: : Food Porn Watch : :

I’m a little bit late posting this. Alrite, more than a little bit late. I’m WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY late.

A brilliant work on catching up with most of the English food blogs on a site titled Food Porn Watch. Yes, we food bloggers are a devious bunch to tantalize you with the temptations of wonderful cooking. Pictures galore with tons of recipes to boot.

Courtesy of Jarrett Byrnes

: : IMBB ~ Around the World in a Bowl of Rice : :

Wena : Aik! Today is the day lah!

Granny : Aiya! We have to go to market and buy the black black thing lah!

Wet Market.

Granny : Got aw kana or not?

Seller : For you, ah, auntie, one ringgit only. Young people dunno how to eat this now lah.

And this is the aw kana which is similar to black olives. The skin is black but the flesh on the inside is very dark purple. It is extremely salty and the packet that we bought came from China. For today’s IMBB, since we are going around the world, we got rice from Thailand, the olives from China and a wonderful granny previously from Penang but residing in Sarawak now. These black olives are very very salty. It is so salty that once you put them into a little jar and chuck them into the fridge, it will be good to eat for at least one year! Granny says that it’s good to eat with porridge as it gives a nice salty taste to an otherwise bland meal.

Anyway, onto cooking the fried rice with aw kana. We had it at Lok Thian about a month ago and it was delicious. So, we decided to make it at home for the IMBB hosted by chez pim.

We cut some slices of chicken. Note that it needs to be in small strips.

Heat up some oil in a wok and stir fry about 1 teaspoon of the olive as well as the chicken until it’s cook.

Throw in about 3 cups of rice. The best rice to use is those that have been cooked the night before so that most of the moisture has dried up and the rice is less wet. If there is too much moisture in the rice, the final fried rice can be soggy. Anyway, mixed the rice and press down on it to mix it with the aw kana. If the skin of the olive is still in big pieces, use the frying stick to break it up into little pieces.

An egg is added into the rice and again, mixed and stirred until the whole dish has been cooked.

As the dish looked a bit colourless, we opened a packet of cashew nuts (salty ones) and used the nuts to add some colour and flavour to the dish.

And this is how it looks like : Fried Rice with Salty Black Olives. Nice, no? Believe me, it tasted really good. And I broke my Atkins fast today with this bowl of rice. The last time I ever had a bowl of rice was 4 weeks ago. It tasted so good! Note that if one would like a more salty flavour to the dish, just add in more black olives but be careful though! It is immensely salty!

For more dishes this Sunday, check out Pim’s blog for updates!

: : IMBB ~ Around the World in a Bowl of Rice : :

Wena : Aik! Today is the day lah!

Granny : Aiya! We have to go to market and buy the black black thing lah!

Wet Market.

Granny : Got aw kana or not?

Seller : For you, ah, auntie, one ringgit only. Young people dunno how to eat this now lah.

And this is the aw kana which is similar to black olives. The skin is black but the flesh on the inside is very dark purple. It is extremely salty and the packet that we bought came from China. For today’s IMBB, since we are going around the world, we got rice from Thailand, the olives from China and a wonderful granny previously from Penang but residing in Sarawak now. These black olives are very very salty. It is so salty that once you put them into a little jar and chuck them into the fridge, it will be good to eat for at least one year! Granny says that it’s good to eat with porridge as it gives a nice salty taste to an otherwise bland meal.

Anyway, onto cooking the fried rice with aw kana. We had it at Lok Thian about a month ago and it was delicious. So, we decided to make it at home for the IMBB hosted by chez pim.

We cut some slices of chicken. Note that it needs to be in small strips.

Heat up some oil in a wok and stir fry about 1 teaspoon of the olive as well as the chicken until it’s cook.

Throw in about 3 cups of rice. The best rice to use is those that have been cooked the night before so that most of the moisture has dried up and the rice is less wet. If there is too much moisture in the rice, the final fried rice can be soggy. Anyway, mixed the rice and press down on it to mix it with the aw kana. If the skin of the olive is still in big pieces, use the frying stick to break it up into little pieces.

An egg is added into the rice and again, mixed and stirred until the whole dish has been cooked.

As the dish looked a bit colourless, we opened a packet of cashew nuts (salty ones) and used the nuts to add some colour and flavour to the dish.

And this is how it looks like : Fried Rice with Salty Black Olives. Nice, no? Believe me, it tasted really good. And I broke my Atkins fast today with this bowl of rice. The last time I ever had a bowl of rice was 4 weeks ago. It tasted so good! Note that if one would like a more salty flavour to the dish, just add in more black olives but be careful though! It is immensely salty!

