I have been doing a lot of stuff lately and yes, I know, I’ve been so tardy in updating Mayakirana. I probably blame it on stuff that’s called Life.
First there’s the new house of course. I call it a house but it’s an apartment that’s on terra firma. Of course like all new toys and possessions, Nic and I have been up in eyeballs figuring out stuff for the new home. I didn’t know there were so many decisions to be made! Lights – the types and sizes are mind-boggling. Then kitchen layouts. Next, even bathroom doors have to be decided coz we really don’t like the existing bathroom doors. And to think our contractor says the remodeling/renovation is minimal. Bah, I hope so!
But this post is about food. So onwards with our topic of the day.
Last year we brought our intern and staff to try out this restaurant hidden within a shop. The uniqueness of this restaurant is that there’s no menu. You just eat whatever the towkay (big boss) cooks that day. Actually the towkay is a well-known local Datuk-cum-businessman. Prices are reasonable considering you get rice, 3 dishes and 1 soup for about RM10 per person. His specialty is Teochew cuisine because duh, he is Teochew.
When Tze first brought us there, we were stumped because the restaurant is only accessible IF you know where the entrance is. As it was located within a row of shops selling joss paper and Chinese praying items along Kimberly Street, we were a bit puzzled. Tze, the ever clever foodie, confidently sashays into the garishly pink shop and walks up the small staircase which opens into the tiny restaurant with all tables occupied!
The funny thing is, it’s like some HK mafia movie where everyone looks up at you the moment you push through the glass doors. It’s like a secret society place – but it is secretive because only those in the know will end up walking into a joss paper shop to eat! (Don’t tell your mama this. She’ll go ‘choy’ if you say you’re eating at a joss paper shop!)
But many moons have passed and we have not been there since our 2 outings there.
Last week, we decided to drop into this newly opened restaurant Old House Cafe on Kimberly Street. We’ve seen this new place a few times already but never had the time to pop in, each time lured by our favourite kueh chap hawker stall a few meters before this restaurant. (By the way, the kueh chap is deliciously good but not for the faint-hearted. It has duck meat and pig offal swimming in dark, herbal soup that’s good to the last spoonful.)
And what do you know?
The same Teochew towkay who runs the other secretive hideout restaurant in the joss paper shop is the owner of this spanking new restaurant. So what it means is, he actually now runs his secretive hideout ‘no menu’ lunches on the 1st floor of this restaurant. Lunch at this joint starts at 1pm so you can walk up to the 1st floor and plonk your butt down for some hearty Teochew fare.
When we were there on Saturday night, the place was truly buzzing. It doesn’t have an extensive menu (perhaps it’s new) and the prices aren’t low. (My plate of braised meats with white rice was RM7.50.) But hey, considering it’s a clean, well-decorated Chinese-style restaurant that you’d be proud to bring any guest to, it’s not too pricey. And if you order snacks like yam kuih or bak chang, it’s still quite affordable.
Plus if you are a Chinese tea aficionado, the Chinese rosewood tables are made just for this leisurely pastime. I would come for the towkay’s no-menu lunch though. That is the most exciting part of finding out that the towkay still cooks and is still offering Teochew cuisine! Coming for prawn noodles or kueh teow thn’g is probably not high on my list. But then again, maybe it’s supposed to attract tourists. Who knows? As long as the Datuk still wields his wok, I’ll be hot-trotting here!
You can’t miss the restaurant if you’re walking or driving down this street. Pop in and give it a try!
Update 3 Sept 2009: The towkay’s no-menu lunch (minimum 2 persons) still rocks. At a very affordable RM13.80 per person that comes with rice (extra rice is not charged the time we were there), free refills of homemade chrysanthemum tea, 1 soup and 3 dishes. When you enter Old House Cafe, just take the stairs (either on the left or right). Order the Teochew Prawn Balls (6 pieces for RM10) as an add-on dish. Yummy!
(By the way, although I’ve been asked countless times if I want to be a food blogger/reviewer and get to eat for free, I’ve turned down many invites. Penang has enough food blogs and food bloggers as it stands. Mayakirana the blog has never been totally about food. I write about everything under the sun and the way I see it, if I eat somewhere and dislike it, I have every right to diss the food. If a restaurant asked me to review the food, I’ll be obligated to write something lovely even if the food sucked. Hence, please don’t ask me again if I would like to review your cafe or restaurant.)
