Lunch @ Kissaten Cafe & Restaurant, IOI Boulevard, Puchong

"You come to a Japanese restaurant and order a burger??"

We had to run some errands in Puchong, and since I had no idea what or where to eat in Puchong, I just opened google map and looked for the nearest mall in Puchong. We ended up at IOI Boulevard and after wandering around the mall for a bit, we decided to eat at Kissaten Cafe & Restaurant. Kissaten, in Japanese means coffee shop and serves Japanese-fusion food such as salad, pasta, Japanese noodles, pizza, sashimi and much more. As I flicked through the menu, the teriyaki pork burger caught my eye since the photo was very enticing. Hubby was surprised at my choice seeing this was a Japanese cafe - burgers are usually associated with Western food, right?

The restaurant was quite spacious and service was very good. The place was packed with the lunch crowd but we didnt have to wait long for our food to arrive.

Nice and spacious

The teriyaki pork burger (RM10.90) turned out to be an excellent choice. It was a really tall burger, so I struggled slightly to put the whole thing in my mouth without making a mess. When I placed the order, the waiter actually asked how many portions I wanted to cut the burger into and this being my first time, I said half. Maybe the better answer would be into quarters since it would be easier for me to handle this sloppy burger.

That aside, I loved the juicy patty... the teriyaki sauce is a great accompaniment to this burger. The pork patty was sandwiched between an egg, lettuce and tomatoes. The egg yolk was only a little runny, which was good or else I would have! made a bigger mess than I did. Hubby certainly had a good laugh at my expense (messy face) and we joked that someone here on a date should not order the teriyaki burger or else they might scare their date away. LoL!

A great burger

A mess I don't mind getting into

I was feeling ravenous so I also ordered a side portion of Pepper Teriyaki Wings (RM6.90) which fell a little short of expectations. This time, the teriyaki sauce didn't really go too well with the wings this combination tasted a little too sweet for my liking.


Hubby had the Moonlight Udon Set (RM19.80) which came with a moonlight udon, yaki gyoza and green tea. The udon and broth was decent, but he didn't really like the look nor the taste of the fine tempura batter pieces which accompanied this dish. Fortunately, the yaki gyoza was very good; flavoursome and moist meat filling with a lovely crisp exterior.

Moonlight Udon

Yaki Gyoza

Kissaten at IOI Boulevard

Verdict: The teriyaki pork burger was satisfyingly good. I am eyeing their mentaiko pasta for next time.

Kissaten also has an outlet in Jaya One. Join their Facebook page here for latest updates.

Non-halal.

Opening times: 11.30am - 12.00am. Fri and Sat open til 2.00am.

Location: Kissaten Cafe & Restaurant, D-G-57, Blk D, IOI Boulevard, Jalan Kenari 5, Bandar Puchong Jaya, 47100 Puchong, Selangor, Malaysia.

Tel: 03-8070 6307

GPS Coordinates: 3.046647, 101.621003

Seasonal Somtam

Chiang Mai in August is not Chiang Mai in February.

In August the air -- relatively clean, with not a trace of dry-season smoke or dust -- is heavy with moisture. You love those steely gray clouds, you pray for them. Even torrential rain is tolerable, certainly preferable to blue skies. Because when the sun comes out it's so clammy-hot that sweat begins dripping from your earlobes in minutes.

Chiang Mai markets in August are not Chiang Mai markets in February. The result of monsoonal rains is evident in the mushrooms, mushrooms everywhere. Last month we cooked, in our adopted apartment, bushels of petite chanterelles and a few other varieties varieties of mushrooms I can't name, often with tender curlicue-tipped gourd vines displayed in fist-thick bundles by seemingly every other seller at Muang Mai market.

We ate no mangoes, but devoured plenty of school bus-orange sour starfruit picked in someone's home garden and sold from a basket in front of a travel agency on Tha Phae Road. The travel agency owner also offered up bushel baskets of fresh santol -- a tart, somewhat astringent fruit with vanilla to blush pink flesh and velvety peach-fuzzed skin -- and had a refigerator case stocked with homemade santol jam (delicious stirred into fresh yogurt) and santol pickled with chilies. Last month in Chiang Mai the vanilla scented watermelon we purchased every evening outside Don Lam Yai market in April were scarce; our preferred vendor proffered green guava instead. And carts laden with pomelos lined up in the lane behind ! Warorot market.

Some of the rainy season's bounty finds its way into seasonal somtam. To sample a salad made with santol -- which is gatawn in Thai, ba dtun in northern Thai -- we payed a visit to our regular somtam guy, in the alley next to Bpu Bpia temple (behind Warorot market). Dtam ba dtun is what we ordered ("pounded" santol), and asked him to exclude the salty preserved crab he usually pounds into his version. Into his big mortar went the fruit, meticulously cleavered into thin slices, as well as sugar, a bit of lime, chilies, and several mini ladles of bplaa raa.

