Photo(s) Of The Day XI : BBQ Siham

It's been a long time since I last had this BBQ-ed Shellfish / Siham / Kerang and OMG~! LOVE IT~! Had this at Nong & Jimmy Thai Seafood Restaurant at Taman Cahaya, Ampang. Gonna plan another visit soon with N!ck and Naeboo~! WOoooohoooo~!

Photography: Lightning @ Marina Barrage

Suppose to update the previous post but then I decided to leave it as it is and write a new one. Finally I've visited Lowyat to get the cable making my Hard Disk work again. A little regret getting it on a weekday but coz of the freaking jam. The jam was so bad I kept thinking to myself... are people so rich now that they dun need to work during the weekdays? WTF?!? After thinking for a while, the jam might be worse during the weekends. I'm a positive person after all... that I keep telling myself.

The photos in this post are actually taken quite a while back. It was a fine Saturday which unfortunately I had to work half day. The sun was shining so brightly blazing through the sky with thin clouds and it seems to be a good day for photography. So I decided to ask Shi May along to go take some photo at Marina Barrage. She just got her camera not long ago and still doesn't know how to use it. I thought it would be a good chance to ask her to go Marina Barrage and shoot some photos.

The sky was still shining so bright at Choa Chu Kang when I left my house at about 4pm heading towards Marina Barrage. But what I didn't know is.... Singapore is so fucking big, the sun could shine and it feels like burning hell but the rain started to pour like elephants and whales when I'm at Toa Payoh area~!

FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-


The rain poured in BIG DROPS and it was really frustrated~! Had to call Shi May ask her to go home and sleep. Luckily she didn't brought out her camera and she was suppose to go home and pick up her camera before meeting up with me. So I was at Toa Payoh area and the jam started at Pan Island Expressway (PIE) and I didn't know what to do next. I exit at Toa Payoh wanted to make a U-turn to go home already... but dunno was it the freaking weather or I was super frustrated or maybe both... I can't freaking make my way back to the opposite direction~! Stuck in the jam again... I decided to go forward and head to Marina Barrage since I'm just another 5km or less away.

When I reach there... I got another surprise... It was just DRIZZLING there.... Remember I mentioned how fucking big Singapore is?? Just a moment ago I was stuck in the jam because of the sudden downpour and now it's just drizzling at Marina Bay. Woohoo~! Lucky me~! From Marina Barrage, I can see those thick clouds gathered at the north side and I can see lightning striking at least once every 5 minutes. Then I think to myself~ what a wonderful world~ Nah, I wasn't thinking about Louis Armstrong's song. I'm gonna capture some lightning shots today and you bet I did after an hour of shooting around 200 photos.... alone abandoned Shi May :p coz it's still drizzling anyway. Didn't wanna take the risk to ask her come over.













These 6 shots are the clearest I've captured. Actually there were more beautiful lightning than the 6 above but I just couldn't get the timing right. It's really not easy to capture lightning. Well, I wasn't prepared to take photos of lightning that day also. Didn't google up how is it done. It was just depending on my raw instinct and troubleshooting. It seems that the best exposure is around 1.3 - 2.5 seconds.


This photo here is same as the first one on top but it's processed differently. It's a High Dynamic Range (HDR) photo. Posted in the earlier post actually. Heh

After shooting and walking all over Marina Barrage for nearly 2 hours, I got hungry... Then call up Shi May see she wants to go for dinner or not. Then baru remember she already moved to Tampines.... damn far... hahaha. Have to drive past Changi Airport and go up some more. With my GPS, I got no trouble finding her place at all.

Another problem kicked in after I picked her up. Dunno where to eat coz I'm not familiar with Tampines at all~! Coz Tampines is further than HOLLAND (there's a Holland Road in Singapore and that's already damn far for me). So we decided to check out Century Square near the Tampines MRT station. Shi May stays there so she is my GPS at that moment, leading me there using her usual bus route... lol

Problem did not get away after we reach there. Can't find a parking space~! I was driving a truck that time and that truck can only go in car park which has 1.9 meter height clearance at least. That stupid car park has only 1.8 meter clearance~!!

FFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-


Luckily no cars behind... I need to make a 3 point turn at the tight car park entry.

The car park entry looks like this. I've already drove all the way in till the gantry. It's shows 1.9 meter clearance outside... but reach inside... omfg... hit the roof of the truck d~! If you are imagining... the truck in the picture is not the one I drive... lols

Pusing pusing for a while then in the end we gave up and next we decided to try our luck at East Coast Park area. It feels like I almost drive around whole Singapore already. At first wanna go Carl's Junior there, guess what... parking problem again... but this time it's not about height clearance. The car park is just FULL. Drove further down and we decide to makan at C.Nai Hong Kong Cafe Xpress.

