Acqua pazza, round two

On the heels of my spiced acqua pazza, I tried making a version without chilli flakes.

It tastes great too! Great recipe, so easy and I only need fish and tomatoes (the other ingredients are always available at home).

By the way, I found out the difference between cherry tomatoes and grape tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes are round (shaped like cherries), while grape tomatoes are oblong (shaped like grapes). Cherry tomatoes are sweeter and juicier, while grape tomatoes have thicker skins.

The tomatoes which I bought at the supermarket were labelled cherry tomatoes, but they are oblong, and I have no doubt that they are actually grape tomatoes! The article also mentions that grape tomatoes last longer than cherry tomatoes, and are less fragile, hence easier to transport. I guess that is why the mini tomatoes that we find are usually grape tomatoes and not cherry tomatoes.

Fine architecture

This guy is getting lazy!

Two weeks ago, the Photo Friday theme was summer, the same as two years ago.

Now this week's theme is architecture, a repeat of one year ago!

This time I present you an example of fine(?) architecture in the making...

I'd post more about the whole thing when it's done, but that might take some time...

Asam pedas

I've been working with a different team at work this quarter, and we had a team lunch today. We initially planned to go to Pak Hussin Tomyam, but it was suddenly closed today due to lack of workers. (When we reached, they said they were opening at 4pm and not 12pm which was the usual time.)

We ended up going to Asam Pedas Premier which is situated at One Precinct, next to the Sunshine Market food court.

We decided to each order our own set, and just add on a few side dishes to share. I ordered daging panggang masak lemak cili api.

The beef is actually in slices:

The gravy was really good, creamy with a slight tinge of spiciness from the cili api. The beef was not really tender enough though. But since it was in thin slices, it was still okay.

Most of the others ordered rice with chicken: ayam goreng rempah, ayam rendang, ayam sambal. They said the ayam sambal was really spicy but good. Then one ordered ikan pari bakar, and another ordered daging bakar (which I considered but did not order because there was no photo to tempt me :P ) It turned out that the "bakar" items were like a Portuguese grill, wrapped in aluminium foil. But I didn't take photos of the main dishes other than mine...so I can't show them to you!

As for side dishes, we ordered cucur udang, which were nice and crispy at the edges, but lacked prawns.

Then there was sotong goreng tepung, which I really liked.

The batter is spiced, so there is no chilli dip for this (there was a dip for the cucur udang above).

As one of the others mentioned, we came to Asam Pedas Premier, but none of us ordered asam pedas. So we ordered a bowl of asam pedas pari to share.

Verdict? I liked both the asam pedas and my masak lemak cili api. As I mentioned above, I liked the sotong goreng tepung but not the cucur udang. My set cost RM13.50, and the others were around RM12-13 if I remember correctly. For lunch (Monday to Thursday), they had lunch sets which come with a free drink (basically the price is the same as on the usual menu but they give us kopi o, teh o, or sirap for free). I can't remember the prices of the side dishes and all though...and we haven't seen the bill yet!

Then at the end we took a group photo.

You can see the advertised cucur udang behind us...the prawn there is sure a lot bigger than what we were served!

Gel insoles to the rescue

A little more than three months ago, I bought a pair of gel insoles to use during badminton. This was because the ball of my foot tends to hurt after playing, especially if I make any jumps. Surprisingly, most insoles are for the heel rather than for the ball of the foot. Even the insoles that I bought had thicker padding on the heel than on the ball of the foot.

The packaging:

Normal price is RM80, so at RM33, it was sure a bargain! The small window on the bottom-left of the packaging is for us to feel the insole's texture.

The back of the package:

A zoom-in for those who would like to read more about it:

Unpacked:

On top is the bottom, and at the bottom is the side that our feet are supposed to touch (top is bottom, bottom is top, haha).

After using it, I find that it does provide cushioning so that I don't feel pain in the ball of my foot any more. Even with jumping.

Here's what the bottom of the insoles look like after more than three months of usage, with two sessions a week.

I'm really hoping that this doesn't mean they will wear off. My badminton shoes had the inner sole (original one in the shoe) of one side coming off just after I had been using these insoles for a while, so I had taken this side's insole out before to re-adjust the shoe's original sole. More than one month ago, it looked about the same as this. So I believe there's hope...

Acqua pazza

Who knew that watching a Japanese show about everyone trying to kill each other would let me discover an Italian dish?

