: : Garden Seafood Steamboat : :

Okay. Another farewell party for the same VIP as a week ago. Vivien’s bye-bye party on behalf of the entire department. Took awhile to decide where we wanted to go and we finally settled on Garden Seafood Steamboat place where we can be noisy, rowdy and just downright undisciple when it comes to eating and belching. :p Yeah, we’re a pretty disgusting group.

While waiting for the soup in the steamboat to head up, we started with appetizers. Appetizers were roasted prawn seasoned with chillis and pepper. However, we only had one plate as we were all too busy with the crab. Or rather, AMan was.

This was roasted crab, again seasoned with chilli and pepper. As well as a lot of MSG, could feel my neck and head shivering like crazy. As mentioned, AMan was eating crab like nobody’s business and David was giving him a run for his money. They must have polished off ten crabs each! They had so much that they finished all the crab for the night! LOL!

Finally, the lid was opened and the steaming smell of tom yam soup was released. This steamboat joint is a buffet style of restaurant i.e. pick what you would like in the soup and just add it into the pot. Of course, one does have to pay for any wastage so be forewarned.

The steamboat we had uses charcoal for fuel rather than the common gas stove. In olden days, charcoal-fuel-steamboat is very common but not so much these days. Steamboat is actually a Mongolian dish that is absolutely wonderful during cold rainy days (which it was on Friday night) and wintertime.

Instead of tom yam soup, one can ask for chicken stock instead. One great thing about steamboat is that by the time the soup has been boiled for a long time, the soup itself would have so much flavours in it. The downside of steamboat is that one has to ensure that all the food is thoroughly cook else one gets diarrhoa.

For Westerners eating this for the first time, please do not forget your diarrhoa pills. You might be in for a nasty shock if you’ve never eaten this before. It can be quite upsetting to your stomach. Once you’re over that hurdle, you should be fine. 🙂

Address Details

Garden Steamboat Restaurant

No. 28, Jalan Nenas,

93400 Kuching,

Sarawak.

Tel : 082 – 257777, 257962

: : Granny’s Cooking : Pickled Cucumber : :

After reading Josh’s posting on the cucumber salad he made, I got hungry thinking of Granny’s pickled cucumber salad. Oooh! It’s very nice on a hot day and I can just eat it with rice alone.

First, she cut up a whole cucumber and one onion. Put them in a bowl and mixed it up with 1/2 teaspoon of salt to dehydrate the cucumber i.e. remove the water. She let it rest there for about an hour. Note that the cucumbers found in Asia is different from the ones in Western Countries. In Asia, one has to cut off the tip of the cucumber and start rubbing the top portion on the cut section of the remaining cucumber to remove the sap (which makes the cucumber very bitter). The sap will start foaming at the top so cut off this part once the foam stops getting bigger.

Next, she chopped some chillis. Gentling moving the chillis to the side of the chopping board with the knife, she separated most of the chilli seeds from the cut chilli. Make sure that the knife is only touching the chilli and not the chopping board. The chilli seeds is the one that makes the chilli really hot.

Then, she poured out the water coming out of the cucumber and the onions. Put the chillis in after this.

The vinegar that she uses is the Rice Vinegar from China. Not sure whether it can be found in Chinse Grocery Shops in Western Countries but no harm trying. Else use malt vinegar. Granny doesn’t recommend using local vinegar as it’s mostly pure acetic acid which will cause bad gas strict problems. She’s of the opinion that the China-made Rice Vinegar is made purely from rice.

She poured in about 2 tablespoon of vinegar to the cucumber, onions and chopped chillis.

Next, she mixed about 2 tablespoon (!!!) of sugar into the salad and mixed everything time. Then it goes into the fridge to be chilled for half an hour.

The finished product. Yum! I can eat this with rice only. For today, I had it with lemang @ glutinous rice that was cooked in bamboo.

: : Cat City Noodles : :

Was supposed to post this up last night but didn’t have time to do so. What Wena and friends had for lunch on Friday the 3 of October in the year of the 2003 AD.

Pascale recommended Cat City Noodles to me a few weeks ago and that’s where we decided to have lunch today. The coffee shop is located near the Stutong Rounabout, along the way to Kota Samarahan and UNIMAS (Universiti Sarawak Malaysia). The signboard above the coffee shop shows a white cat with the paw up and the 8th cue ball. 🙂

The interior of the coffee shop was quite pleasant and pretty cute. A lot of paintings on the wall with many pictures of feet. 🙂

Reminds me of two eyeballs floating up. Gross thought, ain’t it? This was hot lemon tea ordered by Pat. Had sore throat, the poor thing. Hasn’t quite recovered from her bout of flu.

Fresh lime with sumboi (dried plum). A thirst quencher on a really hot day. One thing that I always noticed is the amount of fizz that appears at the top of the glass. What is going on between the lime juice and sumboi?

This was very nice. Think the noodles resembled the Japanese noodle, Udon, but not quite as thick. It was fish ball soup with red wine added in. Yummy. Not a lot of red wine was added in which was a good thing. Would feel too hot afterwards. Hee hee!

D had this : Ipoh Oyster Sauce Hor Fun. It’s kway teow noodles with some sort of sweet sauce mixed with oyster sauce. Is it suppose to be with oyster sauce? Never tried Ipoh Hor Fun so am not sure how it’s suppose to taste like.

The rival to Life Cafe’s Spicy Noodle. Only this time it’s known as Taiwan Spicy Noodles. Not as tasty and spicy as the Life Cafe version but definitely less oily. Pascale was raving about this being so tasty. Which it is actually.

I had the Pan Mee Noodle Soup. It’s not easy to find Pan Mee anywhere in Kuching. Only a handful of places have it. It was okay, more ikan billis (deep fried anchovies) than cangkuk manis inside. Still, the taste was essentially there. Need a bit more seasoning methinks but beggars can’t be choosers in Kuching.

Well, that was the lunch menu on Friday. Friday nite’s dinner was steamboat. 🙂 Another posting later on.