When we reach there, I asked for her new camera that she bought, it's a Nikon D5000.... but she didn't bring out -___________________-|||
Was gonna explain to her about some basics of DSLR camera geh... mana tau... Then she told me there's no dial in her camera... How is it possible that there's no dial in a DSLR?? Lagi confused d coz I was showing her my camera and she said her's one dun have dial. lols. (In the end she found her camera dial when she reach home). Then we ordered some food, was damn hungry d coz we reached there about 10pm.


This is fried Enoki Mushroom, or 炸金针菇


Clay pot chicken rice with salted fish or 咸鱼瓦锅鸡饭. This is for me. Ngek ngek~!


Curry Zhu Cheong Fun.... 咖喱猪肠粉 dunno wat it's called in english so direct translate.

Overall the food still not bad. Actually I'm very cincai with food. As long as it doesn't taste bad, I can swallow until I'm full. That's all for this post ler. One of the most memorable day I had in Singapore.

Have more pics for next post. Stay tuned.

Photography: Holiday at Penang Part 2

More photos from Butterworth, Penang. Click on the pictures to enlarge.


Penang Loh Bak togther with tofu and prawn cake.


Shop lots at Jalan Raja Uda.


Penang Asam Laksa


Penang Char Koey Teow


Ice Kacang


Cendol



It felt so peaceful at hometown compare to Singapore. Life here is slower pace compared. Better food too~!

Should have more photos from Penang soon. Something wrong with my Adobe Photoshop recently... The Adobe Camera Raw won't load in Adobe Bridge... dang.

Sushi Zanmai

Visited Midvalley before going back to Singapore during my trip to Cameron Highlands. I actually took more photos at Cameron Highlands but I'm still arranging and editing them at the moment. Because there are about 3GB of photos I've taken there. Many of them are ugly so I'm trying to filter out all those ugly ones.



Actually nothing much I'm going to write today. Just post up some pictures I took when I was having brunch at Sushi Zanmai, Midvalley. This is one of my favourite Japanese Restaurant. Price there is reasonable, quality of the food there is better than those Japanese Franchise outlet like Sushi King or Sakae Sushi.


Picture of the shop is a little blur but what the hell... it's the only picture I took.







This is lobster Harumaki. It was that week's promotion.


Beef salad. My dad likes it. Taste so so to me because it's just normal salad with few slices of beef.


Ordered Tendon again :p Loves it~!

I'll be still editing the Cameron Highlands photo. Stay tuned for more pictures.

Tendon

I had tendon 2 times during Chinese New Year. Just wanna make a quick comparison here.


This one is Sakae Sushi's Tendon.


This is Zanmai Sushi's Tendon.

I think you can pretty much tell from the photo which one is better. I just can't wait to go back KL and visit Zanmai Sushi at The Gardens at MidValley~!!!

NOOOOOEEEE~~~~~~~~~~~~~!!!!11ONE1ELEVEN!11

Old Cucumber Soup

I cooked 老黄瓜汤 Old Cucumber Soup today. Although I have to work, I still manage to buy some ingredients to cook. Soup would be the most ideal for me as it doesn't require much attention to cook. Didn't really planned to cook actually but then I just couldn't stand eating outside food.



The ingredients are as above photo.
1. 1 Old Cucumber
2. 1 Carrot
3. A small plate of salted veggie
4. A small bowl of red dates. (Actually a estimated a handful of it)
5. Pork ribs/bones (U can also use chicken carcass actually... but I prefer pork ribs or bones coz it gives the soup better flavor)

I missed out tofu and dried stingray. T_T
It was a rush job gathering the ingredients. Was double parking also... hahaha... luckily no saman.

Preparing it is also easy like the Lotus Root Peanut Soup I posted few days ago.

First you should wash the salted veggie. Wash out all the salt and sand and soak it for about 15 - 20 minutes. It should be about time after you prepare all the items below.

Then u scrap out some skin from the old cucumber. You dun need to skin it. Cut it into quarters, remove the seeds at the center of the cucumber and cut them to about 1 inch wide evenly.

For the carrot, skin it and cut it into small pieces however u want to consume it.

You can cut the dates into half or slice it open so that the sweetness of the red dates will blend into the soup.

The pork ribs/bones just rinse it with water. My advice is as usual, get the butcher to cut it into small pieces for you. Dun get urself injured and damage ur chopper. Actually my mom would boil a pot of water and scald the pork for few seconds and take it out. She told me that would get rid of some smell present in the meat and it would also make the soup clearer. But I dun do that coz I think the nutrients would have been washed away.