This is acqua pazza, which literally translates to "crazy water". It is actually fish poached in herb water.

The recipe says to add chilli flakes if we want some heat, so I did. But I regret it a little because I think it overpowers the other flavours. But then again, I might not have liked the dish without the slight spiciness. I'm still considering whether to omit chilli next time. (I used Domino's chilli flakes again)

In the Japanese show, they added mussels to the dish. I guess adding more seafood would make the dish better!

I had this with salad with croutons, which I made from my own bread. But they don't look anything special so I didn't take a photo. I have some left over which I am keeping in an airtight container...I shall be tasting them over the next few days to see how well they are keeping their crunchiness. Online recipes say to re-crisp them in the oven before using them, but I'd like to know whether I can skip this step if I re-use them soon enough.

By the way, I was thinking that it would be nice to dip bread into the acqua pazza, so I did throw a few croutons into it to try. I think it could be a nice combination if I didn't already have salad with croutons.

Of Pokemon and DIY

Just wanted to share some interesting photos...

Some time ago, I saw this lovely Chikorita in Gurney Paragon!

Unfortunately it was trapped in a glass cage and I couldn't rescue it. :(

And then I saw an awesome-looking Blastoise in someone's car, in the office parking lot.

It looks great! There were water cannons on its back! (the reflection from the car window makes it difficult to see in this photo) I want one! It should come for a play-date with my Squirtle! lol

(The fox beside it is cute too, but the sight of Blastoise is enough to drive the fox to the back of my mind :P )

Then there are these DIY flowerpots in front of a house near the Sg Ara market.

They're really creative, and the detergent containers are decorated with holes punched in different shapes too!

The potato mountain

Mountains that nature made are so mainstream. So here's a man-made mountain of potatoes.

Because this week's photo theme is mountain!

Yeasty adventures

As the motivational saying goes, when you make mistakes, you are learning. After two loaves of bread failed to rise, which gave rise (pun intended) to homemade breadcrumbs (which I wrote about before but thought my bread failed due to too much water) and panzanella, and (coming soon) croutons, I finally figured out that my yeast might be dead, and found a way to test it.

This article from King Arthur Flour tells you all about how to test your yeast or baking powder/soda. Baking powder will bubble and foam if stirred into warm water, and baking soda will fizz vigorously if added to vinegar. As for yeast, it needs to be stirred into warm water and sugar, and left for 10 minutes, then we should see that it is foaming.

They also teach us to use the tested yeast in our baking, by reducing the amount of liquid in the recipe by the amount that we had used to test the yeast, but I didn't do that because I didn't think of testing until I had already added my yeast to my flour.

Here's my test bench (aka my dining table):

Together with the bad packet of yeast (the one guilty of ruining two loaves of bread), I tested two new packets (I was a little paranoid about the first new packet not working, and thought it best to check both). The two on the left are the new ones. Here's how the good and bad yeasts turned out.

Good one was foamy and light as described in the article.

The bad one was noticeably less bubbly!

However it seems like the reaction is just delayed, because later on it foamed more. But at the 10-minute mark there were just a few bubbles, nothing compared to the other two cups! So I guess the yeast is not really dead, just...less active? Maybe it can still work if we leave more time for the dough to rise. But when you're using a bread machine like I am, the bread machine waits for no yeast! (yes I'm in a punny mood today)

As I looked at these three cups of yeast, I suddenly realized that I might be making beer :P

By the way, I mentioned panzanella earlier, and here's the one I made:

The basic recipe for panzanella is actually chunks of bread (we're supposed to use heavier bread, but with our usual lighter loaves, we can toast the bread chunks first) tossed with tomatoes, onions, olive oil, and herbs. We can use whatever other vinaigrette, or other ingredients we want. As you can see from the photo, I added some leftover salad leaves and some ham (even though all the recipes I've seen have no meat in them :P ). The dish needs ripe and juicy tomatoes, and I'm afraid my tomatoes didn't live up to that... but the salad was still pretty good.

Dangerous people

The latest in dimsum entertainment: My Dangerous Wife. It's a highly complicated web of scheming and deception, and you never know who's going to be friends with whom next...

Although interesting, I can't say that it was great because of the far-fetched plot. Good thing is that it's fairly short and fast-paced, only nine episodes of 45 minutes (first one is a double-length episode). Not a boring moment at all!