Old House Cafe
145-153, Kimberly Street, 10100 Penang, Malaysia.
Tel: 04 2622 113
Food
Cake Recipes From My Car Servicing Centre
I know. What a title isn’t it? You must have thought I’d gone nuts.
But the title of this post stands because… I really got some recipes from my car servicing centre this afternoon although I did get more than pissed. I got pissed because the people keep telling you to change this and that and when you get the bill for servicing your car, you almost die of a heart attack. The bill’s crazy. (But more of this later*…)
Most car service centres have ‘waiting lounges’ while your car gets its engine oil changed, or its air-conditioner cleaned. Sometimes I bring along my Asus netbook so I can hook up on the free wifi and reply emails during the 1 hour to 2 hour wait.
There’s the TV but who’s watching TV these days right? And the ice cream corner isn’t exactly what I like either. The magazines are rather old and most of them are Malay magazines.
Today I’d planned to read my Pratchett but that didn’t happen. I saw Her World on the magazine rack and decided to poke about – I’ve never been a fan of this magazine (it reminds me too much of my mother’s era!). In fact, I’ve never been much of a local women’s magazine fan unless they’re passed to me by my sister after she’s finished clipping out contest forms!
But surprise. The magazine featured a few very simple cake recipes! Since I tote along my Canon Ixus everywhere and I was too lazy to start scribbling down the recipes, I decided to take some snaps of the recipes! The best thing about technology these days! No pen or paper? No problem. Have camera will travel!
In fact, the cakes were pretty interesting plus they had basic and simple ingredients – Apple Cake with Pine Nuts, Chocolate Raisin Cake, Lemon Almond Cake and Banana Cake.
Here’s one of them:
This is the second part – where the ingredients are listed:
And finally part 3 where the instructions are:
I’m going to try them out soon! Wait for the results.
(* Oh ya, never let the car service people tell you what YOU ought to change/replace in your car even though it is ‘recommended’ to do so. If you don’t feel you ought to simply change and replace parts of your car, tell them you don’t need the change. We don’t need to be bullied into paying hundreds of ringgit just because someone tells us it’s needed. As a consumer, you decide what you want. Don’t let others make decisions for you.)
Exploring Penang On Foot
This post is a bit overdue. But it is an example of what Nic and I love about Penang. There’s much to see, explore, appreciate and love.
Visiting art galleries is something we do when we’re free. It’s great to check in on the latest artists, especially up and coming ones. I still nag Nic about going back to his art. He really ought to. He does very well when he paints. And I am most certainly NOT saying this because he is my spouse. I say this because I’m going to be a very Rich Woman in my twilight years because I get to pick and keep the best art pieces in his collection ;-). LOL.
When we visited Galeri Seni Mutiara a few weeks back, it was an exhibition of watercolour pieces by Ong Choon Hoe. From the art, you can glimpse the soul of the artist. This one certainly loved boats and the sea. Every piece seemed to be about fishing boats of Malaysian fishing communities.
Another stopover once we were done with gazing at watercolour art was to this quaint tea house along King Street. I’d found this place when I was involved in a charity treasure hunt a few months ago. (It has now moved to a more happening address; now it’s the same row with the Pitt Street Goddess of Mercy Temple. Look out for a bright green shophouse near the flower/garland stalls).
Mr Oh’s little tea house was quirky! Laminate tables and plastic chairs. Cobwebs on the ceiling. Totally old world feel. He brews his medicinal pu-erh tea in his slow cooker. You can have pu-erh tea by the glass jug at RM1.20. He also sells pu-erh tea cakes and pu-erh tea in loose leaf form.
Pu-erh is a warming tea with a signature dark colour unlike most chinese teas. Mr Oh’s master (or sifu) is the original tea master who uses specially concocted pu-erh tea to help people who suffer from illnesses and ailments. He was not shy in telling us that his master helped cure a man who had prostate cancer by getting the man to drink pu-erh tea daily!