The forgotten ingredient: tofu... just cut it into 4 quarters and throw it into the pot. Dried stingray u just need to rinse it and throw into the pot.



U can look above photo as reference.



After 2 hours plus of slow fire, THE SOUP IS READY~!!!!

Note: U do NOT need to add salt to the soup. It should be salty enough due to the salted veggie. Control the amount of salted veggie to put in. Ideal amount would be salty enough for you to consume the soup without further adding salt. However if you put too little and find ur soup is not salty enough, feel free to add in more salt.

This time I was able to take pictures of the soup b4 it was finished~! YAY~!!

I think the next soup I will make is either radish soup or Sai Yong Choi Tong.

Lotus Root Peanut Soup

This is the first thing I cooked myself for this year~! Lotus Root Peanut Soup or 莲藕花生汤 is the soup I love most~! It's not hard to make it's really nice too.

Ingredients are simple. All u need is the following:

1. Lotus Root - Approx 500g
2. Peanut - Approx 200g
3. 1 carrot
4. Red date - a handful(u can borrow my hand if u need it)
5. Pork ribs/bones - approx 500g (I just asked for SGD6 actually... so dun really know the weight)
6. Salted dry veggie - 50g maybe... I just bought 40sens of them

The proportion above is for about 5 person's consumption.

Preparation is even easier. Clean the mud away from the lotus root and cut away the joints. Just slice them into the sizes of ur preference.

For the peanuts, u just need to wash them and dump it into the pot.

Skin the carrots and cut them into small pieces.

For the red dates, just slice it at the center of the date till u reach the seed. Dun need to cut them into half as u just need the sweetness of the dates go into the soup.

For the pork ribs/bones, u better ask the butcher chop it into small pieces for u. It's not that easy to cut. I leave it to the butcher as I dun wan to get myself hurt or get my chopper damaged.

As for the salted veggie, wash away the salt and any sand that may present. Soak it for about 15 minutes. Have to wash them if u dun wan ur soup to be too salty. I din put any salt as the salted veggie is enough to make the soup salty.

If u dunno wat size to cut the things into, just refer to my picture above (they are still raw).

After I done all my preparation. I threw everything into the slow cooker. Like the name suggest... the slow cooker is SLOWWW......Too slow for my liking... So I transferred all the ingredients into the stainless steel pot and cook it with slow fire (which is still way faster than slow cooker).

After 2 hours plus, the soup was ready.

AND THE SOUP WAS FINISH EVEN B4 I WAS ABLE TO TAKE A FUCKING PICTURE~!! ZOMGWTFBBQ~!!!
T_________T

Home Cooked Food No.1

This is prolly my first post about home cook food... w00ts~! I cook at least once every week now for a reason. I'm bored eating outside food. Especially food in Singapore. Everywhere I go, the food taste the same. I dunno if those food they sell at food courts are from the same source or wat... they taste more or less the same and I am really sick of it already~!!

Mom and Dad was here to visit me last weekend, so they brought over some food from Malaysia and we cooked together.



This pot of rice is completely done by me~! YESH~! I'm specialized in cooking rice without a rice cooker. Hehe... Bare in mind that this is just a non-stick steamboat pot. All these are thanks to my living experience at UK. Without a rice cooker, I can only control the heat of the hotplate and turn the heat off once the water dries up completely. I added a little brown rice coz brown rice is more nutritious and healthy. The rice looks nice rite?? >_<



This dish is known as "bang guang char" or "jiu hu char" in hokkien. My mom learn how to cook this from few of my aunts and improvised it. The main ingredient is Turnips... I think it's called Jicama otherwise in hokkien it's called "bang guang" and in Cantonese is called "shar cot" along with other ingredients such as dried black mushroom, carrot, dried squid and a little garlic. Wrap it with fresh lettuce and it will taste like heaven with all the juice in the mouth along with the crispy lettuce. WOOHOO~!!



Then here come the chicken dish.... I dunno wat it's called but I've been eating this since I was small. As long as I know how to cook it, who cares wat it's called rite? lulz
This dish is very simple. Just marinate the chicken with salt, oyster sauce, light soy sauce and salt. Then put in the mushrooms, black fungus, red dates, ginger and dried lily buds and steam it for around 15 minutes. It has been a year since I last had this. W00ts~!! Got the chance to eat it again.



Last but not least... CHILI PADI~!!!!

