Zi Wei Yuan charcoal steamboat (紫薇园鱼头火炭炉)

The steamboat was heated with charcoal instead of using the common gas stove, and the soup was special as well… (we ordered a set) with fried fish and taro cubes as the base. It tasted a bit sour along with the sweetness of the ingredients, which gave a very well mixed taste and flavour.

The restaurant offered decent options for their menu, mostly seafood, from cheap fishball dishes to expensive sea cucumbers and abalones etc… reasonably priced.

Address: 6525, Jalan Raja Uda, 12300 Butterworth (location map); Tel: 04-331 2736 or 012-452 4741 (closed on Wednesday).

Farmland is famous for its porridge based steamboat. It’s becoming a habit to bring relatives from other places to dine at these porridge steamboat restaurants, as these dining style is not really common outside of Klang Valley.

Farmland Steamboat Restaurant at Bandar Puchong Puteri, Selangor

I have previously dined at Farmland’s Serdang Perdana branch; this was my first visit to this Puchong outlet.

Just like the rivalry Eastern Delight, Farmland serves simple ingredients as well, and nothing spectacular unless you are ready to splurge on some abalones etc.

What makes porridge based steamboat special is that it would not obscure the original taste of the ingredients. Besides, after some cooking, the flavour of the ingredients would spread into the porridge, thus giving the porridge some really nice taste.

The major different between Eastern Delight and Farmland is probably the ‘thickness’ of the porridge (the steamboat base). ED’s porridge was normally thicker than Farmland… it depends on personal preference on which is better, but both are acceptable to me.

Location map (Tel: 03-8068 1880 / 8068 2280)

The restaurant is a branch from the popular Malacca outlet, fame for its Italian cooking, pizzas in particular. Just like the Malacca restaurant, this KL branch seemed pretty cosy as well.

Can’t remember the exact name of the food we ordered… some drinks, a pocket pizza, a full size pizza, a pasta and some dessert. The food was nice; not great, but nice… worth a visit. The bill was RM92 for 3 person, acceptable.

Finding the restaurant was a pain though… especially when it was dark and raining at night.

Address: 28-30, Jalan Pudu Lama, 50200 KL (location map). Tel: 03-20312830.

Simple wonton noodle

Can’t find it in any restaurants though, it’s cooked by yours truly. The noodles were bought from the market, cooked and flavoured with soy sauce and sesame oil. The pork and prawn wontons were easily made too, recipe here.

A simple dish. The challenge is actually on buying the right noodles, which requires some test and trial sometimes.

Pork and prawn wonton soup

Ingredients (2-3 persons; 25-35 wontons)

25-35 wonton wrappers, 100g lean pork, 50g small prawns, 3-4 button mushrooms, 1 teaspoon soy sauce, a pinch of sault, a pinch of white pepper, a sprinkle of sesame oil.

Methods (Preparation time: 15-25 minutes)

1. Mince the pork, prawns and mushrooms.

2. Mix all the ingredients.

3. Wrap your wontons. Place a teaspoon (flat) of fillings to the centre of the wrapper, and just squeezed the wrapper gently.

Don’t worry about the fillings falling out when cooking, the wrapper would stick together almost instantly when you put it into boiling water.

4. Boil a pot of water, and add the wontons. Don’t add too many at a time, or the wonton might tangle up and the wrapper might be torn.

Cook the wontons for 3-4 minutes, and remove the wontons from the pot. The wontons are ready for serving.

Extra notes

Most wonton wrappers in the market look yellowish because of the alkaline water used, not because of the eggs as commonly believe. In fact, most of the wonton wrappers are not using eggs as ingredient at all.

Alkaline water is commonly used in making Chinese noodles and bakeries for different reasons. It is also used in wonton wrappers to make it a bit ’stronger’ and not easily torn when cooking. Despite the bizarre yellowish colour, alkaline water is harmless if used in proper proportions.

If you want to make a wonton soup, do not cook the wonton directly in your soup. Cook it in boiling water, remove it and add into your soup instead… or else your soup might look all yellowish like the one above.

