Chinese New Year 2011 was celebrated by my family with a Reunion dinner before Chinese New Year. There definitely has to be somewhat of a reunion dinner even though both my grandparents are not around and this year, we have BBQ (Barbeque) for dinner in our home.

Some will find it strange to have BBQ for a reunion dinner as most will either cook home cooked dishes Chinese style. Well, it pays to be different. There were like 20 people over and with a Teresa Teng background music to accompany (obviously Dad’s chosen song).

Now onwards to the following day, it was time of the year again to go to Malacca to visit relatives and friends to collect angpow to wish them a happy fatt choy new year. Considering the Year of the Rabbit, it has its significant of being the luckiest animal around. Well, onward with the post, being able to go back to Malacca during Chinese New Year is one of a kind. Where else can you get authentic Chinese New Year Nyonya/Peranakan dishes?

Yes, it’s home cooked. Authentic. Some of the notable ones are listed below.

Itik Tim, the ingredients inclusive of home farm duck, “Kiam Chai” (Salty Vege), Brandy (if there is). Art of boiling this superb tasty soup is to boil it for long hours in order for the taste of the duck and the vege to mix together to add to the flavor of this soup. This food can be found in nyonya restaurants but loses its authenticity when it’s boiled with gas and not with charcoal.By the way some of these Itik Tim would also include the inner parts of the duck. One fine example is the blood of the duck.

Boiled Duck’s blood in some of the Itik Tim dishes. Not everyone cooks the same, so I got to try a variety of Itik Tim in a few houses.

It takes about one day to boil this soup and the longer the soup stays in the pot boiled, the better the taste.

Second dish would be Acah. Preserved Cucumber and Chili in sweet and sour sauce. Mind the photo quality as it was taken with my HTC Hero smartphone. One of a kind, usually only served during Chinese New Year.

Another Nyonya delicacy would be the Ponteh, a mix of home rared chicken, mushroom, ginger and secret sauce known only to the family. Some will also include bamboo shoots for the flavor.

Finally a dessert which is actually different from what we usually eat, the Taibak. This dessert is something like the Cendol, made of flour and sugar water.

The TAIBAK is usually served as a prerequisite of a Baba Nyonya wedding. One of the reason though it’s because it cools down both the groom and the bride (well from what I was told) before hmmm… hmmm…

So now you have it, the food from the Baba Nyonya era. These are the kinds of food I look forward every Chinese New Year other than the usual kueh.

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Just a week back (Ahhh… yes… the memories of the food) I was invited to had a preview and taste and a special treat from Holiday Villa Hotel & Suites located in Subang, Malaysia. Why? How?? I didn’t know until I found out that whoa…..

This was mentioned on their Facebook page. It says I won a treat by Holiday Villa Hotels & Resorts and is in for a night of great food, good company & simple fun. Here is the close up of the photo. Well, I am sure there are more to come from Holiday Villa on their Facebook page. Of course this food preview was actually a preview of what’s to be offered on the 31st December 2010.

So it was Merryn Tan, Kian Fai and THE WEIRD ONE (ME) who will be dining there and dined did we. Now enough of the talk. Let’s get on with the show, errr… I meant food.

Opps.. this ain’t food. Well, just showing the surroundings around there. Since it’s dinner time, there are lights all around.

So now we have our first food for the night…. TA DAH….

Hey, this is no food. This is merely a decoration with oranges. Not just any mere decoration. It’s made of ICE. Yes, ice that’s slowly melting due to the light shining towards it. Such excellent masterpiece.

Finally I couldn’t take it anymore and I went to have my food after the opening speech by the organizer in charge. The first thing that brought my eyes to was the pastry area. Well, since it’s a poolside dinner and the most visible ones are beside the poolside and beside where I was sitting.

Bread comes in every shape and sizes. Strange enough, I did something else instead of eating it there and then. This was what I did.

Huh? What is this shot? Before this photo, look at the right side. You’ll noticed where this shot actually came about. Yes, so I can’t resist taking weird photos.