Yeah, that's all for now for my first post on home cooked food. Mom and Dad is on the way here and visit me again this week while I'm typing this now... They are just too free at the moment... haha.

I go have a nap first.... So sleepy.... Zzzz.....

Long Beach Seafood

This is another $0 dinner. It's $0 because the company paid for it, not bcoz the dinner is free. The occasion was that we finished a big project and we had dinner with our client. Long Beach is a good place to bring ang moh for dinner.

Why is it a good place?
1. The seafood there are really fresh~! Coz everything is still swimming and alive until you order them.
2. They cook it Asian style but suitable for ang moh consumption.
3. The place is got lots of ang mohs, so can be considered high class gua.
4. They serve beer. You give ang moh any alcohol, they will be HAPPY d.


Raw lobster~ The meat is being removed and placed on the white plate there. You can either eat the meat raw with wasabi or u can boiled it inside the soup. The herbal soup is quite nice. Gets salty after boiling it for a long time tho.


Sean, George, me and the poor lobster taking photo with us~.~
The whiskers were still moving when it was served. Talk about animal cruelty.. =.=||
As you can see... we had beer. Something that couldn't be avoided when u're with ang mohs... They can drink whenever and wherever...


Steamed Mussels with lots of minced garlic. This is the best dish of the night. I find that this is the best way to cook seafood. The sweetness of the seafood is preserved and on top of that, the minced garlic~~ man I'm lovin it~!


Thai Style Deep fried Fish. Nothing special about this fish tho... It's really a big waste to deep fry such a fresh fish. Well, the ang mohs like it... nothing much can be done as the ang moh like it this way.


Pepper Crab~one of the popular dish at Long Beach! See how big are the clamps there~! I can assure you that it's filled with meat inside. Not some crab with big shell but empty inside.


Although the head is high in cholesterol... but nvm lar~ only eat once in the blue moon. Somemore I exercise so often already. No harm lar... hahaha


Then the poor lobster got chopped into pieces and fried with flat noodles. Tho the taste is good, but it's the last dish... I'm too full to eat anymore by the time it was served.


Click here to get detailed map

25 Dempsey Road, Tanglin Village,
opposite Singapore Botanic Gardens

Above is their address. You can also find out more at www.longbeachseafood.com.sg

We then had Durian near the restaurant. Now u know why I grow fat so easily. Haha.
<(=oo=)>

$0 Lunch

Myst3 show off his/her $0 meal. Now is my turn for $0 lunch.



Simple, just pinjam some lettuce, cabbage, egg, cheese broccoli, tuna & sardine from colleague. Put all these ingredients and eat with 2 slices of bread.... TADA~! ... $0 sandwich for lunch~! (Didn't take photo for my pretty sandwich coz I already swallowed it b4 I can take any photos.

*************************

I got another $0 lunch here... but the unhealthy version...


OMG... all the meat... I'm so glad that I am still alive after this meal...

All the food above either "belanja" by colleague or boss. SO... it's $0~!

Brewerkz

This was suppose the night where Munak, Fritz and me go meet Elin for the first time. Somehow Munak got stuck in KL and he fly kite... so we went ahead without him.

Brewerkz got 3 outlets in Singapore. We went to the outlet located at Clarke Quay. My 4th visit to Brewerkz now. The previous 3 times, I was there together with clients/boss/colleagues. I am glad that this time I have 2 gals having beer together with me here... although I did most of the drinking... Fritz did helped out a little.... Elin still small girl, she had only few sips...^^

We ordered 2 jugs of beer, 1 jug of Golden Ale and another jug of Wheat Beer.


Refreshing Cold Beer~

What's so different about beer served here? From my amateurish opinion, the most obvious characteristic that distinguish beer served in Brewerkz compared to Tiger Beer is the aroma. And of course, the beer here is FRESH as they brew their beer locally or I should say... they made their beer in the restaurant itself. There is nothing fresher than this you can ever get.


The we got freaking big onion rings.... really missed my days in UK where we can get big onions like this over there.


Buffalo wings that Munak recommended to us during the previous meet up.... lets just say that neither Fritz, Elin or me knows how to appreciate the wings.... hehe (We can't finish the wings u know~!!)


Calamari... just love it~!! Should have ordered more of these~!


Seafood Spaghetti ordered by Elin~! I tasted some and I really like it. Might order this for myself next time.


I didn't take any close shots on Fritz's mutton.... that is sure some big piece of thigh there...


And more camwhore~~

First time I enjoyed myself at Brewerkz honestly. There was so much crap talking that we were the last table to leave the restaurant. I'm sure I'll be back visiting Brewerkz again soon. YESH~!