What came out of the mortar was a surprisingly rich dish of soft-ish fruit thickly coated with a fishy "dressing" reminiscent of that which cloaks anchovy-heavy Caesar salad. For us fishiness is not a bad thing, and the dressing played nicely off the assertive tartness of the fruit. We picked our way around pieces of pit and ate our dtam ba dtun with morning glory (water spinach) stems and sliced cucumber to tame the heat of the salad's fresh green chilies.

After a week of searching off and on for dtam som-o (pounded pomelo) -- the fruit is a fav! orite of Dave's, who is especially enamored of tart-sweet Thai pomelos -- we found it on our last morning in town at a row of stalls across the moat from Chiang Mai old town's Somphet market.

This was a fairly straightforward dish: pomelo pounded to near bits with green chilies, fish sauce, a bit of bplaa raa (at our request) and a little lime. Quartered green golfball eggplants added a hint of of bitterness. Overall the dish was bracing, refreshing, just the thing on a soggy-sticky late morning during northern Thailand's wet season.

Crabs ! Crabs ! Crabs !

Crabs are crustaceans that feed on algae and animal matter and are mostly found in freshwater, ocean, on land or farmed.

Why is it that not everyone like to eat crabs ?

Some maybe due to health reasons, put off with the hassle of getting their hands dirty..........etc.

My whole family are crabs lovers-cooked any style.

Eating crabs is an art-eat it with a slow and tender loving care- skills (harnessed from experience) are needed to pick and dig up each and every piece of the fine and succulent flesh-breaking the fragile shell segment by segment.

Have anyone of you seen people eating crabs with a pair of chopsticks?

Never eat crabs during the 1st and 15th Lunar day of each month.

Now, which types of cooked crabs, turn you ON................... ?

Charcoal fire grilled crabs ?. Clay pot butter crabs ?.Black pepper crabs ?. Salted duck egg yolk crabs ? Fresh flower crab for steamboat ? Deep fried soft shell crabs-eaten whole including the shell ? Steamed Australia snow crab ? Stuffed crab ?. Curry leaves flavored crabs ? Sweet and sour crabs ?

Steamed crabs with orange roe ? Steamed small sized crabs with egg white

Steamed big sized crabs with egg white ?TeoChew style chillies crabs with lots of chopped Bird's eye chillies ?

Sunnybank Oriental @ Sunnybank, Brisbane

If you are reading this and you were in Brisbane yesterday, you and I would have felt the sudden change in warm weather; welcoming Spring which is exactly a whole cycle since I landed in Australia.

With the car thermometer showing 33 degrees, our whole house felt like an oven and we resorted to driving about, looking for a place to eat, preferably with air-con. Our drive yesterday lead us to Sunnybank, with half a mind to buy lotus root to cook soup. The original idea of having ramen at Sunnybank Plaza was dashed after seeing the queue of a dozen people.

Walking around and seeing a rather mouthwatering menu on display, we walked into Sunnybank Oriental. With quite a number of people inside, it had to be at least half decent. Indeed it was.

Although the menu probably had 50 or more items and we ordered two, i must say we were lucky to order two items that were satisfyingly enough.

The Wat Dan Hor is becoming quite a staple order when we eat in places that serves one. The love of eating hor fun in an egg based sauce started from the days of university where we frequently visited this place and ordered nothing but Wat Dan Hor. For those wondering what is Wat Dan Hor, it is usually called "Combination Noodles something or rather". While the version in Sunnybank Oriental is not the best, i will happily order this again.

When the claypot beef brisket arrived, I was in shock at the portion. For AUD 14.90, the claypot can easily feed two plus the bowl of rice that is filled to the brim. Full of flavour and not overly spiced, even the Wife who will usually shy away at the dish was picking into it happily.

Finishing off the meal with a huge glass of "yin yeong" or a glass of milk coffee and tea in one was a good choice.

After going back to Urbanspoon to look up on this place and reading comments like small portions and average food, I better be thanking my lucky stars that our meal was enormous and tasted above average in my books.

Address and contact details:

Verdict: 3.5 stars out of 5 stars. Asian cafe with a huge variety of rice and noodle dishes, not to mention again, huge portions that can you eat half and take away half for your next meal, what more can I ask for?

Naked Wines Argentinean Rising Star

It's a non-painful affliction, apart from a certain embarrassment, but I am sure I wasn't the only one suffering from Malbec finger last week. The condition results from an over-indulgence in tasting Argentinean wines, not solely Malbec, but Tannat, Cabernet and so on. The symptoms are simple - red stained fingers and I wasn't even pouring!