Now being a person to start with desserts it’s kind of different. Well, one good thing is that while everyone is queuing up to get the main dish, no one will fight for the queue when you start with dessert. So that’s where I was headed.

Cakes! Yes, and it’s Chocolate too. A favorite of mine. There are so many pastries and cakes out there, it’s extremely difficult to put everything of them in this post.

Now here are somethings to note. Let’s visit the food by their locality.

ASIAN FOOD

Yes, local Asian Cuisine. You have chinese style noodles and other Asian food that day. Seeing Asian food though, there are many varieties.

One of them is an Indian Food variety. If you’re a fan of mamak food and Roti Naan or Tandoori Chicken, you’ll know what this “BIG POT” is. Yes, it’s all natural fire in there and here it is, 2 bread is being cooked on top of it. Authentic food to say the least. Fresh from the open oven.

When one say Asian Food, one cannot forget about JAPANESE FOOD.

Yes, that’s Mr Takashi making the Temaki (Hand Rolled). Te means Hand in Japanese. How to write it. 手 (Kanji) or て(Hiragana) for ‘Te‘. Yes, I was surprised. They brought in a Japanese chef to prepare their Japanese food. That’s the quality you can get from here. Now as a fan of Japanese food, you bet that I took most of the food from the Japanese food section. *Evil laughter*

Next up….

WESTERN FOOD (Sort Of)

In lieu and in the spirit of Christmas and also Thanksgiving (a few days back), we had TURKEY. Ahhh… directly served straight from the whole turkey. What can I say about this? Impressed me a lot, the meat was so tender and cooked based on the expectation I had or rather much better than I expected. Definitely had seconds for this. Though had to keep my stomach for some other food tasting.

I also had Roasted Lamb (BBQ Lamb) and we can see it being prepared directly on top of a fire. Now that’s what I call fresh meat. The person doing the cooking was patient enough with me and even made a few fire to spark off from the fire place to help me take this shot. Verdict : The meat from this was cooked well. I love lamb.

There are other meat that I didn’t get to take photos of like the Beef, Chicken and other cutlery and meat dishes. Those posted are the few notable ones. Of course with so many meat being consumed, I need to have something refreshing and what a good idea then to head on to the dessert table and have a bowl of ice ball (Ice Kacang) with lots of ingredients thrown into it.

Of course, the end result is not that presentable but what’s more important is how tasty it is. Why do I say that? Ice melts, thus I delayed my shot till later and looked what it became.

Still nevertheless, superbly refreshing and cooling and look at the amount of ingredients in it.

Last but not least, let’s have a look at another category.

SEA FOOD

Another favorite of mine, seafood. This time we have clams, prawns, fish, crab and also oyster. Just look at the amount of clams here. Hey wait.. did I say Oysters????? You bet I did.

OYSTERS!!! I still remembered I last had Oysters a year ago and this time I get to eat it again. Though I wished one had a pearl in it so I could actually get RICH something out of it.

Somehow though, I felt that I shouldn’t eat so much if not later I would have problem walking back towards the car (Experienced it before and needed someone to support me yes…. I am a glutton). So this was all I took.

Two Oysters on my plate and that’s all I had. Though now I wished I had more.

Conclusion

Finally after all these food, you must be wondering how much will all this cost actually. Well, a normal buffet dinner would cost about RM70++. Ehh?? RM70++ with Oyster and lots of other varieties. Yes, you read it right.

Of course this whole thing wouldn’t be complete with a photo of the ones who got invited to the dinner. Alas the three of us took a shot and all thanks to Merryn.

Here are their links to this food review.
Kian Fai – Sneak Peak of New Year Eve Carnival (sneaky preview of food)
Merryn – Holiday Villa Subang – New Year Eve Carnival BBQ Dinner 2010 (most food photos)

Aside from that let’s see what would be in store upcoming New Year Eve Carnival BBQ Dinner at the Pool Side. Holiday Villa is definitely going all out to ensure that their guests would splendidly enjoy their dinner.

