Reunion dinner for Chinese New Year!

Nothing beats the home cooked reunion dinner with your family, this year petronas ad touched most of us strongly with the tag line, go back for reunion if you can! BUT, I couldn't!!!!

In a foreign land without any relatives, we choose to "reunite" with our fellow friends, believe me, it is not the best because all of us will be thinking back of our families, but when you are stucked in Aber, friends is the nearest form of family-ness you can find! SO, cherish every friend around you! No matter what, it is not really the way my blog is going, I am a food blogger.... Let's go to the blog!

It is very fortunate for us to find such a generous chinese restaurant owner to cater to our needs and give us what our money value of! Thanks to Mandarin Chinese Restaurant!For the first dishes, we got our very own lao sang, all the way from malaysia, and thanks for the kind contribution of this sweet young lady(you know who you are!) to share the love with us! Like the lao sang, which I alwiz knw to appreciate it crackers! From the rather blur photo you can see everyone got so excited playing with the lao sang! It's a chinese belief that by lao sang you can get good fortune in the coming year!

After the lao sang, it is the time for all the main dishes to be served! This is 3 of the 7 dishes we had, I couldn't find all of the dish so , this is the best I can do, sorry folks! The one at the top corner is lemon chicken, and need not much introduction really about that, basically is friend chicken with specially made lemon sauce to go with the chicken, it is rather one of the most popular dishes in this restaurant and unsurprisingly enough because most of the English or Welsh can't take spicy food and like chinese food that is rather sweet like lemon chicken and the one at the bottom right , sweet and sour pork! This two are really famous wherever you go to the local chinese restaurant! The thing I like about this two dish is that there are not too sweet like other places, and all the tastes are so well blended in the meat itself! Must try if you go to Mandarin!

For the one in bottom left, it's king prawns with bamboo shots if I am not mistaken, fresh peeled prawns eventhough not my style of preparing prawns, BUT, UK people are rather unfamilir with the skills of peeling the skulls or skins themselves in this case i supposed, the reason for me to say so is because, when you cooked with unpeeled prawns, the sweetness and freshness of the prawns will be kept inside, and the best thing is the prawns will not shrink in the case of peeled prawns, however, the dish is good....

When we think there willbe not much to surprise us, it comes with the Lady owner homemade roast duck specially for us! How generous of her! What i can say is that the roast duck is one of the best I have tried in my life and not as bad as those you can see back home where everyone queuing us for the poor little portion of duck rice! My favourite dish of that night!

Thank you for the restaurant to cater us and feed us full! Would definitely go back there for more events coming for malaysian society!

Food 8/10, roast duck is just unforgettable,
Service7/10 Rather friendly but could hav been better!
Overall 7.5/10

It is not about what you eat for reunion, is about who you with!

Crab and seafood dinner !

Honestly, this is my first blog about the creativity of aber students in culinary skills....However, I will continue my policy as to not showing any faces but just food in my blog, so only those who were involved in the process or my friends in aber will know who is the chef behind this, in this case, there are three chef, each in charge of different dishes!

Last wednesday, one of my friend ordered crabs from her boss and decide to cook it fresh that night! The slaughtering process was rather cruel for me, but who cares as long as I got to eat fresh and tasty crab!

Now, I should jump to the topic, first dishes of the day is Kam Hiong Crab, I can say that this is something out of my expectation as I don't expect her to cook it like what I had in the restaurant, nevertheless, it's somewhere near to the hight standard !

Second crab dishes is tomato Crab , another high standard culinary skill displayed by another young chef, provide a sweet selection for those who are afraid of spicy, and it is really a nice combination having one spicy kam hiong and one sweet tomato crab!

This is steam crab, one dish that I missed out the other day and now replaced it on request by the cook, it's ginger and wine steamed crab, which giv u a hint of chinese wine and make u sweat at the winter night using the ginger!Good stuffs everyone!

Then, the male chef cooked the heavenly cheese baked brocolli , it will not be as nice as what we had in his own cribs, but with limited resources, he still managed to naild it down!It's cheessy and nicely baked at the same time, with some prawns provide extra flavours in your mouth!

Food rating 9/10, nothing beats home cooking
Overall 9/10 You can't get it anywhere but in aber!

The world famous Klang Bah Kut Teh!

Sorry for all the readers that waited so long for new updates! Here I come again bringing you the best food on my way home last year during the Christmas and New Year time!

Today the main character is the world famous Klang bah kut teh and as a local in klang, I realised that there is much arguments about which one is the best in Klang, and by recent polling in Malaysia, 5 out of the top 10 bahkuteh are from Klang, that shows how good the BKT is in Klang! Bahkut teh is actually Pork cooked with chinese herbs and literally means pork ribs and tea , a great companion to drink along the meal!

I was hanging out with High School friends when we decided to have a lunch together one afternoon for the lovely BKT near Jalan Meru....

This shop was selected in 2003 as the top 10 BKT, not for their traditional claypot soup base BKT but the rather new dried bkt! Dried BKT to some people that had knowledge about it, is actually using the same meat which is pork, but stirfry it with blakcksoy sauce, some with oyster sauce and dried chilies, and with lots of dried squids, to bring out the aroma!

The best way to eat BKT is to eat with yujiakueh, which is a kind of chinese pastries basically made from flour, and eating and drinking the tea during the meal is said to clear the oil from the pork, (I wondered how true is that!)

BKT is originated from Klang by some sources as the food for the port labours from China, port labours require large amount of energies to carry out their daily works, so the labourers will cooked the pork with healthy herbs and eat with large portions of rice in the morning before going to work to provide them enough energy for the work! I think the tradition still being kept because most of the people in klang went for BKT in the morning!




The traditional soup based BKT, and you can see the yuciakueh from at the right side of the picture!

Food 7/10, not my favourite BKT place but it's worth a try and the dried BKT is good!
Services 6/10, it is a general rule that crowded restaurant provide less friendly service, but they are comparatively good!
Overall 7/10