I know that pu-erh tea is good for slimming (not that I want to grow slimmer!). It’s also a good tea to drink as it is not cooling unlike jasmine tea. Pu-erh tea is great after a meal of oily food. In Chinese dim sum eateries, you can get a type of tea called “Kuk Po” which is a combination of pu-erh tea leaves and chrysanthemum flowers. As pu-erh warms and chrysanthemum cools, marrying both is essentially a Chinese method of ensuring proper yin and yang! Too yin creates health problems like chilly hands and feet while too yang creates an overheated body system. That is why balance is important especially in food!
Mr Oh chats in English and Hokkien so you can drop by anytime for an affordable cup of tea. He probably has some 60s music playing too.
What a strange combination huh!
Pizza & Spaghetti at T-Jays
I’m continuing a little bit about food in Langkawi today. I’m not a flogger – that’s what food bloggers are called these days. I’m far too eclectic to limit myself to blog musings on food.
I heard of T-Jays from many sources. One was The Star’s Flavours magazine. They’d reviewed T-Jays many years ago. The second source was James who had raved about these pizzas. And it’s a huge compliment because James is British and he’s always asking me, “Why are you Malaysians always going on and on about food?” For him, food is just sustenance. No point going blardy mad over.
On our last trip to Langkawi, we wanted to try out something totally new so we chose T-Jays. Nic’s a big pizza and spaghetti fan so it fit him to a T.
T-Jays’ is opposite the Langkawi Underwater World which up till now, I’ve not been inside at all. Every local person tells me there’s nothing much to see there – it’s just for tourists.
Anyway, we ordered a 12-inch pizza (RM27) and the spaghetti with spiced beef (RM30). I felt the drinks were a tad on the pricey side considering this is Langkawi where beers and what-not were dirt cheap. RM 5 for lime juice? Come on! (And this is not Perdana Quay. This is a cafe by the road in Pantai Cenang. Pantai Cenang is like Chulia Street, Penang.)
“The food better be good.” The same thought ran through our minds when we ordered.
Luckily the food lived up to its “best pizza place in Malaysia” tagline (on its signboard). The pizza was crispy, a bit burnt on the edges and full of great tasting ingredients like pepperoni, olives, tomato and cheese. I believe it was called the Quatro Pizza. Each of us had about 4 huge slices.
The spiced beef spaghetti was pretty damn good too. Imagine spaghetti bolognaise that’s rich in a gooey thick tomato sauce and mixed with cream and kick-ass chili padi. You get a rich tomatoey, creamy spaghetti (that was perfectly al-dente) with lots of mouthsearing chilies. Lots of minced beef. Lots of chili oil and chilies. I could’ve licked the platter clean. It was THAT good!
We were totally satisfied with the portion of spaghetti. It reminded me of the spaghetti I had with CC at Italiannies at The Curve not too long ago. I much prefered T-Jay’s to Italiannies, to be honest.
Now if only they lowered their drink prices!
More Langkawi food posts:
1.How to savour Langkawi
2.Going Dutch in Langkawi
3.Nasi campur and other local Langkawi eats
4.Breakfast at Tun Mahathir’s Favourite Cafe
5. Stylish dinners at Pantai Tengah, Langkawi
How to Savour Langkawi
Got back about a week ago from a truly relaxing trip to Langkawi. Most times, we go and meet a whole bunch of clients. Good for them but terribly frenetic for us. Friends do not believe us when we say we are really working when we go to Langkawi.
This time though, we decided to reclaim some semblance of a holiday for ourselves.
It was time for a real break.
This time, we didn’t want to stuff too many clients into our 3-day trip. In fact, we didn’t meet any except Kak Su whom we lunched with at Wan Thai on Sunday, hours before we left Langkawi. (Even meeting Kak Su wasn’t such a planned event. We’d gone for a quick breakfast at her Cafe Molek but her staff, Sal, said she wasn’t around. As we were leaving, we saw Kak Su driving by in her dark blue Volvo.)
Kak Su is more of a friend than a client though we did start off with a business relationship. She is the owner of Villa Molek, a boutique villa resort on Pantai Tengah, Langkawi. It’s tastefully done up, hidden yet accessible. We had great fun designing her website because she had a great ‘product’ and good selling points too. Plus she gave us full control, trusting us to deliver not only a visually pleasing website but one that generates good results too. But that is another blog post for the other blog.
So what did we do?
We took our time to savour Langkawi.
The food of this island is exceptional especially if you know where to look.