For more dishes this Sunday, check out Pim’s blog for updates!

: : Homecook Egg Dish : :

After 3 weeks of not being able to connect on to streamyx, I got on for about 15 minutes and then it went berserk. So now, am back to using my trusty old Jaring account. The inside word is that Telekom Kuching knows what is the problem in the Tabuan Jaya area but does not do anything about it. Stupid. And Telekom being an IPO company. Not to mention people who like to ‘work’ from the canteen rather than at their desk. Telekom Malaysia likes to brag that their broadband services are cheaper compared to most countries. What they fail to mention is what you pay is what you get. Bah!

Anyway, here is a great homecook dish. I’m sure some of you would recognize it.

Beat up 2 eggs. Add some pork, salt and pepper into it as well as a splash of water. Then steam it until it is cook. And voila! We have a delicious steam egg dish with meat inside. Some people would like small pieces of salted vegetables into the dish and of course, more meat than what is shown here. Goes extremely well with rice and is one of my favourite childhood dishes. Very easy to made.

This is how it looks like inside. Other than pork, one can substitute the meat with minced chicken or minced prawn. Not sure whether it would go well with mince beef or mince lamb though. Anyway, this was my lunch dish on Friday last week, I think.

: : Warning! GORY : :

Proceed with caution! Gory pictures ahead. If you have no stomach for blood and internal organs, please do not proceed any further. Today, we’re going to look at how to cut up a fish.

Uncle Cyril came home at around lunchtime after spending the whole night fishing out at sea. Came back with 3 big Ruby Red Snappers. Looks beautiful, no? It weighs about 3-5 kilos each which is pretty hefty. Well, thought it was time I learnt how to cut a fish properly. Surprise that Wena doesn’t know how to? Well, better late than never. So, this is how Granny did it.

One thing’s for sure, after all that cutting up, I’m glad we did it outside. All three of us got sprayed with sticky water and occasion droplets of blood here and there.

First of all, one needs this handy tool : a descaling device. Looks very wicked and if one is not careful, the spikes can do serious damage to one’s hand. However, it’s extremely useful to remove the scales of a big fish faster than using a knife.

Some of the smaller fishes that Uncle Cyril caught. The top two are called banana fish. Don’t ask me why because I seriously have no idea. I think he mentioned that the bottom one was a sardine.

Anyway, here is the scaling device in action. The huge spray of fish scale just went everywhere. Looks like flakes of ice shavings flying around, if you ask me.

Next, remove all the fins from the fish, especially the ones on the top and bottom of the fish. Be very careful when you do so because most likely, there will be quite a lot of sharp pointed ends on it. Use the cleaver to spread them out and then give it a good whack to chop it off! Also, cut off the tail.

After that, it’s time to remove the head. Make a diagonal slide and start cutting it away. At this point, it’s good to note that one must have an extremely sharp cleaver to do is and also be prepared to whack the fish really hard with it. The bone is quite thick so it’s going to be hard to remove. Although the bone is not as tough as chicken bones.

With the head removed, it is now much easier to remove the internal organs. Be very careful when doing this as not to burst the green sac which is the gall bladder. If you do, the contents from the bladder will make the flesh of the fish very bitter. Believe me, you do not want the fish to taste terrible. After that, the fish was divited up into 2 parts to be frozen. Granny usually cuts the fish into smaller pieces once she’s ready to cook them.

Now, we also cut up the fish head to make assam fish head curry. The head is sliced into have and the gills must be removed.

Granny : Must remove this part (gills) wor! All the germs there!

Granny : Humph! I don’t think so! I see it still there lah!

The rest of the catch. Smaller fishes and the spotted one is a tasty grouper. Not the greasy version but one that can be steamed with no problems. I prefer the grouper to be fried rather than steam because the flesh tends to be hard.

Anyway, we double bagged the fish and squeeze them into the freezer. There was enoough fish to last us for at least a month!

This is the reason why I have a healthy respect for fishmongers and butchers. Imagine having to do this every day for hours!

: : Italian Dining in Brighton : :

Just read about this at the gastroblog. Carlo has rented a small restaurant for the night and will be preparing a wonderful night of good home-cooked Italian food! Wow! It’s the first time I’ve ever heard of this happening : a food blogger doing it. Sounds very very interesting.

Unfortunately, I’m stuck 16 hours away from Brighton, England. Darn! Else, it’s a steal for 15 pounds! From the menu, it looks like an extremely delicious four course menu.

It’s by reservations as only 25 places are available. Contact carlo for a reservation.