Food from Various Places

 

Here is fish fillet braised with almond flakes and poured with lemon sauce from Mizi at Tesco outlet in Straits Quay. Veges such as sliced carrots, a floret of cauliflower, some green peas and steamed potato wedge are garnished to complement this delicious meal. I love patronizing Mizi Bistro for its very affordable and reasonably charged western food. They also offer a fusion of both western and eastern food and there are 3 branches in Penang - one in Prangin Mall, one in New World Park and the latest in Tesco, Straits Quay. The chain of food is owned by a former executive chef with working experience in a 5-star hotel.

 

This is my favorite dish of fish florentine which consists of dory fish fillets on top of braised spinach and topped with cheese powder. The white sauce was just pure ambrosia and heavenly!  I will always order my favorite fish and the waiter can already anticipate what I am going to order each time I come here.

 

As you have already guessed, the dish above comes from a Chinese restaurant - slices of fish stir-fried with chopped spring onions and garlic. It was ordered from Xuan Xin Restaurant in Gurney Plaza, an upmarket shopping mall in Penang which is currently undergoing renovation and expansion. You will be lucky if you can find a car parking bay during school holidays!

 

Also from Xuan Xin Restaurant, this is large prawn omelette and garnished with parsley. Though this meal looks appetizing, the doctor just advised me to cut down on seafood like prawns which has high cholesterol. I just went for a blood test last week and the results were not too good, I failed in 6 categories of the overall test which means that certain abbreviations like HDL, LDL, etc were above the normal range. So now I am taking 1,000mg of Omega-3 fatty acids 3 times a day to lower my blood cholesterol level and to prevent future heart attack or heart disease. My dad already has 3 clogged arteries and it seems this could be hereditary.

 

Here is stir-fried spinach with oyster sauce, from Xuan Xin Restaurant. You can choose a set meal for 2 persons with several choices of 2 main meals and a vegetable meal from a list of 6 to 7 vegetables and different sauces like garlic, oyster sauce, etc. There are 2 bowls of rice with 2 bowls of soup, a drink each for about RM 50 after tax (USD 16.70).

 

As my friend is a member of Chinese Recreation Club, we went to the Chinese restaurant with 10% discount using the member card. Above is steamed fish cooked in Teochew style which is sourish where slices of assam are added to add the zing. Black shitake mushrooms, straw mushrooms, preserved vegetables are added with slices of ginger and carrots and garnished with spring onions. The fish is garoupa and it is quite delicious in this cooking style. Don't throw away the soup as all the flavors are infused during the cooking and this makes it very delicious.

 

This is fried chicken coated with some batter for crunchyness and added with Thai chilly sauce. I have forgotten where I ordered this meal as I normally snap a lot of photos from the various places for posterity.

 

The set meal above was ordered from a Taiwanese Tea Restaurant in Queensbay Mall near Bayan Lepas. If I don't go to Gurney Plaza every night, then I will be at Queensbay Mall once in a while for a change of location. I love the blue champaign milk tea with brown sago pearls or also known as boba. 

 

 The meal above was part of the buffet breakfast in City Bayview Hotel in Kuah, Langkawi. I was in Langkawi last month for business. See the granite table top which makes the ambiance classy and elegant.

Dinner at Ming Garden Restaurant in Penang Times Square

 

I had dinner at Ming Garden Chinese Restaurant in Penang Times Square last night. It is located in Birch the Plaza building on the second floor. The address is below:

Ming Garden Restaurant

77-2-28 Penang Times Square

Penang.

Tel: 604 226 9977

Above is a snapshot of the grand entrance with pixue or some Chinese mythological creature that is believed to bring luck and prosperity to its owner. I love the bouquet of red roses on the table with pamphlets of different cuisines and prices to choose from. Since it was opened yesterday, there were congratulatory bouquets of flowers to the owner and also look good to welcome new visitors.

 

Here is the decadent ambience with velvet covered chairs and embellished with buttons behind to complete the dining furniture set. Complementary maroon serviettes match the color of the velvet-covered chairs. At the top, large lotus-designed lights hang precariously over the tables. There are private function rooms too for those who wish to dine quietly away from the glare of the public eye. Usually millionaires and the well-heeled will choose to reserve a private function room to eat in complete privacy. There were about 3 very large screens showing Andy Lau's concert performance in Hong Kong and audiences bopping to the lively rhythm. It sounded more like Michael Jackson's Thriller but sung in Cantonese.  

 While waiting for our set dinner, we were served Chinese tea and 'acak' as appetizer prior to the food. 'Acak' consists of julienned carrots, cucumbers and yam bean seasoned in vinegar with peanuts and chilly added for that extra oomph. The taste was piquant and spicy, teasing the taste buds for more to come.

 

This is the real appetizer as part of the set dinner with a spoonful of fresh scallop, bits of fried scallops served above the braised asparagus. It is garnished with parsley, julienned carrots with a purple petal of an orchid. In the dessert glass are 2 pieces of some crunchy batter mixed with delicious condiments. It was just heavenly tasting them. 

 

The next dish of the set menu was braised shark's fin soup with crab meat in casserole. The shark's fins soup were scrumptious and the crab meat fresh and tangy. There were generous portions of them too.

 

This is stewed sea cucumber with mushroom and fish maw wrapped in aluminium foil. A dark purple orchid with green parsley embellish the meal. Inside the aluminium foil was also pacific clam, black Shitake mushroom and abalone mushroom. The thick gravy was just as tasty as it looks. 