Here are some of their categories.

The Poetic Salad

• December 19/41
• The Ocean Wave
• From the Wheat Farm
• De La Soupiere
• The Five Asian Wok
• Charcoal Griller
• The Carvery Station
• The Tandoori Clay Oven
• Thai Hot Stuff
• D’Dusun
• Sweet Agent
• The Snow

One thing though, what I had was only 85% of what December 31st 2010 had to offer. I am missing out on some of the other delicacies. Well, of course I might also be going for the New Year Eve dinner. If you would like to go too, why not? It’s only RM111++ per person for the Poolside New Year Eve Carnival BBQ Dinner. Of course if you would like to have more information on this, here is the link to their site.

Holiday Villa Hotel & Suites Subang
9 Jalan SS12/1
47500 Subang Jaya
Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia

Tel: (603) 5633 8788
Fax: (603) 5633 7499

Upcoming Preview: The

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Finally back from the mountains, it’s now free and easy in the town of Lhasa and I’ve forgotten that I brought bread up with me to the Mt Everest base camp. Now look at how the bread turned out.

All puffy and somehow reminds me of a fetus that can’t wait to get out from the womb. Jeez… of all things I have to think of that instead. What bread is this though? Just a simple flour and nothing inside. In English, they only wrote French Bread.

Anyway for those that wants to read back a few posts regarding my Tibet travel without hassle, here’s the whole link again!

[Tibet 1] Hello from Lhasa, Tibet
[Tibet 2] The Rough Journey Tibet
[Tibet 3] Another Day in Lhasa
[Tibet 4] Visiting Drepung Monastery Tibet
[Tibet 5] Monastery Visitation Tibet
[Tibet 6] Moving Around Lhasa Tibet
[Tibet 7] The Day I Visited Temples at Lhasa
[Tibet 8] Weird Blue Lake Tibet
[Tibet 9] Randomness at China and Tibet
[Tibet 10] More Monasteries and Mt Everest
[Tibet 11] Journey to Mt Everest
[Tibet 12] Journey to Namtso Lake
[Tibet 13] Namtso Lake Scene

Okay, enough of the bread. Since we’re now having our free and easy in the capital city of Tibet at Lhasa, we thought of looking for places to eat and definitely a few notable places we could hang out. Yes, get ready cause this time it’s all about the food in Tibet. When you’re outstation, one has definitely got to try the local food.

One of the place that we found is Makyeame Restaurant, located at the pedestrian street of Lhasa. As you can see, there are two exposures of the same restaurant. The sun was blazing sunny but the weather there is still cool (compare to our hot and humid Malaysia), so we didn’t even sweat. Well, that’s for a country that doesn’t hit the equator and also about 5000m above sea level.

Seeing this restaurant and since we’re all hungry, let’s get some grub.

Not until we see what’s the view from the top of the restaurant. Remember we’re sitting at the roof top and unlike the houses we have in Malaysia, the houses and buildings here all have flat surfaces.

This is how the place looks like when you’re not overlooking the ground below. Ahhhh…. many people so it seems. Kenny sitting there playing with his HTC and going online. Darn, they have WiFi here. Those days I don’t have a WiFi enabled gadget. We’re actually practically waiting for our food to arrive.

Of course, why not start with a taste of something Tibetish, a Tibetan beer. The name is Tibet Beer – Green Barley Beer.

What an original name. There are loads of Barley in Tibet, heck they even have a tagline for this beer which is Beer From Top Of The World. Simply amazing I must say.Taste like beer and yes, there’s no way you can find one of these alcoholic drink in other countries.

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It was around March, where Daniel was one of those going to go for a food gathering with a bunch of bloggers at a location situated near Bandar Utama. This place is none other than Traffic D’light Cafe and invited by Feeq. It’s been quite some time since I did a food review as a previous plan was to open a new food blog with a newly acquired domain but, looks like food are here to stay.

Site note : This post will be picture hungry, so do click the read more if you want to view more photos of food. No compensation would be given for anyone suffering from Food Drooling Symptoms.