Our clear favourites are Sun Sutra (for a romantic western-style dinner with excellent wines), Sunday (for Chinese stir-fry dishes in a Thai-influenced ambience) and The Loaf (for a totally awesome breakfast experience by the marina where the yachts berth).
Some people exclaim that The Loaf is expensive. Well, it is of course but don’t discount the view. The view, the quality ingredients, the slow breakfast, the good cutlery. Don’t these count for something too? Otherwise, a cheap nasi lemak bungkus breakfast at some rundown warung down by Pantai Cenang is available too.
Remember I mentioned Wan Thai? It’s a halal Thai restaurant in the heart of Kuah town, popular with locals and foreigners. The lady boss (who is Thai by the way) is soft-spoken, gentle, unassuming and ever-smiling. Oh and she is so beautiful with porcelain skin! (How do Thai women get so pretty? They eat so much of chilies yet their skin’s super smooth like taufufah!).
Wan Thai is a MUST visit place, especially before we board the ferry back to Kuala Kedah (we often drive from Penang to Kuala Kedah and board the ferry from there instead of doing the 3-hour Penang-Langkawi ferry ride). I love to order their “hor muk” or seafood otak-otak served in a young coconut. This way, you get the otak-otak AND you get to scrape the young coconut flesh after!
Another new place we now visit for breakfast is Kak Su’s Cafe Molek, adjacent to her Villa Molek. It serves good food at reasonable prices plus there’s wifi connection! (Heaven sent for IT people like me and Nic).
Considering that there are dirty, slum-like places serving similar continental breakfasts along Pantai Cenang/Pantai Tengah and charging the same prices, Cafe Molek gets my vote any time because it’s cleaner, it has proper tables and chairs, it’s airy and quiet and the food’s good too.
This time, we also dined at a firm favourite of our friend James. James loves Orkid Ria, a seafood restaurant on Pantai Cenang. Orkid Ria is a really happening place for dinner. It is always packed with people. The atmosphere is a bit like a cleaner, modern Chinese kopitiam though noise levels can reach deafening volumes.
The food’s good too especially if you love rice with seafood dishes like deep-fried soft shell crabs, baked lobster, steamed tiger prawns etc. According to Uncle Loh, the seafood that you see displayed each night are freshly caught and delivered just before the restaurant opens for dinner. Prices are reasonable so it’s really not difficult to understand why Uncle Loh (the owner) gets so many customers each night, high season or not!
The DNA of Durian Pleasures
I’m a durian fan. A huge one. I could not pass up the chance when Nigel invited Nic and me to a true Balik Pulau durian experience. There’s nothing like the king of fruits to bring strangers together.
The Sunday morning drive was pleasant – we took the road to Gertak Sanggul tailing Nigel’s Corolla while anticipating luscious, bitter durian. Would we get our hands on premium stuff?
Halfway, we stopped to wait for 3 other cars – this was going to be a group affair. The durian orchard owner, Pao Lun, rode his Honda though. Later we’d know why.
Much weaving about the hilly areas later, we turned off onto a steep road going up uphill. We parked our cars, got on with the introductions and hiked some more. Now you know why Pao Lun was on his trusty Honda bike. He could just ride up to the top of the hill.
I didn’t exactly pant while climbing the hill but it was strenuous on my calves and thighs. This was truly working up an appetite.
Finally we reached the house on the top of the hill. The view was spectacular. I could see a promontory; this very promontory saved the lives of those living on this side of the shore during the 2004 tsunami which hit parts of southern Penang island.
All around us were durian trees, rambutan trees and papaya trees. Netting was strung across the trees for 2 reasons – to collect the falling durians and to protect people from getting concussions while walking underneath these tall trees. (Durians were falling with dull thuds on the ground when we were there so yes, they do fall and they don’t care who they hit. They’re durians, remember? Thorny and heavy.)
But the moment Pao Lun started opening his stash of durians, everyone went into a revered silence, watching his methodical movements.
It was ecstatic just looking at him opening durians, and showing us the creamy yellow flesh; some were pale yellow, others were rich sunshine yellow. Some looked moist, others dry.
Each one had its own name, its own DNA of taste. Bitter yet aromatic, soft with a delicate aftertaste. Or creamy sweet, sweet lingering till the end. Or wonderfully intense aroma heightened by thick custard-like flesh with small seeds.