There's one part that went unexplained and I'm rather disappointed at that... the dangerous wife supposedly sent a message to be passed to her husband after she knew she was in trouble and might die. But from the sequence of events, there seems to be no time window for her to send that message.

Journey in crime

It's time I wrote some drama reviews again... I've been watching three pretty good ones, courtesy of dimsum (again). They add some new shows from time to time, and if I see someting interesting, I will give it a try.

The first one was Two Cops. It's Korean, and it's about a cop who suddenly needs to share his body with a con artist after a freak accident. Like Nine, it's supernatural but once you accept the principle of the supernatural happenings, the rest is believable.

However, it does not match up to Nine, because the storyline is not so exciting, and the details aren't as well taken care of. I'll say more about that below in the spoiler section. Despite this show's shortcomings, I really enjoyed watching it because the characters were very engaging. I liked practically all the characters, including the bad guy!

[[[Spoiler alert]]]

So the cop is Cha Dong Tak and the con-man is Gong Su Chang. The way Gong Su Chang's soul gets out of the Cha Dong Tak's body is by bleeding, that is to say that the cop has to start bleeding and the Gong Su Chang's soul will get kicked out. So isn't it easy to get out? You just need to prick a finger or something. But no...even after the Gong Su Chang figures it out, he goes around looking for someone to punch him so that he can start bleeding. Duh, so stupid...

Then there was the romance between the leading lady (reporter Song Ji An) and the cop. At first she doesn't know that there are two people in the cop's body, and she is falling for him. But after that, when she finds out, she seems to very easily figure out that the one she really likes is Cha Dong Tak. That might still be acceptable because she did go through a period of confusion when she first found out their body-sharing situation...though I would have liked a better way to see how she chose one over the other. But...how about Gong Su Chang? Both the cop and the con-man like the girl. In the show, Gong Su Chang immediately gave up on the girl and assumed that she liked the cop. But she hadn't even said that yet... so why didn't he have at least a bit of hope?

The main romance aside (it was rather tuned down, which was believable because the cop was not a really romantic guy), there was a second romance which was very funny and it was very entertaining to watch it developing. Like I said, I love the characters.

As for the main bad guy, the reason why I could even like him is because his character was very well-defined. He would do anything for his son, and all his crimes stem from one crime in the past (which ties everything together, like a typical Korean drama), which was to cover up something for his son.

[[[Spoiler ends]]]

Rating? I don't know... I would just say that this is a very enjoyable drama, although not on the must-watch list.

,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_ .-:*'``'*:-.,_

Second one up, Medical Examiner Dr Qin. This is a series from China, and it is very similar to Bones. The medical examiner (in forensics) in question is Qin Ming, and the stories come from the real-life Qin Ming's memoirs. There are many small cases, with a few underlying references to a big case coming on. And in the last few episodes, the big case comes up.

The main character is advertised as eccentric, but coming after Bo Jin Yan, he is really quite normal! I wouldn't have said he was eccentric at all, just rather short-tempered and asocial.

I feel that this series is a rather "entry-level" crime series. The cases are interesting enough, but a lot of the clues are too simple for me because I've seen them before! But that's because I've watched a lot of crime stories...people who are rather new to the genre would find this very good.

I also have a bone to pick with how they handle details. Why would forensic people wear a face mask and full protective gear (protective as in fully-covering their bodies, with hood and mask) when going to a suspected crime scene (which was already cleaned) to gather evidence, while their policemen colleagues are only wearing foot coverings in that same crime scene? And then these same forensic people do not even need any protective mask when working on a rotting corpse. Tsk tsk.

[[[Spoiler alert]]]

And at the end of the series, one person gets kidnapped and is locked in a glass cage, and the others need to get her out quickly. The bad guy has swallowed the key to the padlock, and the glass is bulletproof so they can't use their gun to shatter it. In the end they found a way... but I'm still puzzling over this: "Why didn't they shoot the padlock?" Even if the padlock were bulletproof or something like that, they should at least try shooting it first!

[[[Spoiler ends]]]

For its simpleness, the series is actually quite enjoyable. A bit graphic at times (think dead bodies), but I found it a happy watch, because it was not too gripping. There are three main characters, and apart from the asocial Dr Qin, I liked the other two characters very much.

,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_ .-:*'``'*:-.,_

Third and last of this post, is The Guardians / Lookout.

