Kuala Lumpur Chinatown - Kim Soya Bean, Bunn Choon Egg Tart and a Ramly Burger

To be honest, we found Kuala Lumpur's Chinatown area fairly disappointing - lots of people selling merchandise and very little food. Still, we managed to find a few things to eat.

Right in the heart of Petaling Street is Kim Soya Bean, and it was doing a brisk business when we stopped by.



We got a bowl of warm soy pudding ("tau fu fah") and it was really, really good. Lovely, soft and creamy and swimming in lightly sweet syrup.



If you've followed our time in Hong Kong, you are aware that we developed a bit of an obsession with egg tarts there. So when we found Bunn Choon Egg Tarts on the edge of Chinatown, we had no choice but to stop in.



And when we saw they had durian flavored egg tarts, we just had to try one.



The regular tart is on the left and the durian on the right. The standard egg tart was very good. I wasn't sure what to expect from the durian version, but it turned out to be terrific. The tart itself wasn't durian flavored - there was a layer of durian jelly on the top. Very good.



Later in the day, we found ourselves back in the same area, desperate to grab something to eat. Most things were closed, but on our earlier visit had seen a Ramly burger cart just starting to set up and they were now in full swing.



Ramly burgers are definitely a thing in Kuala Lumpur. As I understand it, they are named after the Ramly patties, a product of a local fast-food company. Various street food vendors take these patties and do their own thing with them. Above is a chicken and fried egg version.



And there is a beef patty somewhere in that one, although it was hard to see (or taste) under all the other goop. Definitely a case of condiment overload for me, but it was fun to watch them make it.

Food Photo Round-Up #2

It's been too long since our last food photo round-up and I've got way too many pictures for one post, so I'm going to split this one up into two.

We'll start things off with some simple, but delicious bacon and eggs. A friend of ours now has three yard chickens, and we've been lucky enough to score some of their eggs from time to time. They look beautiful, and taste great.

Next up, a favorite snack of ours - memelitas. Sherry learned how to make them from our landlady in Oaxaca.



Continuing with the Mexican theme, here are some chicken chilaquiles with saucy black beans:



A new addition to our Mexican repertoire this year is Mole de Olla:



It is a delicious soup/stew (mine usually ends up more of a stew) with an earthy red chile base. I've been playing around with variations and I'll do up a recipe post soon.

Speaking of Mexican braised dishes, pork chile verde is a regular of ours:



We've been visiting Tijuana a lot recently, and one of the many things they do really well there is birria tacos. The ones we had at Tacos Fitos outside Mercado Hidalgo were fantastic. We haven't reached that level yet, but this version was very tasty:



While visiting an avocado grove in Temecula, we had some really nice salads. With that on the brain, we tried one of our own - avocado, beet and orange. The flavor combination was a bit aggressive, but it sure was pretty:



We need to make more Indian lentil (dal) dishes. This one was Toor Dal Uttar Pradesh Style, based on a recipe from Camellia Panjabi's 50 Great Curries of India:



Such rich flavor and vibrant colors.

We love a good hamburger. Recently, Sherry stacked one up so nicely that it reminded me of a burger advertisement with all of the layers nicely stacked. Pretty, but hard to get your mouth around...



We've had some ups and downs with ribs the past few years, but things were definitely on an up note this July 4th. Pork spare ribs - smokey and succulent:



I've been messing around with "modernist" techniques a bit lately - in particular, with cheese. This is a Mac and Cheese that uses Sodium Citrate to get a silky-smooth texture:



I haven't got it fully sorted out yet, but it is fun to play with. The sausage is decidedly un-"modernist" - a homemade Sicilian sausage, one of our favorite recipes from Rytek Kutas' Great Sausage Recipes and Meat Curing.

Speaking of meat curing, and returning full circle to bacon, this was our most recent batch:



We added a step to our normal process to dry cure it in the magic fridge for a week before smoking. The result was very, very good - a really intense, concentrated flavor and texture. I think it will become a standard practice for us.

Phew - that's it for the first part of the round-up. Stay tuned for the next half!

Hawaii "Odds and Ends": I-naba Soba, Giovanni's Shrimp Truck, Me's BBQ and More

Ok - last Hawaii post, I promise!

Here are some odds and ends of food we had on our trip that didn't make it into a post of their own. Above is the cold soba lunch at I-naba Soba in Honolulu. We had never had soba served this way before, and we really enjoyed it. Rather than being served as a soup, you dip the noodles into the sauce. The soba was fantastic, as was the tempura.



