Best Yao-Char-Kuai @ Jalan Bendahara

If you are someone who likes fried stuff, then you shouldn't miss the best yao-char-kuai in town. The stall that sell the yao-char-kuai is located at Jalan Bendahara or best known as Kao-lao (九楼) among the locals. Kao-lao is a Hokkien dialect. In literal, it means 9 floors. Why do the locals call this place Kao-lao? That's becuase next to this stall is the building with 9 floors. It is a medium cost flat.

Anyway, back to the yao-char-kuai. This is a family business. We have been buying from them when the father was operating it, now the son took over and soon you will see the baton being pass down to one of the grandsons. They are only open at night. Most of the time the que is long, so you have to be patience. Apart from yao-char-kuai, they also sell ma-kiok and ham-chim-peng.

Yao-char-kuai: Best eat with hot coffee or Milo. Deep it into the drinks...Wahsey, sedap!


Ma-kiok: It is nice on its own. Don't have to deep into any hot drinks.


Ham-chim-peng: The red bean filling is superb!

Remember, all of these should be consumed while it is HOT!

Beef Dumplings

One of the thing that I miss the most whenever I think about Taiwan is their dumplings.They are huge and juicy! I've been wanting to make it myself, but my biggest challenge is the dumpling skin. I know there are ready made dumpling skin, but i am sure it won't be as nice. So, I KIV the idea of making it on my own.

Just this morning, a friend of mine shared some tips on making Pan Mee dough, and so I immediate try it out when i got home after church. Halfway cooking the Pan Mee, I thought to myself, the Pan Mee actually taste a bit like dumpling skin (those that i've tried in Taiwan).

So, I decided to D.I.Y. the dumpling skin just to try out. So, here's the process of making the dumplings.... :)

The dough:
500 gram flour + 1 egg + some salt and sugar + water
Knit the dough for about 30mins


The filling:
Spring onion + mince beef (you can substitute it with pork)
Marinate the beef with light soya sause, pepper and seasame oil.
Important note: Add more soya sauce, pepper and seasame oil if you want to cook the dumplings in the water, because the water tend to dilute the taste.


Mix them together...


Dumpling skin: Flatted the dough with the roller (due to lack of equippment, I use an empty round bottle...hehehe), Use the round cutter and cut the skin into round shape (you can use a bowl as well... that's what i use... hahaha).

Then, start wrapping the dumpling...

Tada!! (I am so proud of myself! :P ..hahaha...)

Now, you can pan fry it or cook it with water.

Tada! Pan fried beef dumplings!

Beef dumplings cook with water!

As you bite into the dumplings the juice will ooze out...Slurp! Ah! :P

Baby bean sprout fried mince beef

It is a shame that this blog was left unattended for a long time. Well, I am making a come back once again! Lately I've been experimenting with some newly self-invented reciepes. I hope I will slowly get back the creativity in cooking!

I've nothing much left in the fridge, so it was just simply a mix and match with whatever I have in the fridge that I came out with this dish - "Baby bean sprout fried mince beef"

The ingredients used are:

Grey mushroom - cut into small pieces

Onion - cut into small pieces
Garlic - cut into small dice

Baby bean sprout - cut into small pieces

Mince beef - marinate with some light soya sauce, seasame oil and pepper

Heat up the pan with some olive oil, then put in the onion and garlic, stir fry until they are slightly golden brown. Put in the mince beef and stir fry under low fire. Then add in the mushroom and finally the baby bean sprout. Stir fry until they are nicely mixed. Add in a pinch of salt and some light soya sauce before you remove them from the fire.
Note: you don't have to add water, because the mushroom will produce water on its own.

Now, I would like to suggest 2 ways of serving the dish.

The healthy way - wrap it with salad leaves with some rice. So you have a balance diet of carbo and fiber.

The western oriental way - fry it with speghetti

If you ever try out the reciepe, do drop a note here and share with me how you find the reciepe.

Lo Han Kuo

This is the best "Lo Han Kuo" dessert in Malacca. The stall has been there since I was young. Easily, I can say it has been around for more than 30 years. The stall is located at Bunga Raya. You can easily spot them, because they are the only "Lo Han Kuo" seller in this area.

The dessert is home-cooked! REAL ingredients was use, unlike those in big cities, where everything is instant or "powder-bancuh". It is nice to drink it cold in a hot afternoon!

This is the uncle...

Peanut Dessert @ "Hwa Shen Tang"

This is one of our 'childhood dessert'. We use to have this quite often during our younger days, however, now it is not that easily found. I was happy to find it (accidentally) after so many years! I remembered there was an old uncle at Bunga Raya who use to sell it during the night. I guess he must have passed away, cause there was one night sis and i went to his place but it was not open, and whenever we passed by his little corner he was not there still.

The one that i found recently is at the Newton Hawker Center (Next to Mahkota Parade). You can find it at the dessert bar and they are selling it at RM1.00 per bowl. This is also nice (but still can't beat the old uncle lah...). The peanut was soft but it is not as thick.

The best way to enjoy it is to eat it together with "yao char kuai". Make sure that the dessert is (really) hot and then deep the "yao char kuai" into it! Yummy!!!