The event, held in the Lord's Cricket ground pod was a side show to the annual Argentinean trade tasting, a gathering of loyal customers and faithful wine bloggers, hosted by Naked Wines. They were after a new wine to list and winemaker to support with a guaranteed 50,000 order. There were a lot of wines to taste.

A narrowing of the running list resulted in four wines from our table (there were five or six other tables) being put forward to the second taste off. Interestingly several of our selection plus from another table were from one producer...

One wine really stood out - I even tweeted about it on the day - a blended wine, Dramatis Personae 2010 from Bodegas Argenceres [Adegga / Snooth. Amazing value at, as we later discovered, about 7 and one of the cheapest wines in the room!

It so very nearly made it to the Naked Wines list. Just pipped in a vote off by Oscar Biondolillo's Aguma Reserva Tannat 2009 [Adegga / Snooth]. Looking for another bout of the red stained finger I ordered six bottles as soon as it appeared on the Naked Wines Website, good thing I did it then too as the wine has now sold out.

While I'm not party to the machinations of the buying team I do hope that the other top runners, not only the second placed wineand more wines from the Biondolillo stable make it to Naked Wines too.

Below a few photographs, not mine I should add but taken by the talented Richard Toplis, from the day.

Over 40 Naked customers gathered in London to spend 50,000 of YOUR money.Finding the best unknown winemaker is like finding a needle in a haystack. After 125 wines, 3 rounds, blackened Archangel teeth and puffy red eyes, there could only be ONE winner. It's official, Oscar Biondilillo is the first Naked Wines Rising Star gold medal winner. His winning wine, Aguma Tannat Reserva 2009, is mouth-wateringly monstrous. Silky, powerful and perfumed, it was without doubt the BEST wine in the room."

Instagram update

Note:Ill be slower in postings these 2 weeks; cause Im moving house. Boo to packing, but yay to bigger kitchen!

Its been a few rounds of macaron, trying new flavours n stuff. And u know, its just one of the faster bakes unlike cakes which take a whopping 30 mins or 1 hr in the oven. Because my new found love is making macarons at the oddest flavour or (i wish) most clever combinations, Ive been stuck to making quite a few batches already; Macaronathon ? well, kinda HAHa

Sorry for the quality, its taken with iPad, not iPhone. oh and theres another one, but forgot to take the pictures. Haha

OMG SO LOVE THIS !!!It is probably the cutest thing you would ever see on this blog. haha why am I so excited over this Hello Kitty Macaron. Am going to do a proper post of this soon ok. But perhaps after Ive settled down in my new house. If you would like to have these Hello kitty macarons in your party or as gift, please drop me an email. We can get from there. Email is up on the right.

and in the midst of all that, a 3 tier Chanel inspired birthday cake, for Chrislyn, who had pool side 21st birthday party. I never had such a 21st birthday party HAha, well, its ok. I make yummy cakes well for myself every year.

Ok thats kinda it for now.

Oh oh, just one last one.

Playing around with latte art, well, still a long way to go.

Ok ciao.

forum

Tawakal Hokkien Mee @ Aik Yuen Kopitiam

It was a Saturday evening and time for a dinner, there was no food @ home and there were only 3 of us at home. I decided to take the 2 young ones to Jalan Pahang (near Tawakal Hospital) for some fried noodles.

The boys find the place interesting with lot of customers and sitting at the road sides. A typical Malaysian street food scene.

We anticipated that our Hokkien mee would come out late and we "taupau" / pack a Mee Goreng fried by an Indian lady at a nearby stall. We reckoned it has to be good cos it's not being fried by any foreigner like a Myanmar but by an Indian lady. Truly the mee goreng was lovely. We were satisfied with her fried noodle.

Business has been brisk here but the entire place looks disarrayed, dish washing just next to you at the corridor of the shop house and the drinks are prepared at the corridor. Everything looks temporary. I was initially very pleased with the service we had our fish cake reasonably fast and followed by with our Cantonese fried noodle.

Delicious fried (saito) fish cake with golden skin and bouncy bites.

Cantonese Fried Noodle was also yummy.

The only thing you dislike about place is the cleanliness, waiting attitude and cook smoking while at the woks. I would suggest that you just close one eye and enjoy the food like we do.

The Hokkien mee was undeniably awesome and everyone of us like the taste of the Hokkien Mee even though the fried noodle came pretty late.

Restoran Aik Yuen
Jalan Sarikei,
Off Jalan Pahang Barat,
53000 Kuala Lumpur.GPS : 3.177885,101.699288