Chinese roast pork

Ingredients (2-4 persons)

500g pork belly, 1 tablespoon fine salt, 1/2 tablespoon five-spice powder and 1 tablespoon coarse salt.

Methods (Preparation time: 55-65 minutes)

1. The skin needs to be dry before putting it into the oven; it’s one of the key factors to create the crispiness. So, clean your pork hours before cooking it, so that it could dry properly.

You might want to consider drying it with kitchen towel or put it under a fan etc… just make sure it is dry.

2. Rub the fine salt and five-spice powder on the meat.

3. Pre-heat the oven for 5 minutes at 180°C. Put the pork belly into the oven with skin facing up; lay the coarse salt on top of the skin.

Roast the pork for 20 minutes.

4. Take out the pork and remove the coarse salt. Use a sharp instrument (knife or fork etc.) to poke the surface of the skin… poke it thoroughly (the whole surface). This is crucial to make the crispy skin.

5. Put the pork back into the oven and roast for another 20-25 minutes.

Verdict

Not bad. The taste was good… it could be better if I add some other ingredients like pepper and wine, but I like this recipe for the fact that it’s so simple to prepare.

The only failure is that the skin was not crispy enough. My main mistake was not making sure the skin was dry enough before roasting it (step 1).

I tried to amend it by increasing the cooking time, but I was afraid that the meat would be too dry at the end.

It’s still a decent dish nonetheless.

Extra note

Remember to put the pork on a rack, with a tray underneath to catch dripping oil. It’s a pretty standard practice when roasting meat (chicken, lamb, whatever) which will save us plenty of cleaning time after the cooking.

Some Dim sum at Pan Ki

One of the major reasons why I like this restaurant is because it’s relatively easier to find a seat even in Sunday morning. Their dim sum is pretty old school, nothing fancy but with decent taste and varieties… and when it comes to dim sum, old school is a good word.

I like their har gao, siu mai, and also their chicken feet. Their pork based dim sum are normally better than fish based dim sum, somehow.

Reasonably priced, quite cheap by KL standard.

Eastern Delight is famous for its porridge based steamboat. This Sri Petaling branch should be their first outlet; they also have branches at Kota Damansara and Sunway if not mistaken. Chose to dine here because my aunt had never tried porridge steamboat prior to this visit.

Porridge steamboat at Eastern Delight

The porridge steamboat is quite common in Guangzhou, China, but has only become popular in Kuala Lumpur in recent years. It’s still not commonly found in other cities like Ipoh or Penang.

Porridge steamboat is actually nothing much different than normal steamboat besides using porridge as the cooking base instead of variety of soups. The beauty of porridge based steamboat is that it would not obscure the original taste of the ingredients like most of the soup based steamboat.

Clay pot is commonly used for porridge steamboat because the porridge would easily stick to the bottom if metal steamboat pot is used.

Eastern Delight serves some pretty simple ingredients, and 9 out of 10 customers would probably agree that their food is overpriced… but their business seemed to be doing well regardless. In fact the restaurant was so pack that night that we had to sit at open space instead of enjoying the air-con inside the shop (hence the poor lighting for the above photo).

At the end of the dinner everyone went home with a happy stomach. Set aside the price, it’s not a bad meal… or else I wouldn’t have dined at the restaurant for numerous occasions.

Address: No 26, Jalan 14/149L, Sri Petaling, 57000 KL. Phone: 03-9059 3545. The restaurant is located at a shop somewhere between Sri Petaling and Happy Garden, a bit difficult to find if you are not familiar with this area.

There are a few ways to make Dongpo pork, as the original recipe of the Dongpo pork was probably not documented properly. The common traits of the dish are the aroma and the tenderness, where the fat of the meat would melt in your mouth without the greasiness.

Dongpo pork

The general ingredients for Dongpo pork are pork belly, wine, ginger and Welsh onion; and it involves a long cooking time (2-3 hours) to give the tenderness.

Ingredients (2-4 persons)

My first attempt on Dongpo pork, had to make shift a bit as I didn’t have the proper ingredients.

450g pork belly, 500ml Chinese rice wine, 250ml white wine, 4 tablespoons light soy sauce, 2 tablespoons sugar (and 250ml water).

