Malaysian Food – Madam Kwan’s – Midvalley Megamall

 Pre-empting that I might be assigned the task of making reservation for dinner after our meeting, I downloaded the list of eateries at The Gardens and did some homework ( read: blog search) as well. Having a mixture of foreigners and locals, it was kinda not easy to make a decision and Mr 2^nd boss, decide not to take a risk on food and suggested Madam Kwan – and it’s not even at The Gardens lah.

Note:please make reservations , as it might turn out to be a long wait especially for peak dining hours and especially if you have some hungry people that will literally kill for food.

 

Mr 2^nd Boss did the ordering – (that is my excuse if the names of the dishes in this article turn up to be not too correct).

 

The drinks came first, I had ice kacang, plenty of condiments including : cendol, cincau, raisins, red bean, attap seeds, corn  and the occasional cashew nut ( I know ice kacang is classified as ‘dessert’ lah…but, I would rather have this than a drink mah) . Some of the guys had Kirin or Tiger but complained that the beers weren’t at the right temperature and asked for ice cubes, I dunno about you, it’s not often that I see ice cubes in beers…

 

We had : Asam prawns ( lotsa onions and taste so good ), curry chicken ( very rich, and yes, we noticed that someone was greedy and took 2 pieces) , rendang was tender, char koay teow….hmmmm..pretty close to Penang standard lah, fried rice – ok, I liked the ladies finger dish, fried kalian – ok, sotong – I didn’t try this, but seeing that the rest cleaned this up – should be good. I was hoping that they will order petai prawn just to catch the reactions of the mat sallehs but they didn’t let me indulge lah.

 

Acar

Asam prawn

chicken curry

char koay teow

Beef rendang

unmanicured female fingers

Sotong

 

There was a dare going on between the 2 Aussies on ordering and finishing the ice kacang, and this guy had a problem swallowing the cendol and cincau and we have to assure him that the green and black ‘worms’ are safe to be eaten .. they  made one observation : beer taste lousy after ice kacang.

Someone down the table ordered ice cream and banana fritters, and it looked so tempting that there were immediately 3 more orders for this ( including my greedy goodself). The hot and cold combination of vanilla ice cream and pisang goreng was like pinang dibelah dua.

Ice cream + Banana

One of the policy of the organization is that the highest in the hierarchy  should be paying the bill but Mr Big Boss refused to sign for the bill and we were all curious on his hesitation- turn out that a bill with the heading of Madam Kwan,  might be misunderstood by his boss who approves the bill that it’s a bill for some err.. extra-curricular activities

 

Overall: the group were happy with the food.

 

Other stuff on the menu : Nasi Lemak, Curry Laksa, Mushroom Chicken Mee, Nasi Bojari, Curry Fish Head, Cendol

 

Madam Kwan’s Restaurant
F-052, First Floor
Mid Valley Megamall

Lingkaran Syed Putra

59200 Kuala Lumpur

 

 

 

Pickled / salted lemon, lime 腌柠檬,橘子

This recipe is from mum

 

You will need :

 

1.Lemon  or lime( I saw some ‘local/ kampong ’ lemon at the pasar malam and used these)

2.Coarse salt 粗盐 (how much you need will depend on the quantity of fruits that you have)

3.Glass jar for storage ( the big Horlicks or Nescafe jars are suitable or any glass jars will do)

 

a)Boil water and while waiting for the water to boil,  wash the fruits

b)Drop the fruits into the boiling water and leave to boil for 10 – 15 minutes

 

c) Remove fruits from heat and leave to cool on a sieve

d)Pack the fruits with salt into the jars

e)Leave the lime/lemon in salt until the fruits are wrinkled – this takes about  ~ 2 weeks for the lemon I tried.  (After  1 week , I found that I could pack all the fruits into 1 jar ( I started with 2 jars)

 

f)Wash the salt from the fruits. Place the fruits on a plate and steam them  for about 5 – 10 minutes . the fruits will bloat during the steaming and will very quickly wrinkle when heat is removed.

g)Leave the fruits to cool and pack them into dry jars for storage – and the pickles are ready.