Healthy food

Aaah...after the porky and fatty noodle soup, let's take a break from the "not so healthy" food. The one who is the most health conscious in our family is Mum, so it is not a surprise that she is the one who introduces me to this vegetarian restaurant.

This place started off as a shop that sell all kind of organic stuff. They have all the organic vegetables and fruits. They also sell brown rice, flour, noodles (dried) and crackers. Health drinks like 5-grains milk powder, spirulina, wheatgrass powder etc. They also have organic chili sauce, tomato sauce, light soya sauce, thick soya sauce , tom yam paste and many (1000x) more. (see the pics below).

After about 10 years, they started to cooked meal for people who wants to eat healtily. At first it was on request basis, later on people seems to like it and started coming on walk-in basis. Sometimes they have to turn the customers down, because they didn't pre-order the meal. Since it is a good business, the owner decided to start the restaurant. So now, anyone who walk in can have a healthy meal! :)

Their menu is simple, basically it have 4 categories - the rice, noodle, drinks and dessert. Since this is my first time there, i will only introduce what i've tasted and is nice.

"Set lunch"

Their set lunch is simple. A bowl of seaweed soup, salad as appetizer and two different kind of vegetables and taufu as the main dish. The one we happen to try was asam lady's finger with egg plant, Curry potato and black sauce taufu with dried bean curd. The set lunch also comes with a bowl of brown rice sprinkled with some white sesame (YikeS!!! :P brown rice is still not my favourate...haha...)

Salad

Rice

"Herbal soup noodle"

Their herbal soup is NICE! Nice! NICE! You can have it with (organic) bee-hoon, kuey-teow, mee or "mee-hun-kuey". Here, i decided to have it with "mee-hun-kuey". I was told that the flour was organic as well, it does taste like one :) The herbs is just nice, not too overly strong. They have many types of different ingredients in ther soup like seaweed, mini corns, green leafty veggie, mushroom, "kei chee", some sweet corns and tau fu. The soup is REALLY tasty! This is one soup that you can finish it to the last drop without having to worry about ajinomoto :)

"Barley red bean"

This is the dessert that they have. This is the first time i see people mix barley and red bean together and it taste quite nice!

Nice bowl

Apart from serving nice food, the restaurant is also nicely done up, giving you a very comfortable atmosphere to enjoy your food. They have a little reading corner as well, but most of the reading material are health related.

Since it is an organic shop, the price are slightly higher than the "normal food" you get outside. To give you a rough idea, a bowl of herbal noodle is RM6.50 and the barley read bean is RM3.50. Come to think about it, it is almost similar same ask KL price, only that in KL you are paying that price for food that is not that healthy...Where to find this place? Taman Melaka Raya is where you need to go! :)

Pin Pin Xiang

This is one of the many coffee shops that family and I love to come. It was dad who brought us to this place many years ago and since then, it became one of our favourates. This coffee shop is called "Pin Pin Xiang" (mandarin), meaning "Nice taste". If you want the direct translation it would be "Taste, taste, frangance" :P Gee...sound so weird...Hahaha...

What is so special about them? Apart from the nice food (which i will go into detail later) is the atmosphere here. The shop is located along Jonker Street. Front part of the shop you can hear the cars passing by (traffic ain't that bad in the morning) and occasionally you can see old uncles/aunties cycle by slowly. At the back of the shop, you will hear the old black smith working on the iron. "Tong!" "Tong!" "Tong!" you can hear him working hard.

So what do they have here? The one on top of the list is the Pork-seafood noodle (pic below).

The standrad ingredients they have for the noodle soup are minced pork, pork intestine, liver, pork lard, prawns, small oysters and veggie. If you are not a pork intestine /liver person you can ask them not to add that in. You can have it with bee hoon, kuay teow, mee or mee sua. If you ever order this, i would recommend you to go for mee sua! If you are super health concious, then i warn you not to step into this shop! Hahahaha....The noodle soup is RICH, in the sense that rich in fats :P But taste guarantee BEST! The noodle comes as individual meal. So you may want to order according to the number of people who wants it.

The are other stuff that you can order as extra / side order. They have chicken chop and pork chop (pic below). This is quite different from the western style. They are normally deep fried and cooked with canned green peas, potato and some tomatoes. The sause is thick and nice! For a REAL chinese, they would say, "a bowl of white rice to go with the sauce will be a perfect meal!"

They also have a variety of fried vegetables. The one shown here is "choy sam" fried garlic. One of their nice veg is the fried bitter gourd. (i've never tasted it before coz i hate bitter gourd, but others who have tasted it said that it is nice)

Omelette! They have Prawn omelette, oyster omelette and normal omelette. So far i've tasted the oyster omelette and it is nice! Sorry no pics on that, cause i tasted it few days ago and my camera was not with me at that time :P

Another good one to try is the fried fish / pork with ginger and spring onion. It is SUPERB!

Well, once again, to eat here you need to have the patience to wait. Reason being, they don't mass produce your order, even if it is similar type of order. For example, the cook will do the noodle soup pot by pot. So if you order 5 mee sua soup, the cook will repeat the process 5 times to come up with 5 bowls of mee sua soup. Their style has become a trademark for them and because the food is nice, so people normaly don't mind the waiting :)

How to find this place? Easy. Look for the Orang Utan house (main branch), the coffee shop is just next to it across the street that is 10-step wide.