Not that I recognised their names. But each durian Pao Lun presented us was like heaven in a seed of flesh. From the youngest to the oldest, we were all quiet as we licked our fingers clean, looking forward to the next durian taste.
Soon the basket of durian shells were filling up. After gorging for almost 30 minutes, we were all truly sated, our breathing a tad laboured as we struggled to say no to yet another bounty.
I picked up an empty durian shell section and went in search of a tap to rinse my mouth and wash my hands. The tap brought forth fresh spring water (or so someone said) and I drank our Malaysian-Balik Pulau Evian water. It tasted OK.
Drinking water from the durian shell, according to local folklore, prevents heatiness after eating durian. Drinking water with a pinch of salt is also good as a prevention technique. Washing one’s hands underneath the running tap (the water must run off the durian shell first) also gets rid of the durian smell from one’s fingers. Believe it or not, it works.
This is perhaps my first of many durian outings – I am so glad I live in Penang. It’s the durian season and you can find durians on every street corner but nothing is as hedonistic as enjoying durians on top of a hill in Balik Pulau while drinking in a view of the southern tip of the island.
Thanks to Nigel and Fee for this great introduction to Pao Lun’s durian orchard! Fee promises more durians to come. Yum!
More great photos over here.
UPDATE: Here is Pao Lun’s mobile number in case you want to call him and make a date to visit the farm and have some durians – 016 436 4640
Korea Town in Penang
I thought the Korean craze had already died down but I was wrong. (Cue: Winter Sonata, LG, Samsung….)
A lot of people watch Korean dramas on TV and like K-pop (ummmm, I was introduced to the cute, preppy Wondergirls girl group by my cousin one day). And Korean food is set to soar too.
That’s how we ended up at Daorae, a Korean BBQ restaurant last Saturday night. You cannot miss the signboard – it winks, ok, blinks at you when you are at the Krystal Point roundabout (actually the restaurant is located along Ideal Avenue, near Bukit Jambul).
I don’t mind Korean food though my first love is Japanese/sashimi. I love the way they’ve marketed themselves so successfully over the years. A great blue ocean strategy. Whoever is behind this Korean craze deserves accolades. Everyone wants to travel to Korea now.
I particularly like kimchi and I always have a box of this spicy condiment in my fridge for those moments when I crave something other than Vietnamese chili padi.
The four of us ordered 2 dishes (3 slabs of pork belly and thinly sliced beef – a minimum of 2 dishes are a must if you want to try the Korean BBQ) and a kimchi noodle steamboat set. The waiters were all authentically Korean, yelling “ann yeong haseyo” each time someone walks through the door and saying “kamsahamnida” when you leave.
As with all Korean food, you get a multitude of side dishes of vegetables in fantastic colours. A thin pancake made of scallions and an egg custard (reminiscent of Japanese chawan mushi) were provided to us, on the house.
We started with tasty kimchi broth each and then the BBQ started. The waiter loaded the ‘hole’ in the table with a pot of charcoal briquets before putting a stainless steel top on it where he expertly barbecued the beef and pork for us. A small steel cup of thickly sliced garlic was also put into the BBQ.
The fun part was eating the BBQ meats. The correct way is take a fresh lettuce leaf, dip the BBQ meat into a salt-pepper-oil condiment, take a slice of the garlic, dip garlic into another red condiment resembling sambal belacan but tastes more like cincaluk, put garlic on the meat, wrap up the whole thing and pop into your mouth. Very satisfying and a fantastic way of eating greens with meat. Also a vampire’s nightmare because the garlic smells like well…garlic!
Korean food really is quite healthy with so many varieties of vegetables as sides (the waiters will refill your side dishes once you’ve finished them).
The kimchi noodle steamboat was nothing spectacular – just imagine eating instant kimchi noodles in a soup full of mushroom, meat and kimchi.
Daorae serves a free flow of genmai-cha (a kind of rice-roasted tea – sorry but I only know my Japanese teas) besides the refillable side dishes. Apparently it has about 6 outlets in the Klang Valley. The charges are for the mains that you order. In our case, it was the 2 meat dishes and the steamboat. The tea and sides were not charged.
The robust and loud Korean waiters were rather comical as they aren’t very good in English and they’ll tell you cucumber is pumpkin and konjac (of which konnyaku jelly is made from) is squid when you request for more side dishes.