Although we had Oahu's north shore locked in as a shrimp destination, our first shrimp of the trip was at Savage Shrimp in Koloa on Kauai. We had the place's namesake "Savage Shrimp" dish. Served in a spicy broth with bread on the side for dipping, it was hearty and flavorful.

Later, on Oahu, we made it out the north shore. We had a hard time deciding which of the shrimp spots to hit up. In the end, we settled on Giovanni's Shrimp Truck - mostly because we were on the bus and it was near a stop.



We shared a batch of Giovanni's Garlic Scampi:



Simple fare, but good. There was a ton of garlic in the sauce - which we really liked, but if you aren't a garlic fan, this wouldn't be for you.

One night, we were wandering out from our vacation rental at the south end of Waikiki and Sherry spotted Me's BBQ. A tiny little Korean joint tucked away on a side-street, the feel of the place immediately appealed to me. They have a small indoor area with a counter where you order, and a few tables outside.

We ended up eating there twice, and our favorite item was the Fish Jun - delicate, thin pieces of fish coated in an egg batter (sorry for the bad, low-light photo):



We like the Jun so much that we made our own version as one of the dishes in our Feast of the Seven Fishes last Christmas Eve. We also really liked their Kalbi and Kimchi.

There was an Izakaya place, Tokkuri-Tei, not far from where we were staying, so we went there for dinner. It had a pleasant atmosphere and friendly knowledgeable waitresses. The dishes we had were hit and miss, but more hit than miss. This beef tongue skewer was one of the better ones:



I had decided that I needed a teriyaki burger. Teddy's Bigger Burgers was just a block away from where we were staying and seemed to be pretty well liked. Not by us, though, as it turned out. The burger didn't look bad:



Unfortunately, it was dry and uninteresting. One of my least favorite burgers I've had in quite some time. And pretty expensive, to boot. Not recommended.

We also cooked with some local ingredients while we were visiting the islands. I saw Redondo's Portuguese Sausage in the grocery store and couldn't resist picking some up:



It was very tasty for breakfast - sliced up and fried with eggs.

And, of course, we couldn't leave out the Hawaiian staple:



Spam and eggs made a lovely breakfast one morning on the tiny balcony of our vacation rental in Honolulu.

I-naba Soba
1610 S King St.
Honolulu, Hawaii
808-953-2070

Savage Shrimp
Kukui'ula Village Suite K-158
2829 Ala Kalaikaumaka
Koloa, Kauai

Giovanni's Shrimp Truck
56-505 Kamehameha Hwy
Kahuku, Hawaii
808-293-1839

Me's BBQ
151 Uluniu Ave.
Honolulu, Hawaii
808-926-9717

Tokkuri-Tei
449 Kapahulu Ave.
Honolulu, Hawaii
808-732-6480

Teddy's Bigger Burgers
134 Kapahulu Ave.
Honolulu, Hawaii
808-926-3444

Food Photo Round-Up

When we make a good dish, but I don't really have enough for a blog post, I often post a picture on twitter instead. For those of you who don't follow along with those tweets, I figured I'd do a round-up of some of the pictures here on the blog.

The picture above is a homemade Sicilian sausage (one of our favorites - we need to do a post on making them sometime) with Hasselbeck (or is it Hasselback?) potatoes and a black kale salad.

Mapo Doufu


Fuchsia Dunlop's version of "Pock-Marked Mother Chen's Bean Curd", from her book "Land of Plenty" is on our regular rotation.

Chawanmushi


This was our first attempt at making Chawanmushi, and it turned out really well. I love savory custards.

Shoyu Ramen


Not quite homemade ramen - I call it "home-assembled". We buy packaged ramen noodles and add the trimmings - fish cake, pork slices, greens, nori and, of course, a soft-cooked egg.

Lamb Shanks Braised in Red Wine


Is there is anything more comforting than a braised lamb shank? We do a red wine braise based loosely on a short rib recipe from Daniel Boulud's "Cafe Boulud Cookbook".

Romanesco


The first time I saw a picture of Romanesco I was amazed - it is such a cool looking vegetable. Sherry has had great success growing them this winter, and we've been eating a lot of it.

Spaghetti alla Carbonara


Perfectly cooked spaghetti coated with egg is a thing a beauty. We make ours with homemade pancetta, which I prefer to the traditional guanciale.

Green Chile Cheeseburger


We've posted a number of times about green chile cheeseburgers in New Mexico, but we also make them at home, using hatch green chiles that we buy by the crate when they are in season. Yes, that is American cheese on the burger. I make no apologies.

