The Food Site

About two months ago, I was fast running out of food blogging material and in quite a panic. What am I going to blog about now? I can’t just update the blog once a week. Not when I have established a pattern from the start that at the very least, I’d blog once in every two days here, unlike my personal blog where I blog on a daily basis.

Now, I suddenly have a stockpile of blog posts which I have not written and posted. I have recipes of desserts and main dishes and reviews of food places and restaurants and the roadside coffee shop. AND I’ve been tagged and meme’d.

What am I going to do?

Even if I were to blog daily here (which I tried to but did not have the time to do it consistently), I couldn’t possibly fit it all in and sometimes, I’d even forget all about a place I reviewed until I chance upon the pictures while clearing my desktop folders!

Why can’t I just get to the cheap and good yam rice already?

Heheh…alright. I just want to let my blog readers know that I do have plenty of posts coming up, just that I don’t have the time to post it all at once. Slow and steady wins the race.

Now, here’s my review of a yam rice stall in the middle of George Town. Quite a while back, I did a review of yam rice in Bukit Mertajam and how good it is. The yam rice there is really quite good. And now, I am searching for something as good here on the island and found this stall.

About a few years ago (actually, more like a decade, heheh) we ate at this exact same coffee shop and I was greatly impressed with the food offered. It was also yam rice with side dishes but theirs were with a difference and the tastes and flavours of it stayed with me till now.

However, since we seldom go to the middle of town for lunch (traffic is horrendous!) we had completely forgotten about the place until recently. We went back there and found that it is no longer the same person! The previous stall owner has left and now a new one (well, it’s been there several years so, it’s only new to us) have taken over.  Since we already parked at a perfect spot and walked to the place, might as well give it a try.

It didn’t look all that inviting and I was really craving the old yam rice stall’s food so my photography suffered…Here are some of the food we ordered…

Okay, so I was pretty impressed by their braised soya sauce pork. This simple common dish is the best way to determine how good their food is. If they can’t make this simple dish taste good, then all is lost. Well, they passed  with flying colours. The pork were tender and the sauce, thick and sweetish without being too oily.

Since this is a special flavour yam rice stall, of course we have to order the yam rice. They do have plain white rice too but we didn’t order that. Though their yam rice is not exactly GREAT, it is not bad at all. Quite good compared to a lot of other places in town.

I don’t really know what it’s officially called in English but I know in Hokkien, it is often called ‘loomba hu’ or something like that. Or could it be ‘rempah hu’? Hmmm… whatever it is called, it the one of the few spicy fish dish that I simply love to bits. Theirs are pretty okay, I finished the fish so that should mean something…

This is Mr Picky’s special favourite dish. Since he won’t eat the fish and finds the pork too ‘chewy’, egg is the best option for him to go with his rice.

Did I mention we are a bunch of ’soup people’? As much as possible, whenever having rice, we will order a big bowl of soup to go with it. It is like tradition but for Mr Picky, it is a MUST especially if we are having rice. This soup, called ‘bak kee’ is medioacre at best. Really nothing to shout about. However, we noticed other tables ordering a different type of soup which seemed popular. Shucks. Must have ordered the wrong thing!

All in all, the meal was pretty good and filling. It may not be gourmet or the greatest ever but it passed muster and is a great place for some quick, cheap lunch. Besides, I learnt that this stall is pretty famous when it used to be along ‘gor teow lor’ (5th road) or to be exact, Macallum Street, and now in this new location they are still getting quite a lot of regulars.

They are open daily between 6am and 3pm.  They don’t have a fixed day off. They will take the day off when they feel like it. Seriously. That’s what the stall owner told me.

Here’s the map to their place.

Rating: 6/10

Price:$$ (RM12 for the above food)

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First, before I start, let me write something about The Food Critic aka My Personal Chef and his hate-hate relationship with desserts.

He hates most desserts. Cakes, pies, cookies and yes *gasp* even chocolates. Which explains his difficulty in putting on weight.

So, each time I decided to bake something, I’d end up eating the whole lot. Every. Single. Time. Which explains my difficulty in losing weight.

And then, there were some changes. He suddenly starts eating some of the desserts I made. Maybe it’s because of the frosty silence I had whenever I offered him some piping hot from the oven baked stuff smelling so heavenly that nobody except him could resist it and he said no. Or maybe it’s because some of the baked desserts I’ve been making suits his weird dessert tastes. I dunno. But when I made this…

He turned it down.

“I don’t eat apple pies” was his response. Despite the heavenly aroma of baked apples in the air. Despite the ultra-tantalising apple crisp I placed in front of him. Despite it NOT being an apple pie but an apple crisp which is very different, involving different ingredients.

I was frustrated. Annoyed. I had a slightly miffed, hurt expression but it went unnoticed.

So, what the heck. Might as well eat it all by myself. It’d probably take me days to do it. Maybe Mr Picky might like it too but he’s a toddler and he can’t eat much.

Then, one day I came back and found a huge chunk missing from the dish. Yep, The Food Critic raided the fridge and took a piece and then, deciding that he liked it, took another! HAH. His comment?

“This is the first apple pie I actually liked!” in an incredulous tone.

Never mind that it is actually apple crisp and not pie. At least he liked it!

So, here’s the apple crisp that The Food Critic liked:

Apple Crisp Recipe

Ingredients

Note: I used Fuji because we had a lot of these and couldn’t finish it before it spoils but I guess you could use other types of apples

4 - 5 tbsp butter

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup flour

1 cup oatmeal (instant)

a pinch of salt

1/2 cup almonds (or other nuts, if you prefer)

2 tbsp golden syrup (or maple syrup if you like)

1 cup chocolate chips

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees (Celsius).

4. Either use a mixer or like me, manually cream the butter and sugar using any utensil you are comfortable with.

12. Then sprinkle the rest of the chocolate chips and some oatmeal on top.

14. Bake it for 40 minutes at 180 degrees (Celsius) or until it turns brown and the apples are cooked and soft (just like the picture underneath the Apple Crisp recipe heading)

The best thing about this is that, you can also…

Needless to say, this whole pan of apple crisp finished within a few days! Oh, by the way, I realised that this is a favourite Thanksgiving dessert too but we don’t celebrate thanksgiving here but it is a great way to get rid of apples we can’t possibly finish by eating it raw!

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