It must be feng shui or the food’s really captivating because when we left at 8.30pm, a queue had formed and were waiting for their seats!
Or maybe it is Sparkling Korea like their tourism posters proclaim!
Chinese Dumpling Festival
I love being Chinese because we’ve got a tonne of festivals where we get to celebrate with food and snacks and other yummy delicacies. Any way, the zhang or chinese dumpling festival is back again.
I love zhang! I love it in all its incarnations. From kee zhang (lye water dumpling) to bak zhang (meat dumpling), I’m mad over these glutinuous rice dumplings.
And to think it was inspired to save a Chinese poet from being eaten by fish in the river! The zhang or Duan Wu festival is celebrated on the 5th day of the 5th lunar month in the Chinese calendar. This year it falls on 28 May, Thursday.
I’m no bak zhang expert maker so I leave this to my aunt who makes the most scrumptious zhang ever. Of course as age catches up with her, she makes fewer and fewer. A short supply always makes this festival much anticipated – I look forward to this festival with relish and a growling tummy.
Not all zhang is full of glutinuous rice containing fatty pork meat, chinese mushrooms, salted duck yolk, chestnut, dried oyster and dried prawn (hae bee).
There are those with very little ingredients (some just filled with beans) but they taste just as good. Then there are the zhang made with lye water which has nothing at all. But eaten with rich, eggy kaya or melted gula melaka, hmmm…..heaven!
While most zhang are triangular in shape, my Grandma used to make pillow shaped zhang, a larger zhang which could feed more than 2 persons happily. Sadly she does not make them anymore!
But if you are like me and can’t wrap a zhang properly, you can buy them. Every street corner in Penang seems to sell the zhang during this time.
And if you’re feeling particularly healthy, how about vegetarian zhang? Not made by me. Made by the Buddhist Tzu Chi Society.
A friend who volunteers at the society writes:
“Yes, it’s that time of the year again and we are now starting to take orders for the famous Tzu Chi vegetarian dumplings for this year. If you have any friends or colleagues who would like to buy from us, it would be great if you can help to consolidate the order and send to me. The sales of dumplings will start from 22 May 2009 onwards at RM5 each. Please let me know the date you need to have the dumplings delivered and where so that I can make the necessary arrangement. If you are not into eating dumplings, you may want to consider donating to the ingredients for the making of these dumplings.”
If you want to order, you can email Swee Yong at sycheok at gmail dot com or call 012-423 8700.
So you see, there ARE more ways than one to get your zhang if you’re not adept at wrapping them yourself!
More zhang links to feast on:
Making your own zhang – nah, too tedious for me but you may try it if you’re adventurous.
Another one but with video of step-by-step process of wrapping the zhang.
Or take a look at the recipe for peasant zhang.
The Simplest Bread Recipe Ever
I know I’ve made claims about my special banana cake recipe and that recipe is simply superb and just too easy BUT this time, I take my topi off to Yeo for the easiest bread recipe ever.
Even if you haven’t baked anything in your life, I bet you could bake this bread.
Especially if you enjoy chewy bread that’s stuffed full of pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds.
Bread that is not made with white flour. (Ooooh, the white culprits.)
Bread that’s healthy. Made with organic rye flour and organic (unbleached) wholemeal flour.
When Yeo told me about this recipe, I didn’t really believe him. After all, he is a bread maestro. He makes things sound easy.
But I did taste his bread and I must say I was impressed. (As an aside: Did I tell you that I took home to Penang 3 slices of his homemade bread on the AirAsia flight from KL and the bread still tasted divine upon arrival? Make that 3 slices of homemade bread AND a box of sinfully rich butter cake and marble cake, tar-pau’d from the famous OUG weekend market.)
He made it sound too easy so I was keen on trying his recipe out only to find that I didn’t have the flours needed to make this bread and I had been way too buggered by work and projects to pop into Jusco to get my organic flours.
Until last week when I managed to get to Queensbay Mall.
I say this recipe is easy because I didn’t even need to knead the dough.
I just mixed everything up, put it aside to rise for a few hours, came back to stir it a bit, left it to rise again for an hour and then scooped the dough into a loaf pan and popped it into the oven. About 40 minutes later, the bread was ready!