 

The next dish was deep fried grouper fillet in Cuba style but I accidentally deleted the photo as I was trying to remove spare pictures. The above meal was the second last dish before dessert and consists of  fried ee-fu noodles with crab meat. All the meals were served in small portions so that they are not too overwhelming and filling. They were of appropriate portions enough to fill a hungry stomach. 

This is the finale of the set meal and the sweet dessert consists of coconut with longans topped with ice cubes in syrup. The Chinese tea helps in the digestion and washes down the remaining oil. On the whole the six course set dinner meal for two cost more than a hundred ringgit (USD 33.00) which is quite reasonable considering the tastiness of the meal.

Glorious Food Pictures for the Week

I have decided to make the photos a little larger for clarity in this blog. By tweaking a little with the width of the main body and side bar, I managed to get what I wanted instead of spending too much time looking for a suitable food template. So what do you think of the pictures? The photo above shows the ambience of the dining area in Royal Hotel along Larut Road in Penang. It displays wall paper consisting of photos of collonial Chinese pre-war houses by the side with cloth covered chairs that make a contrast to the sight.

For the weekend, I stayed in Royal Hotel in the deluxe room with an additional room to work that comes with a fax machine and writing desk. The lounge chair here looks beckoning and comfortable withh plush cushion against the thick curtains.

Here comes the food where we had breakfast the following morning. It consists of toasted slices of bread spread with a myriad of jams and butter. In this close up photo, doesn't it look appetising?

While waiting for my colleague at Royal Lake Club in Kuala Lumpur, I decided to take a little tea break and ordered black forrest cake and butter cake with hot chocolate. Decided to indulge myself a little after coming out from the library while he attended to the contractor for the synthetic turf tennis courts that are being installed by the company. Since my work requirement is to handle all the computer and administration work, I am not required to be physically present on site at the tennis courts.

This was my dinner of quiche that was ordered from Delifrance along Mont Kiara, an upmarket place with many high-end condominiums and many expatriates live here. The quiche was just so-so; I would have prefer if it has spinach in it like the one I have tried in Singapore which was tastier.

Recently, I went to Food & Tea Restaurant in Gurney Plaza and had prawn mayo with rice and soup set. The prawn mayo was mixed with cut honey dew melon and mixed with Thousand Island cream. I kind of patronize this place and will always order the same kind of food as it is quite delicious.

This is chicken lasagna from Delifrance but I find it too oily and did not finish it as I was too full. It looked scrumptious but since they did not have seafood croissant, I had no choice but to order what is available. This will be my last time going to Delifrance in Mont Kiara as the service was slow and bad, even though I love dining at Delifrance for their seafood croissant.

This salmon-egg croissant was ordered in Northern Beach Cafe in Penang from the French stall. It is not often to find a true French man to prepare food for you except for this stall here. The portions are adequate and just right - neither too much nor too little.

I had seafood lamien again in Dragon-i Restaurant in Gurney Plaza without calamari or sotong and extra fish slices to make up for it. It is like eating noodles in soup prepared by trained Chinese chef.

This was my friend's order of stir-fried seafood with pan fried Hong Kong noodles that are crunchy to taste - also ordered from Dragon-i. Gurney Plaza is the high end premier shopping mall that I visit often to dine and also to read books for free at MPH readers' circle since I am a member.

I hope you enjoyed looking at the photos as much as I enjoyed putting them together in this culinary journal of mine. You are free to comment as to how I can improve this blog while I read more food articles in the press to improve on my writing style and food vocabulary.

My Birthday Treat This Month

July is my birthday month and last week, I treated my family to a Chinese cuisine in Fong Wei Restaurant along Jalan Bahari, off the famous Penang Road. A must, I will always order sauteed brocolli with scallops which is my favorite dish. Green brocolli is rich in anti-oxidant and also helps to prevent cancer, as claimed in the news.

This is 'choong piah' or meat mixed with vegetables and spices and wrapped in thin batter which is then deep fried to taste. I also love this Chinese cuisine as there is crispy and crunchy feel to the mouthful of 'choong piah'.

I also ordered stir-fried pomfret with an assortment of veggies and it is know as 'tau teh nor bi' or simply translated to mean pomfret cooked in 2 styles - first is the sliced fish cooked with vegetables and secondly it includes the bones mixed with batter and fried till they are crispy which can be eaten as a whole. The picture is below.

The fried bones together with some batter is quite flavorful and crunchy. Not a single bit of the fish goes to waste and the different styles of cooking pomfret is simply fabulous.

This shot is taken with most of the dishes ordered that were served piping hot on the table covered with auspicious red table cloth. Fong Wei Restaurant is famous for its sumptious food that is affordable yet will not burn a hole in your wallet. That is why I love Penang for its economical food that is abundant everywhere. Malaysia is indeed a melting pot of cultures with the various cuisines to whet your appetite.

A birthday meal is not complete without 'lam mee' or simply known as birthday noodles for longevity. 'Lam mee' consists of meat stock boiled for a long time for the essence and flavor and mixed with crab meat, slivers of pork, prawns, shallots and spring onions in long yellow noodles.

This is a set meal from a Taiwanese restaurant in Queensbay Mall which consists of seafood broth, soup with some veggies and my favorite champaign turquoise blue boba drink. Bobas are brown tapioca pearls which are mixed into bubble teas and sucked up with a large straw.

This is a close up of the seafood broth from the Taiwanese restaurant. The unusual container looks interesting and creative but it may be a bit difficult to scoup up the broth from the small aluminium container placed in a wooden box. These are thre pictures for the week as I snap them during my culinery pursuits at dinner time around the various dining places.