If Dr Qin was entry-level, this one is expert-level. I am so happy with this one, I really love dimsum for introducing it to me. The synopsis is about a group of people who have been hurt by crime and are taking the law into their own hands. As usual, the synopsis of this Korean drama does not do the series justice (although in this case, it might be to keep from spilling spoilers). These people are taking the law into their own hands, but they all have background stories, and what background stories they are! I won't go so much into the details because I feel that it is best to discover the stories while watching the series. This one is a definite must-watch. There are so many twists and turns in the plot, right from the beginning, that I enjoyed every minute of it. Some of the episodes flew by so quickly that I was shocked when it ended. Highly recommended!

I only have a few gripes (if you can say gripes... because they are really rather minor) about this series, and that is about some of the details not being wrapped up properly.

[[[Spoiler alert]]]

At one point towards the end, the bad guy, Yoon Seung Ro, calls someone to request some call logs. I thought he was going to make a comeback with that, but in the end, nothing seemed to come out of it.

The ex-Justice, Kim Eun Joong's father, said he was leaving his house to return the (crucial) handphone to the dead man's family. But it turned out that he had left the handphone in the drawer for his son to find. But then where did he go? Did he just leave the house to make the coast clear for his son? We could expect that, but I would have liked them to show it.

The last few episodes were a bit more repetitive (they repeated more scenes from the end of one episode to the beginning of the next episode). I think they did that because otherwise the last episode would be too short. But I feel that they could have given more details about the people's lives a year later... as it was, they only showed us a few people's lives.

The Leader died, which was more or less expected because otherwise he would have a lot of crimes to pay for. They didn't show whether Yoon Si Wan (the bad guy's psycho son) died, but I think they should have. Either that, or show us that he's in vegetative state or something. When Yoon Si Wan was in critical condition, Jo Soo Ji (the main character) deleted evidence of Yoon Si Wan's wrongdoings with the reason that it would hurt her policewoman friend's career. But that doesn't make sense if Yoon Si Wan was going to get better and commit more crimes!

At the end they also hinted that Kim Eun Joong had a girlfriend. He had been in love with Jo Soo Ji all along, so we wonder whether she was the girlfriend. They showed us that they are working together to bring criminals to justice, so that's definitely possible, but I think they could have given us a more direct pointer to that...instead of just ambiguous hints.

One thing I observed about this drama is that there is a lot about mothers. There is the mother who lost her child (Jo Soo Ji). There is the mother whose child becomes a fugitive and runs (Jo Soo Ji's mother). There is the mother whose child is a monster (Yoon Si Wan's mother). There is the mother whose child is kidnapped (Jo Soo Ji's cop friend and also another character)

[[[Spoiler ends]]]

So how does this compare to the best of the best, which are Nine and Love Me If You Dare? I really don't know... This one is seriously an amazing ride from start to finish, absolutely thrilling... I'll just put these three at the top and leave it at that.

Summer blooms

This week's theme is summer. Malaysia doesn't really have summer (unless if you call it summer all year round), so I guess any photo I take now can be considered summer.

Luckily for me, I spotted these flowers on the trees by the road on my way to work, along Jalan Tengah, just beside Giant. They're not bad-looking!

And the sunlight from behind the tree makes the photo look more summery. :)

The worst market visit in history

This morning I went to the market as usual to get my breakfast.

First: When going to the preferred parking area, a car was coming out and I had to reverse half the length of the road to let it come out.

Second: After that I went in to see whether there was any parking spaces left. There was none, so I made a U-turn to go back out. Then I saw a car coming out of its parking space. But earlier there was a motorcycle (a big one) behind me when I was reversing out, and when this car came out, the motorcycle went in and parked there, then the youngster riding it got into the car (that just came out) and left with them. There goes my parking space...

Third: I go for an alternative parking area. Again, another narrow road, which is fairly empty most of the time, but today, as luck would have it, there were not one, not two, not three, but FOUR cars coming in the opposite direction. Luckily I didn't have to reverse so much (this road is much longer than the first) because there was a parking space at the roadside and I just moved temporarily in to let the cars pass.

These three incidents, unlucky in each of them happening by itself, were already making my day unluckier than usual. But that's not all...

I didn't stop at the aforementioned parking spot because it was still quite a way to the market. (otherwise the unlucky story would probably end here) I went on... and today was really awful, there was no parking space until I reached the main road. So I parked there, and...

