The food journey continues...

Day 2 of our holidays and we are spending most of the day in KL, because our flight to HK leaves at 4pm in the afternoon.

Which means i ring up my best bud Miss M to say hey and wanna eat?!
We asked to be taken to another local place and eat what the locals eat.
Miss M takes us to an old skool kopitiam (i think) to have a Malay/Hainan breakfast.
Break fast in Malaysia is not like breakfast in the western world.. its heavier, greasier and full of surprises.

i opted for the light breakfast, kaya jam, butter & toast. Not a big fan of big greasy breakfasts - i actually don't eat breakfast normally. So this was just PERFECT. I also had a half boiled egg but i gobbled it up before i took a photo - heheh woops.. If you do find yourself in Malaysia one day, this is one thing i recommend everyone to try - toast with kaya jam. Watch out though it can be quite addictive!

The old school kopitiam place we went to was famous for their "roti babi" which translates to "pork bread". As curious tourists we had to order this dish, as it was the house specialty.
Roti babi is bread stuffed with shredded pork meat & cabbages, then the whole package is dipped into a raw egg mixture and pan fried till you get the golden egg skin as you see above. Very unusual meal but very tasty. A savoury french toast maybe?

This was hubby's breakfast - fried hokkien mee, very saucy and tasty.

The only regret we have was not trying the other unusual menu items, such as the pork chop & chicken chop. According to history, Malaysia was colonised by the British and many Hainanese chinese people we hired to cook for the British expatriates. These chinese people were "trained" to cook British foods but put their asian twist to the above dishes. So the pork chop and chicken chop are a mix of fusion asian & western cuisine thats evolved with the times and remains to be a popular choice by the locals. [brief history lesson - if i got facts & details wrong i apologise & feel free to correct me - my info comes from Miss M]. I didnt even take a photo of the dishes, but we did see people eat them. This is definitely on my TO EAT list the next time we go to KL.

more KL food

Come to dinner time and we were hungry for local stuff. This is when the hotel concierge recommended us to Jalan Alor. Food stalls galore, full of surprising and wonderful snacks.
On our walkabouts we came across this "deng deng" stall. As indonesians we call it "deng deng", which is pork mince pounded into flat sheets, mixed in with an assortment of herbs, spices, and sugar. Then its lighlty grilled to give it a wonderful sweet smoky aroma. We didn't end up buying any tonight, but was tempted to because it's not something you can have everyday back in Australia. What was so fascinating about the above picture is the "bacon dengdeng" - i think it was basically bacon treated in the same herb and spice mix then grilled - this i had never seen before. The other side was just normal "dengdeng"

This is a picture of Jalan Alor, packed to the sides with food stalls, people and tables. See how the car just squeezes in? people and food rule here.

Our very yummy black pepper mud crab. We were definitely licking every part of our fingers and crab shells to savour the flavours...

our yummy kung po beef claypot - servings were rather small so it was easy for us to finish everything.

our disappointing chicken satay. meat was dry and the sauce was bland and runny (fail!)

because we're on holidays, hubby and i turn into little pigs. on the way home we came across a super market and it had JACKFRUIT! i love LOVE jackfruit. jackfruit smoothies, ice cream, bubble tea, from the can and fresh - sooo good! This bundle of yellow goodness was about aud$3.00 but worth every penny. each fruit was super sweet and delicious, i could not stop eating them.

our other midnight snack was a crispy popiah from a local chain in KL. it was sooo good and hit the spot even though our bellies were full. what makes it crispy is the crunchy bits inside - as part of the filling of the wrapper skin. definitely a must try when you go to KL.

top floor food court, klcc

Our plane left for KL at 6am in the morning and arrived in KL at 12.30pm, so when we left the plane we were STARVING and i only had one thing on my mind : FOOD!!!

Luckily our hotel is close to KLCC shopping centre and there's food galore there.
This is our first meal in KL.