Methods (Preparation time: 80-90 minutes)

1. Cut the pork belly into cubes (~ 4×5 cm).

2. Blanch the pork belly… put the pork in boiling water for a minute and clean it with cold water.

3. Put the pork belly into the cooking ware with the skin facing the bottom (important!). Add in 500ml rice wine, 4tb soy sauce and 2tb sugar and boil it before turning the heat to the lowest possible. Simmer for 45 minutes.

No need to stir, just make sure that the stock doesn’t dry up. Add in some wine when necessary.

(The original dish should be cooked with clay pot, which I don’t have… I had to use a corning ware instead)

4. After 45 minutes, turn the pork around with the skin facing the top. Simmer for another 30 minutes. Add some wine (or water*) if the stock is drying up.

* 500ml rice wine was used at the beginning, 250ml white wine was used in between (out of rice wine) and at the end 250ml water was used (out of all wine). If possible, you might want to try using just rice wine all the way.

The verdict

Taste great. The fat was in fact melting in the mouth without the greasiness, but the lean meat could be better if the cooking time was longer (another 30 minutes perhaps).

The pork skin was slightly burned because of the lack of ingredients. Welsh onion should be laid on the bottom of the pot before the meat, which could prevent burn besides giving the extra flavour.

Presentation could be better too. It should look more reddish instead of the brownish I made… not sure what I was missing though.

Extra note

Lots of Chinese restaurants that serve Dongpo pork actually took a short cut by deep frying the pork before simmering it, which could reduced the cooking time greatly while giving similar taste and texture… but with that cooking method the pork simply becomes a red-cooked dish and shouldn’t be named as Dongpo pork at all.

Beef noodle with beef, tripe and meat balls

Their beef and tripe were tender, meat balls just so so… the great thing about their noodle was actually the soup, which was thick and strongly flavoured with Chinese herbs and spices… I couldn’t stop myself finishing every drop in the bowl.

The beef noodle stall is located in Lai Foong Restaurant, located at the intersection of Jalan Tan Cheng Lock and Jalan Tun HS Lee.

Fried wonton (Chinese dumplings)

Ingredients (4-6 persons; 40-60 wontons)

40-60 wonton wrappers, 200 grams minced pork, 2 tablespoons light soy sauce, 1 tablespoon sesame oil, a pinch of salt and a pinch of white pepper.

Normally people would add in other stuff like prawns, mushrooms, carrots, gingers, garlic etc… but my fridge was so empty that day; I had to resort to using the simplest ingredients, which was actually sufficient.

Method (Preparation time: 20-30 minutes)

1. Mixed the ingredients.

Wrapped raw wonton

2. Wrap your wontons. Place a teaspoon (flat) of fillings to the centre of the wrapper, and just fold it by half into a triangle shape (right pic). Slightly press the filling a bit to make it flat.

This is probably not the prettiest shape for a wonton, but it’s definitely easiest to cook.

3. Heat your oil. If you don’t want to use too much oil, just filled your wok (or whatever pot) with around a thumb-length deep of oil.

Avoid boiling oil to fry the wonton; or the wrapper would burn before the fillings are thoroughly cooked. Use a chopstick (or something) to touch the bottom of the wok; the temperature is ok when you start seeing bubble when you touch the bottom. Switch to low heat then.

4. Start deep frying. Put the wontons in batches; deep fry until they are golden brown, which should take just less than a minute.

Note that the wonton’s colour in the above photo is not golden brown… you need to take it out of the oil when the colour is lighter, as the wonton will continue to cook itself with its own heat for a while even after you take them out of the oil.

5. Bon-appetite. The fried wonton is best served as soon as possible after it’s cooked, as the crispiness will fade gradually after cooking.

It was a nice dim sum meal… good presentation, excellent variety, great taste and prompt services. The only downside was probably the price… HK$400+ (US$50+) for 3 adults, probably the most expensive dim sums I have ever had.

Not complaining though… it was our last meal in Hong Kong, and it’s a pretty good feast to end our Hong Kong journey.

Fried spring roll

Variety of dim sum at Maxim’s Chinese Restaurant