A December Food Trail

Continuing where I left off previously...Traveled south towards KL and Mei Ying was already hurrying me to reach her place and start decorating her Christmas tree in time for the house-warming/pre-Xmas party, lol. Arrived at her place 5ish, and immediately started taking out the faux tree from the box and got to work with her on my case :P She's gotten all the ornaments and baubles and whatnot EXCEPT!! The tree-topper! So I told her, it's ok, I'm pretty sure we can improvise and looked around her 'office' and spotted this teddy bear hahaha. Like what they say, the rest is history.

I must say, pretty impressed myself with the results ;)

Excuse the very pinkish faces, low lighting hor.

 Creative director and the marvelous, joy-filled Christmas tree ;)

 Can't remember which night it was and Mei Ying wasn't feeling very well so she asked if it's okay if we have salad. Anything high fibre and healthy, I'm a direct convert! (we were initially supposed to get bakuteh). But after a couple of weeks back home and gorging myself on good food almost daily, this is a great step back of mild detox.. lol. She also introduced me to quinoa, which I think complements the salad nicely and kinda rounds it up! I think I'll be having more of these in the future... :)

Too soon I speak of a detox, the next morning we visited the much hyped about Village Park for their so-called famous nasi lemak and even more famous deep fried chicken. It was, most unfortunately, my idea to visit the place after hearing much hype from my old colleagues back in KLCC about its crunchy and out-of-this-world fried chicken and sambal..........

The queue was really long, even though it was on a working day, but then again, it was Xmas Eve, so I guess most people are taking the day off. What's also bad about the place is the fact that their system is annoyingly inefficient. There was only one entrance/exit and on both sides of the already narrow corridor were two long queues, one for ordering and one for payment. There were waiters but they only seem able to take orders for drinks when they could also have included meal orders as well. Oh well, Malaysia Boleh and anyhow no matter how bad their system is, there's still a long line of nasi lemak-deprived people so willingly to push and shove their way for that plate of nasi lemak.

Verdict on Village Park nasi lemak: chicken looks nice, succulent but the taste just doesn't quite make the cut for me. I'd still take the Lucky Plaza deliciously mouth-watering ayam penyet any other day. Sambal was not bad, but it's more on the mild/sweet side. Me, I love my sambal burning hot :D

Had a lot of fun preparing our Xmas dinner. Cranked up the music, karaoke-ed to the songs, and started with the multiple chopping, peeling and cooking. Don't know whether you should be drinking and cooking but Evan then made this refreshing Italian soda, alcoholic no doubt lol.

Bombarding the chicken in the tray before it gets shoved into the oven. No turkey this time, but a whole chicken. Still, not complaining...

Stuffed with cooked, chopped onions, minced meat and garlic along with other miscellaneous herbs and spices, roasting with a tray full of other wholesome ingredients: carrots, capsicums, taters, onions, cucumber, basil leaves, whole garlic, the works. All with a dash of olive oil, salt, and pepper. Yum, yum, yum. (Please excuse the remnants of the chicken feet on the corner).

Slowly baking for an-hour-and-a-half...

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Ta-dah!

Are you drooling already, or are you drooling already?? The chicken carcass deliciously browned and succulent, the meat just falling off the bones. And the vegs! Fully caramelised, and just melting in the mouth! And the garlic! Steamed in its own clove skin..... so soft and bursting with flavour. Bon Appetit!

The chicken and its other complementing friends... The others made fun of me as I prepared my classic Christmas ceviche (thanks again Su Jen for the recipe, lol, been making it every so often). They claimed I took too long at my own sweet time to chop the ingredients for the recipe, lol. That's called preparation with love, y'all ;) Even Evan who has done preparing a couple of dishes was insulted when he came beside me, frying onions, garlic and minced meat for the second time and I taunted him 'ko chai cha' (frying again) that got him fired up hahaha.

Initially thought that with the roasted chicken and ceviche would be too much, but considering the size of the chicken, it was good that we also have pasta as well! Wiped everything clean that night :) Brussel sprouts was a huge mistake on its appearance in the Xmas dinner. A colleague calls it whistle berries, and rightly so! Whole night after dinner my stomach felt full of wind, not a comfortable feeling, I assure you :/

Dinner did not end on a flat note, no way that's going to happen. After another round of drinks, our sweet palate came in the form of a beautiful pine-nut-and-walnut-covered carrot cake, inspired by the curvaceous Nigella Lawson. The cake contains all the necessary ingredients for the makings of my favourite carrot cake: rum, raisin and walnuts. It was heavenly, needless to say.

Please take a moment to admire the beauty of this flawless cake :D

We didn't do much that night, just drank, karaoke-ed some more and fooling around with the camera lol. All good fun.

Topped cake with lemon zest mascarporne cheese cream... mmmmm..............

I don't know what's with me and this new job that I am taking up, but I realize that I've been slacking off so much more than usual. Sleeping for longer hours (I used to wake up when the sunlight hits me), do things at a relatively slow pace.... Maybe I'm just more laid back now? Not sure if it's a good or bad thing... yet...

Boxing Day.. A little ex-LGs reunion. Visited this nice little designer coffee place @ Typica in KL.

Typica sells expensive 'designer' coffee. I tried this iced coffee drink that was served in a martini glass. That little heart-shaped thing in it is in fact frozen gula Malacca! The barista then poured my cold coffee over it and each sip taken will give you a different taste experience as the iced gula Malacca slowly melts! Genius.

And on the way down south.... towards Malacca.

And what else can you do in Malacca besides eating? More eating!

Chicken rice balls are a must... Kenneth brought us to this place which is further from town so we can avoid the massive jams that is so infamous in Malacca's central.

Chicken, oh so tender! It's seriously just as good as the one in Jonker Street, minus all that long queues. Way too much hassle. In any case, even the garlicky, chilli sauce is also pretty good in my opinion (which may have turn out to be a generous compliment now that my taste standard has seriously deteriorated after serving time in Singapore and on the vessel...). Blogging about this now is a serious mistake..... On the vessel now and devoid of real, good food :(

Sigh...........

Next stop is the must-go-place while in Malacca. Nadeje. Kenneth again brought us to another branch of Nadeje where we can avoid the horrendous traffic. 

Mille crepe, or thousand layer cakes :3

I only ever fancy the original flavour, the other flavours don't quite cut it. Plus, these crepes have cream in between their thousand layers or so, and after a few mouthfuls, you just can't go on anymore! Fills you up real easily. But of course, being Lifeguards (ex), it's only a matter of minutes before all nine pieces of mille crepes are annihilated...

Proceed with our drive down south and detoured over to Segamat, Johor for some stinking fruits that Segamat is so famous for.

Been a while since I'd been in Segamat, Wei Inn's hometown. 

Now, I'm not a big fan of durians but this round of durian feast is really something! I particularly enjoyed this breed of durian which has a tinge of orange to its flesh. Creamy and rich.... super! I may have just turned into a durian convert!

Complete with mangosteen for the non-durian eaters. It's really more fun to eat durians! At least when you burp, you can guiltlessly burp with the other durian eaters :D