I am not kidding.
If you’re new to bread-making/bread-baking and want something fail-proof, this has got to be it.
For this wholemeal rye bread, you’ll need to mix together in a fairly large mixing bowl:
3 cups wholemeal flour (I used Country Farm brand from Jusco, 500gm for RM4.10)
1 cup rye flour (also Country Farm brand from Jusco, 500gm for RM4.50)
1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
2 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon salt (mine’s Himalayan Rock Salt)
2 cups warm water
1/2 cup pumpkin seeds
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
You’ll get this gooey mess when everything’s nicely combined. Leave this in a warm corner of your kitchen for 3 hours. It will rise and become double its size. After 3 hours, stir it a bit (to deflate those air bubbles created by the yeast activity) and leave it for another 1 hour. It will start to rise again.
Get a loaf pan. I didn’t grease it but just sprinkled plain flour in it. I was worried the bread might not come out of the pan if I didn’t do that.
Scoop the dough into the loaf pan. (Remember to pre-heat your oven for 20 minutes at 180C before this.) Put the pan into the oven for 30 to 40 minutes. Once done, cool and pop bread out.
As this bread does not have any preservative or bread improver or anything faintly synthetic, it keeps well in a tightly covered container in the freezer. To serve, just thaw it by leaving it out at room temperature for a few hours or warming it in the oven for a few minutes. Great with pats of fine butter.
I found that a slice of this dense and nutty bread keeps me full the whole morning! It must be all those healthy seeds!
Thanks, Yeo for a brilliant bread recipe. This will probably be my fave bread too!
Muffins for Charity and More…
Never underestimate the power of the ‘Net. Remember the muffin charity call sometime ago?
While I’m horrible at making muffins (Nic will attest to this fervently), I am thankful I have friends like Beng Choo whom I can fall back on whenever there’s a need for yummilicious muffins.
Anyway, Beng Choo wrote this email to everyone today and I want to update all of you (especially those who ordered her banana walnut raisin muffins) that she has far exceeded her goal of collecting RM1K for charity.
The second time she sent out her email to us (asking if we would help her get to her goal of RM1K) I emailed my cousin and sister and within 2 hours, we had lots more orders. It helped that Beng Choo’s muffins did its own word-of-mouth advertising – the proof of its deliciousness was in the eating.
In between her baking ‘days’, she (plus friends and nieces) even managed to go to the hospital to donate blood to a friend who had been severely injured (and who is now in a coma) due to a snatch theft incident near Queensbay Mall.
Finally after the second batch of orders were delivered, Beng Choo sent us all this email below.
Never underestimate the power of a dream.
Thanks to everyone who helped Mindy fulfill her muffin project for charity (see below for the list of homes she is donating to).
================================
Email from Beng Choo
The second round of orders for Mindy’s Muffin Project was even more overwhelming than the first time around. We calculated that we will need an order of 40-48 boxes (depending on the pisang raja market price) to hit our target of RM1K.
However within 5 hours of sending out the message, we received a total order of 113 boxes before we could managed to send out the stop order message.
As a result our profit achieved exceeded our target by 43%, with the total profit amounting to RM1,430. Lee, my husband topped up to make a total of RM1,500. He has also sponsored the electricity for our baking and petrol for our delivery. Special thanks to Wai Hau who has been a great help.
After discussing with Mindy, today, we sent out the total profit to the following homes :
1. Pure Lotus Hospice
2. Bodhi Home (children home run by Pure Lotus )
3. Penang Children’s Protection Society
4. Penang Shan Children Home (located at Bodhi Heart premises)
We also decide to channelled a token sum to Mr. Leong Pow Neng who is still in coma in CCU at Island Hospital. His daughter Cecilia said they will donate the sum to other children/senior citizen home on behalf of their father to make merit to support his recovery/healing. Today is the 13th day Mr. Leong has been in the CCU and has not regain conciousness though there were several occasion he partially open one eye. Thanks for your overwhelming response to the request for blood. For the moment, I understand from Cecilia that they do not need more blood.
Thank you very much for all your generosity and kind support without which this charity project would not have succeeded. Many of you pay more than RM8 per box as on many occasions you all asked us to keep the change which we duly added to our profit amount.
May all the blessings be with you and your family.
With lots of metta,
Beng Choo
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