That reminds me of the many cafe and restaurant chalkboards that misspell menu items. Here’s one from Equinox Cafe/Bar that made me stop short yesterday as I first spotted their version of this tuna salad.

This was meant to be a Salmon, Green beans and Egg Caviar salad but N decided to substitute snowpeas as they looked fresher on the day he went to the market. Even A, who doesn’t like smoked salmon all that much, enjoyed this dish. I managed to sneak a little bowl of leftovers away to have for lunch the next day.

J&L, big Neil Perry fans, brought this Salmon with Tomato-Braised Chickpeas and Herbed Yogurt. According to them, Neil Perry’s recipes are deceptively simple, more straightforward than Jamie Oliver’s.

J’s dish, a Dry Prawn Curry, was pronounced the most delicious looking when she saw the photos later on. Tasty as this was, J didn’t agree with J&L that Neil Perry’s dishes are easier to cook!

Unfortunately, I don’t have a photo of my Honey-Braised Duck with Orange and Olives but we did finish the night off with E’s Lemon Yogurt Cake, baked on behalf of S&B.

All-in-all, a good night with good friends with Neil Perry’s Good Food.

I love this tradition of tossing the prosperity salad! I love watching everyone getting their chopsticks in and the vegetables getting progressively jumbled. It tastes great too, of course.

Mum cooked some fantastic food and we were able to invite the guys from work to join us. Apart from the salad, there was loh bak, fish balls, roast pork ribs, duck stuffed with glutinous rice, noodles, fried rice, steamed chicken.

Enjoy the photos and best wishes for a prosperous new year!

We only spent 1.5 days there but I think we manage to fit an admirable amount of food in during this short period! On our first night, we visited Guerney Drive. It was pouring with rain so we wandered through the shopping centre next door until the skies let up. As soon as the rain eased, we were out of the shopping complex and in amongst the stalls. Good timing because we managed to get seats just before the crowd descended.

We started with Assam Laksa, one of A.’s favourite dishes, and boy was it good. Fantastically sour and spicy, the only thing it was missing was the black sauce – what’s that called again? We also tried a cuttlefish salad (Ju Hu Eng Chai) and I cannot recommend this dish highly enough – I just couldn’t get enough of it!

Of course, after reading so much about Poh Piah, we had to try this as well. Nyeh, wasn’t the greatest poh piah that I’ve had. A little on the soggy side.

This was washed down with soya bean milk, which we kinda had to order whether we liked it or not because the tables belong to that stall. Good thing that we did like it. I was told off at another table because I didn’t want to order freshly squeezed fruit juice and the guy grumbled that I couldn’t just sit there and not order from them! Ooops!

A. decided that he couldn’t leave without tasting the satay too so here’s the picture.

We came back to Guerney drive another night, after spending a couple of days in Langkawi, and ordered the Assam Laksa from another stall. This one did come with the black sauce but A. thought that the Laksa from the first stall was better.

The ice kachang served in Penang is also slightly different, made more decadent with the addition of ice cream. The one you see here had peanut icecream. Yum, I love ice kachang. I used to just eat the shaved ice sweetened with rosewater and evaporated milk from the top and leave the other stuff at the bottom of the dish for dad. Naughty, huh? I didn’t like all that red bean, corn and attap although the grass jelly was okay. Now, I’m happy to try some of it but my favourite part is still the flavoured ice.

One of my other favourites is Ban Chang Kueh, a pancake sprinkled with crushed peanuts and sugar. I had a really hard time tracking them down both this trip and the last, especially the thin crispy ones, so when we came across this stall selling Apong Manis and Apong Balik, we got a serve of each. The Apong Manis just consisted of batter spread very thinly over the little wok so it’s very light and airy. Didn’t love it. The Apong Balik was better though and I think it was filled with corn and coconut.

A. loves anything with peanuts so we tried these thingys as well. I cannot remember what they are called although I’m sure some Malaysians could help me out with this. We really liked this version cos the pastry was really thin and it was choc full of peanuts (makes it sound like a Snickers bar, doesn’t it?).

I’ve always wanted to try cooking with zucchini flowers but I’ve also always chickened out at the last minute. Not today though. Today, we visited the Abootsford Convent market and we happened to stop by one of the stalls to ask if they were selling mulberries. Only ones that had gone mouldy unfortunately but they did have zucchini flowers, 10 heads of which came home with us.

What to do with them though? We didn’t have any ricotta or fetta but I remembered some home-made babaganoush and parmagiano reggiano sitting in the fridge. So, our zucchini flowers were filled with a mixture of these two ingredients before being battered and fried. A sprinkle of fleur de sel from Ginny together with some lemon wedges on the side and voila! Serve and eat immediately!

While the boys were enjoying the zucchini flowers, I prepared the salad. While browsing at a book sale a couple of days ago, I was instantly smitten by the beauty of Julie Le Clerc’s cookbook ‘Taking Tea in the Medina’. The vibrant photo of this particular cucumber and fennel salad scattered with torn mint leaves and pomegranate seeds made me buy the book. Thumbs up for this salad. The pomegranate seeds are a little pale but they were revived from the depths of our freezer so you will have to forgive them for looking a little anaemic.

I also grilled some chicken thighs which had been marinated in a Jamaican Jerk spice mix for about 30 min. The thighs were basted with a sauce of brandy, lime and more of the spice mix while grilling. Serve with a wedge of lime.

Battered Zucchini Flowers

3 egg yolks
2-3 tbs flour
1/2 cup cold mineral water

3 egg whites

1. Remove stamen from centre of flower, wash gently in cold water and pat dry
2. Fill flowers with mixture of babaganoush and shaved parmagiano reggiano
2. Beat the egg yolks with flour. Season with salt & pepper then add mineral water and mix until smooth
3. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Fold into egg yolk mixture.
4. Dip flowers into batter and shallow fry for a few minutes on each side until golden brown.
5. Sprinkle with salt and serve, with a side of lemon wedges, straight away