people about food and telling people that you know cooking!. It's just another blah blah subject that a lot of people have heard from so & so that that guy could cook well. Well to me actually a lot of us could cook in one way or another and if we are forced to whet our hunger pang, who doesn't know how to spice up a bowl of Ho Chiak Penang Har Mee. Anybody can, right just go grab a packet and thats it!

If you are like anybody else who enjoy eating & savour good food then cooking is no problem as it is just a matter of interest and you can then conjure few dishes in a short while, with some imaginative ideas of course and a little bit of interest in basic cooking. So, let's take the pot & pan out and go get a few stuff to cook something to eat.

Over the last few weekend, cooking laksa came to my mind and this then lead to a few source of recipe with some from the open source out there & a few from granny secret recipe.

You know to get secret guarded recipe is never easy to come to you and what most people would tell you is to get this a little bit and that a little bit and you just goreng it , put a bowl of santan and cook over high heat and then count one to ten, that's it. If that is so so easy, you & I could get hold of the best recipe for good food and start a food chain of our own.

Anway, toady as I am feeling a little bit generous, let me show everyone out there this secret art of cooking lemak laksa... not the recipe yet, as going through fine tune process .. ok. I tried cooking for more than 3 times before I could conjure the world best recipe for laksa on this earth. Truly & believing....

Penang is famous for their laksa and there are 2 types available with the assam laksa being the more popular type with the sweet sour chilly paste fish soup served with the laksa noodles and a variety of vegetables condiments and the other being the lemak type i.e. with coconut milk and a number of local herbs such as kaffir lime leaf & basil leaf.

To start with , the important ingredients to get the fishy soup is of course fish itself. You must get very fresh fish for the great taste and you need to get these from your local fishmonger from the wet market. There are a number of fish that could be used for laksa soup and the popular types would be yellow stripe scad - kuning ( ooi boi ku) , kembong (Indian Mackerel-kambong hu) , tua bak ( Big Eyed Herrings) & sardines.

I would prefer tua bak as they are more fleshy and easy to de bone to get to the flesh and much bigger to get your job done faster.

The below picture shows the fresh fish place neatly on a enamel plate, after being steamed and with the fish flesh taken out and ready for cooking fish soup. You can always pre-prepared the fish meat earlier and keep it in the freezer and it could be kept for 2 weeks without any lost of taste & freshness. Fish used is " tua bak" obviously due to the big eye as this is called and you could easily spot this type of fish in any wet market.

To get to the chilly curry paste, I prefer to have the ingredients freshly prepared rather than buying it direct from the wet market in ready grounded paste form. Bet you, the taste of your curry soup ( any type) would taste much better if the ingredients are freshly prepared this way but of course much effort is required to have this done conventionally. You can either blend it using an electric cooking blender or if you want to sweat it out, use a pestle & mortar to pound it.


The final product of all the above after cooking it is a pot of good smelly & tasty lemak laksa soup. Add in with all the freshly prepared vegetables condiments & with the laksa noodle, you now have a good bowl of lemak laksa. Try it out yourself....

Here is the lemak laksa soup.......use enamel cooking pot to seal in the taste...


More on what to cook.... here is kerabu bee hoon in the making....

World Music Festival 2008 Penang : 02 to 04 May2008

This year will be the 2nd year the World Music Festival will be held in Penang again. The World Music Festival 2008 will be on from 02 to 04 May 2008 and venue will be at Botanical Garden and the program will start in the evening at about 1900hrs.

There will be 11 international team performing from France, Reunion Islands, Mexico, Tibet, USA, Canada, Croatia, Iran, Kenya, India, Denmark & Ireland and 4 local team from Malaysia.

It will be held under the romantic night skies with the breezing air from the botanical forest , this place would definitely be filled with enchanting melodies originating from various part of the world when renowned musicians once again converge to give us their spectacular performance.

You can bring along your family or friends and can have an outdoor outing bringing along your favorites snack food & drinks sitting or just plain lazy strolling while listening to the vibrant musics & songs provided by the participating musicians. Bring along a mat and lay it down to sit and enjoy your food or perhaps a glass of wine with your lover ? If you wish, go ahead and let your hair down and dance to the tune of the music.

The below photograph taken during last year Music Festival and come one come all to the World Music Festival 2008 Penang.



The ticket entrance to the festival is MYR50.00 for adults for an evening of music performance by about 8 teams per night. Bet you, it's worth the money paid as this is once a year event bringing world renowned musicians to Penang and your support is required to bring more world events to our place. Enjoys....




ABOUT RAIN FOREST WORLD MUSIC FESTIVAL


By the way, there is another music festival called " Rain Forest World Music Festival" held annually in Sarawak and this year it will be held from 11 to 13 July 2008 and this is a major exploding music events.

The Rainforest World Music Festival is a unique festival that brings together on the same stage renowned world musicians from all continents and indigenous musicians from the interiors of the mythical island of Borneo.

Its formula of afternoon informative workshops, ethno-musical lectures, jamming sessions and mini concerts, followed by evening performances on the main stage has proven to be a hit with the audience, who come from near and far.

So Friends Exellers, DON'T MISS IT...........as all good things in life are best shared !!..bring your picnic mat , food & drinks, tit-bits etc and meet on Saturday-03May2008 @ 7.30pm for an evening together ...let the party begin..please pass the word around..Ronald,Shirley ok !!!

Amazon Cafe at Phang Nga, Phuket

When I mentioned that the best coffee can be found at Phang Nga on the way to Phuket , quite a number of folks out there ask me if that is true or just simply need to write something to promote Amazon Cafe.

But honestly speaking, this is one of the best coffee drink that I ever had tasted and believe me it's is better than CB or SB . In fact for those who have drank coffee at Amazon Cafe, be it ice or hot they vouched for the nice aromatic coffee that they could not find in Penang.

So I am not the only one saying this and for sure if anyone planning a trip to Phuket, don't ever miss this cafe and tell me otherwise. This Amazon Cafe is a small set up shop and it is inside the compound of a petrol station ( it's PTT Petrol....I think) and within the compound there were a number of food stall.

What I observed when the waitress prepare the coffee is that they took a sealed sachet of roast coffee bean ( just perfect for 1 serving) and grind it immediately thus sealing the coffee aroma when it is brew in the coffee machine.

That is the reasons why the aroma & taste of Amazon Cafe coffee is so much different than ours. All their coffee bean are individually sealed in sachet and not like what we have it here whereby the grounded coffee is in a big packaging or a container whereby it is scoop to prepare when it is ordered.

By the way, after asking around of the coffee taste that make it so wonderful I found out that Amazon Cafe procure the coffee bean from 94 degree coffee in Bangkok. And ninety four degree coffee is very popular in Thailand....check it out. I am not a coffee lover and that's so much said about coffee and I think now I need to go for a coffee break.

For a good coffee drink to be prepared & served, the water need to be boiled at just the right temperature and ideally it should be at 94 degree to make a perfect cup of coffee. That's how 94 degree coffee came about and the beans are from Chieng Mai district not from Ethiopia, Costa Rico or Kenya.