 For making delicious and refreshing drinks, use a folk to breakup the pickled fruits ( and squeeze  some fresh lime juice for the extra umpphh) , add sugar syrup , add some ice cubes. This is also a good remedy for clearing phlegm-omit the ice cubes.

 

h)To make the sweetened  version of pickled lemon/lime- after steaming the fruits, make some thick sugar syrup and pour them into the storage jar, leave for 2 weeks or so.

 

NB: the salt can be recycled, run some water over the salt to rinse it ( make sure you don’t use too much water and dissolve all the salt lah ), let them dry in a sieve and store them into a container until your next project.

 

 

 

 

New Formosa Restaurant – SS2 PJ

Times has changed… we  read the blogs for choices of where to eat, including what to order and probably goggle earth-ed  to  get the road directions- how did we survived back then ? when there were no WWW, no ipods ( I don’t own one also, and still surviving, maybe I don’t know what I am missing..), no mobile phones, where u have to go to the photo shop and get those 36 exposures developed and wait a day or two before you know did your picture turn out ok or did u accidentally  cut off  2^nd uncle’s head  or only got half of Ah Chye’s face.

 We are not familiar with SS2, so it was ‘ you look left and I will look right’ instruction from Chunny , to look out for New Formosa Restaurant. Parking was a breeze as we were very early, 6.10pm and we were the first customer.

 Before arriving, we had in mind what we wanted to order, thanks to the research done and salivating over the pictures posted on the blogs.We wanted the steam crab claypot rice, but was told we had to pre-order, so please take note to call in one day earlier if you want to order this dish. We ordered Rice in bamboo, butter eel and  bittergourd with salted egg. For drinks it was sour plum juice.

The overhead TV was on, showing a Taiwanese talk show, the guy on tv sang some songs and narrate his sob sob story and then seemed to have reunited with his long lost relative or forgiven for some family feud, or something to that effect where it involves some hugging and patting of backs, and it was rather sweet to catch one of the waiteress  sniffing away, red-nosed and all with her full concentration on the TV screen.

 Back to food… the sour plum juice (RM2.70) was very refreshing and I finished half of it before I realized what I have done. The side dishes of pickled vegetables were appetizing and pretty much build up our appetite for the dishes to come.

 The butter eel  was a thumbs up,  There were bits of chili padi, lots of  coated fried garlic bits and curry leaves that comes with the eel. You bite into the crunchy bits outside and get into the tender succulent meat on the inside and you go hmmmmm..

The rice  came next, rice cooked  with yam, pumpkin,  Chinese sausage, meat, dried prawns, it taste very much like ‘lap mei’ rice / the claypot rice with sausages/meat. You get about 4 bowls of rice out of the ‘bamboo’.

I have tried salted egg + bitter gourd at another eatery before, and the bittergourd was coated with the yolk of the salted egg and deep fried, at Formosa, this is done differently, there were a lot of anchovies and salted egg white in the dish, the presence of the egg white makes this dish a bit salty it eaten without rice.

 

 

 

 

We were actually quite full – as we have to finish 2 bowls of rice each, but being the greedy gluttons that we are, we still wanted some desserts and decided to try the ‘mochi’ – it was ok. At the same price you would probably get twice the amount from the pasar malam though.

 

 

 

 

 

The bill came to RM69.70, inclusive of service charge. Overall, it was a satisfactory meal and might come back again ( and with bigger company so that we can order and try out more of the dishes).

 

The menu also include :  steam prawns with herbs. 3 cup chicken, suckling pig, hot and spicy steam boat, a series of puddings/desserts, crunchy pop rice,  caramelized yam

 

Any of you out there keen to join us for a meal (we go dutch) to explore the various types of food or eateries or to recommend any eateries , please leave a note lah

 

New Formosa Restaurant

46, Jalan SS2/24

47399 Petaling Jaya.

Tel: 7875 1894, 78757478

Open daily : 12pm-3pm; 6 pm -11pm