Gougères


Light, puffy and cheesy - Gougères may be the perfect snack. They are made with the same choux pastry technique used for cream puffs, but go a savory direction instead of sweet.

Pan-Seared Duck Breast with Green Beans and Potatoes


Rosy pink meat and succulent skin - what more is there to say?

Homemade Bacon


It has been over three years now since we started making our own homemade bacon, and we're still going strong. Store-bought bacon is a thing of the past for us. We're almost out of the last batch we made - time to make some more!

Green Chile Cheeseburgers at Monroe's and Blake's Lotaburger

Road tripping through New Mexico means that Green Chile Cheeseburgers are very much on the agenda. This trip, we had two.

First up was Monroe's, in Albuquerque. I chose Monroe's because it was well-reviewed and within walking distance of our hotel (Casa de Suenos, which I highly recommend). When we arrived, the place was pretty dead. Undeterred, we entered into the harsh, florescently-lit room and sat down.



You can see the green chile cheeseburger above, served with sweet potato fries (I ordered regular fries). Overall, it disappointed. Not enough green chile for the flavor to really come through, and the burger itself was the thin, frozen puck style you would buy at Costco. It was decently prepared, though, and I had no trouble eating it. Unfortunately, the same couldn't be said about their carne adovada, which we also tried - way too salty, and lacking in flavor.

Overall, it was a pretty bad dining experience. Monroe's seems like a place that has seen better days, and it would be hard to recommend based on our visit.

The next day, we had a much better meal at Blake's Lotaburger in Deming:



We wrote about the green chile cheeseburger at Blake's a few years ago, and this visit was nearly identical. Here is the Lotaburger with double meat, add cheese and green chile:



The amount of green chile was perfect, with tons of chile flavor and a good amount of heat.



There is nothing complicated about this burger - just a better-than-average fast food burger, well prepared, and with the key addition of chopped up Hatch green chile. If someplace in San Diego puts a burger like this on their menu, I will happily give them my money on a regular basis.

Monroe's
1520 Lomas Blvd. NW
Albuquerque, New Mexico
(505) 242-1111

Blake's Lotaburger
600 North Gold Street
Deming, New Mexico
(575) 544-7302

Jalapeño Bacon

It is hard to believe that it has been almost two years now since we first posted on making bacon. That batch was our first, and it was so good that I ended the post by declaring: "we won't be buying bacon again". And we haven't!

A fun variant on traditional bacon that we've been playing with recently is adding jalapeños to the brining stage. We've been known to enjoy a bit of heat on occasion, so we figured why not add some spice to our homemade bacon?

Our first attempt to do this used fresh chiles. It was very pretty:



But it ended up not doing much. What worked better was using canned jalapeños (you know, the kind that always come with carrot slices). It took a much larger quantity than we expected to get the desired effect, and over the course of multiple batches we noticed that a fattier belly carried the flavor much better than leaner meat.

Here is a belly all zipped up and ready to cure, with some carrot slices added because it seemed like they should be:



I love the way bacon looks hot out of the smoker:



This is the same batch pictured at the top of this post. Once it cools and you cut into it, you get that characteristic bacon look.

It made for a very nice bacon cheeseburger...



You can use this bacon pretty much as you would any other. It is lighter on the sugar than some recipes (we prefer our bacon more salty than sweet). The heat from the jalapeños is definitely present, but subtle.

Jalapeño Bacon

This bacon works best if the belly is somewhat fatty rather than lean.

1 (3-4 pound) slab pork belly, skin on
40 grams (3-4 tablespoons) kosher salt
20 grams (approx. 5 teaspoons) sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons pink salt
4 canned jalapeños in escabeche, plus 1-2 tablespoons of the liquid
4 garlic cloves, sliced or crushed
2 bay leaves, torn into small pieces
1 tablespoon black peppercorns, slightly crushed

Mix together the salt, sugar and pink salt. Sprinkle generously over all sides of the belly, then gently shake off the excess. Place the belly into a non-reactive dish or zip lock bag. Blitz the jalapeno with the pickling liquid in a food processor or blender. In a bowl, stir the garlic, bay leaves and peppercorns into the jalapeño, then add to the belly being sure to coat all sides fairly evenly.

Let cure in the refrigerator 5 to 8 days, turning the belly every other day. The meat is ready once it is reasonably firm when pressed. Remove the belly and rinse off the cure with cool water. Pat dry, place on an oiled rack and return to the refrigerator to dry uncovered, overnight.

Smoke at 150-180 degrees using apple and oak. The bacon is ready once it reaches 150 degrees - usually in about 3 hours.