1. curry mee
2. tofu goreng (friend tofu)
3. kuay teow goreng

the curry mee hit the right spot. i was sooo hungry - so it all tasted really good. probably not the best laksa i've ever had, but that was what i needed .

we ordered a side serving of tofu goreng, which was probably the best of the three. yummy crispy skin, bean sprout and soy sauce filling. i think there was more to the filling then that, but we were so hungry we just didn't care.

hubby's friend kuay teow. he said it was "ok", not the best but definitely edible. it had little bits of "seahum" or clams mixed in with the noodles.

Day 1 : KL

ok ok i'm going to quickly recap the last 8 days of our trip.

we arrived in KL very safe and sound. Jumped into a taxi which cost us rm105!! thats like $35! a bit of a rip off but we let it go because we just wanted to be at the hotel as soon as possible. we went to KL last year and the taxi only cost us rm80/$25 or so. some killer inflation must of hit.

arrived at our favourite KL hotel - traders!! love love LOVE this place. [ask my kl friends, we always stay here for some reason]. great service, super clean rooms, very modern, free internet with printing servive [ great for online check ins and stuff] free shuttle to klcc.

we went to klcc shopping centre to scout our sales and bargains. few here and there but we wanted to wait for hk for the hardcore shopping. and hard core shopping we did. i have a seriously SICK credit card [which will need fixing up asap in perth]

for dinner we wanted something really local tasting, street style food with great ambience, so our concierge recommended jalan alor. so we went. what we found was a street jammed packed from both sides with food stalls, only a thin stream of cars can go through because the pedestrians were thick on the ground.

how do you choose which stall to patronise? you choose the busiest one of them all! a large crowd means good food right? anyways it turns out every stall pretty much sold the same thing, with flavours pretty similar to each other. We ordered a small crab, a beef claypot kong po style and some chicken satay. the crab & beef were fantastic, the chicken satay was a bit dry and the peanut sauce was a little thin - thumbs down.

then we slowly walked out way back to the hotel with our tummies very full...

luv.clio

day 2 : holidays!

so we are in day 2 of our holidays. not quite in hong kong yet, but we're about 10 hours away...WOOHOOO!

kl is great, took lots of pics of food (hehe no surprises there). Just shitted that i can't upload the photos straight away because these computers dont have SD card bits. oh wells... ill just have to remember when i get back.

i could use the iphone to update and upload photos, but because we are on roaming it will cost us an arm and a leg. its FREAKIN' expensive! seriously something stupid like $20-50 per MB download.
oh wells... we're just stuck on using the hotel computers.

ciao!
clio

hong kong here i come!!!

We leave for KL tonight and move on to Hong Kong on Wednesday!!
Soooo excited, can't wait. This is the HIGHLIGHT of my school holidays.

Still have a lot of packing and tidying up to do before we leave..

ciao!! clio

ps: i don't know what's wrong with my blogger but it keeps automatically choosing this font when i write. VERY ANNOYING. i have even tried changing the settings, but nothing works ... urgh... worry about it when i get back.

pork shanks

We finally went to Elmars in the Valley for a meal today. We've heard lots of good things about this place and their famous pork shanks. So with visitors from over seas and a group of friends, we made our tracks to the Swan Valley to show how we live it up in Perth.

Because it was a big group of people, we did a big order and shared everything. Starting with our entree.

Elmars tasting plate - cheese, pate, olives, and a range of german sausages - all Elmars of course YUMMY!

garlic cheese bread - soooo good!

chicken ceasar salad - our token green thing amongst all the meat!

and this was our mains! the famous pork shank with fried potatoes, saurkraut and mustard.
The pork is pickled then oven roasted till the meat is juicy and tender on the inside with beautiful crunchy crackling skin outside. Was soooo good... we are taking all our over seas and inter state guests here next time. Just make sure you leave room for desserts ...because we didn't and i regret it.

a very fappy ms clio :o)

note: 1 serve of pork shank can feed 2 - 3 normal people
you've been warned!