There are at least 30 bloggers there, and yes, there are many of them there and eating here and there. From here onwards, prepare for mouth watering dishes. Word of information, there will be pork dishes so it’s gonna be tasty.

Yup, the cafe is on the upper floor above Carrefour Express.

First the starters, 30 bloggers sharing few glasses of Jasmine Tea.

The Jamine Ice Tea is not too sweet, what a thirst quencher. Looks like beer though from this photo.

Next we had a combo of mixture of fruits in a drink. Now can you imagine how these 3 glasses can be tasted by 30 people? Separate glasses? Nope all from the same straw. LOL

My Turn! My Turn!

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This post was way backdated, but yes, I had the privilege to visit Penang Island again shortly before my Tibet trip. Yes, it’s way before my Tibet trip which was like half a year ago. Now how far back that was.

Ahhh… Penang reminds me when I am back at Malacca. All the old buildings, the unique buildings which you can hardly see in the now modern city of Kuala Lumpur. Not to mention a lot of history back then, which we get to visit now.

Some really old means of travel, the trishaw.

Up till now, I don’t think I’ve ever sat on a trishaw after I was 12 years old. Darn, that reminds me of my age. I am getting older. Nevertheless, the older one gets the more things one can do, eh wait, the more responsibility. Arghhhhhh!!!

Unlike previous trips to Penang  (Pulau Pinang), this time I got the liberty to go on a tour of historical buildings and places of interest as this time we’re being guided by our guide, Su Lyn and also we were to guide a German national (plays Volleyball) to tour around Malaysia’s Pearl of the Orient.

One of the places we get to visit is the Khoo Kongsi. Well, seemingly is like a house full of Khoo’s (people who come from the ancestry line of Khoo). Superbly big, and the Khoo Kongsi is the biggest Kongsi in the whole of Penang, the street you’re looking at is the Cannon street. The reason : A cannon was fired towards this street. Huh?? Yup, during the war.

But I thought Penang is a strategic location to defend the Island???

Take a look at Fort Conwallis. Once long time ago, it was the fort to guard the city from the attack from the ocean. Now only a few remains of the Fort is there. Guess it again, this time I did go in after many times trying to visit the place only to find that it’s close on Sunday.

The cannon is now rusty, but look Jonas (the German guy I was talking about) just had to pose alongside the cannon. I should have asked him to do a photo shoot. He’s tall, way way tall. When I say tall, it means…..

This TALL. I only reached his shoulder. If you’ve met me, you will know how tall this German Volleyball player is. (pssst.. he’s from Saxon, girls, too bad he’s taken)

Of course, a fort won’t be called a fort if there’s no defense area, and a place to produce gun powder for the cannon. We need gunpowder and so that one can POW POW POW.. KABABOOM!!!

As light was insufficient, this is the best I can do. Though one can just put sand and call it gunpowder, noooo.. it’s the real thing.

Being in Penang, it’s not only the places of interest. It’s the food too. Well, food can come another time as I am writing this when I haven’t had my dinner. So I ain’t gonna show some food pics. But of course, going to Penang, you just had to buy those biscuits from Him Heang. Where’s that? I ain’t sure cause there was a guide to bring me there.

Look at the obscene amount of queue just to buy BISCUITS. Serious!!!!!

After talking about food, I am so hungry I can SUCK A BALITONG. What’s that? Have a view from my previous Penang Trip.

Suck Suck Suck~~~ Even Jonas had a try. Seriously I ain’t a fan of this sea mussel but if a tourist from another country can do it, so should I.

One response : WOOOT~~~~ I wanna eat again!

Finally after all that, meet the gang and the place we bunked in.

From top: Charles (rockers)
From bottom left : Khong Wai, Weird One, Su Lyn

Purely traveling and having food and sightseeing. A different experience for me. Should do this more often as I am not Penang lang (penangite).

Finally ending with a photo of a food in Penang. Anyone can roughly guess what’s this?

HUNGRY~~~~~~~~~~~~

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