Fourth: I decided to cut through the small park to go to the market. There are some stray dogs there, and they are usually just dozing in the sun, keeping to themselves. But today one of them took it in their head to come barking at me. At first I thought I would continue walking, but then its friends (at least three of them, or was it four?) came too. At that point I was wondering whether going forward or backwards would get me out of the park more quickly... and then suddenly one of them lunged at me from the back. I think it was trying to bite me... (it couldn't have been a headbutt, could it?) Luckily it hit me just above the hem of my shorts instead of on my bare skin. After that I got seriously scared, and gave a yell, hoping that someone would come to my rescue (no one did :( ). However the yell did have the effect of making the dogs stop short, and I turned around and walked back out of the park, with the dogs barking at my back. I think one or two of them may have followed me for a while, but I didn't dare to look back and check.

Safely out of the park, I checked my skin under the shorts, and there was just a small red mark there. By the time I got home, the mark was practically gone, so I think I got off lightly. I think I will have to give the park a wide berth for a while... the dogs might remember my scent!

Of pickles and breading

This post is all about making the most of failed attempts.

Some time ago, I attempted to eat an avocado before it was ripe enough. I found online that we can wrap up the avocado again and place it in the fridge to ripen. But it didn't seem to work for me. My avocado seemed to stay in the exact same state even after two weeks. So I searched again and found a recipe for avocado pickles (not just one... it seems that a lot of people make pickles like this).

I made mine in two bird's nest jars. (one avocado) I used chilli flakes from Domino's Pizza because another website said they did that.

I believe that the recipe was a success, as in the pickles turned out exactly as they should be. However, I'm not a fan... probably because of the sourness. If I ever cut open an underripe avocado again, I'll try making a sweet pickle instead... like those we make with raw mangoes.

That's for the pickles... now on to the breading.

The other day I put a little too much water into my bread. (Edit: seems that water was not the problem, updates in this post) I was trying to make the bread softer, and it seemed like adding more water helped (unless it's a coincidence mixed with minor fluctuations of quantities in other ingredients). But I overdid it once and (as the world wide web tells me) it caused the gluten to break down, making my bread more like cake. I didn't like it at all, so after eating some of it, I decided I would try to make breadcrumbs (the bread was so crumbly it was already like breadcrumbs!) with it and use it to coat some chicken.

So today I made some breaded chicken tenders from scratch. (really from scratch, since the breadcrumbs are made from my own bread!)

They don't look that great because I didn't blend the breadcrumbs as instructed (so there are pretty big chunks), but the taste was pretty good. I'm satisfied :)

There were some breadcrumbs left over so I discarded then (they weren't a success anyway, with all those chunks). I wonder whether people usually throw away the leftover breadcrumbs... seems like such a waste! The recipe even says that we can blend thyme or lemon zest into the crumbs, but of course I didn't do that because I didn't blend the breadcrumbs. Maybe next time (if there's a next time) I can just mix it in. But then it'd be even more of a waste throwing those leftovers away...

As you may know, a chicken only has two chicken tenders (I found out not too long ago - maybe in the past year - that chicken tenders are actually the filet mignon of chicken), so only two pieces are chicken tenders and the other two are strips of chicken breast. Seriously there was a huge difference... the chicken tenders were so much more... uh, tender. :P

Oh, and by the way, I didn't bake he chicken; I just pan-fried them.

Guess what's purple?

It's Mr Potato's purple sweet potato chips!

I was halfway through the can (the small one) before I thought of taking this as my Photo Friday pic! I was spoilt for choice as the theme is purple. Too spoilt that I couldn't decide what photo to take and was procrastinating until this idea hit me (which is a few hours ago when I got back from work). Luckily it was before I settled for another photo and posted it. And also before I finished up the can!

Of teddy bear sidekicks

We switched on the TV and saw Chef Nic trudging up a snowy slope with a teddy bear hanging on his backpack. (don't ask me why, it was Season 3 if not mistaken, they don't do much cooking on this chef's show)

Snorlax said, why do they like to do this? Aren't they afraid that the bear will get caught on some branches?

I said, they don't care about the bear... the bear is there to make viewers like me happy. If the bear gets spoilt they'll just replace it with another one.

Suddenly I realize, if I see a teddy bear change in the middle of a TV show, I might need to start grieving.

Say hi to Squirtle!

This week's theme is window. I couldn't find a suitable window to take a photo of, so I made one myself!