Phillie is on a baking hiatus. Bad Phillie.

Italian Yumminess!

My 'mission' for the weekend past was to find a carbonara recipe that used a more traditional approach, which is prepared using eggs and cheese, instead of cream only. So i thought to myself, why not do a whole Italian themed dinner?

It started out with a salad of spinach, sliced tomatoes and sliced buffalo mozzarella, topped with a sprinkle of chopped basil, balsamic vinegar and olive oil dressing. All done in like 8 minutes. Easy to prepare and delicious!!!

The carbonara was next; I couldn't find pancetta as recommended by the recipe, so with my friend Selina's advice, I bought streaky bacon which I cut to squares, as a substitute. While waiting for the spaghetti to cook, I fried the bacon in some olive oil, and I went on to prepare the sauce. All it took was an egg, quarter a cup of percorino and parmesan cheese mixed together with a generous amount of freshly ground pepper and voilà – the sauce was ready! I drained the cooked pasta, threw it into the pan with the fried bacon, and then stirred the sauce into the pasta - I had to do it quickly so that the egg didn't scramble. I then finished it off with some more pepper and a sprinkle of cheese, and it was finally done!! Super yummy!!!! I should have thrown some of the water used to boil the pasta into it as it was a little dry, but no regrets about that- it was still very good!

For dessert, we had Tiramisu that we bought from Spinelli's (it didn't have any taste of coffee. Yucks! I really need to learn how to make tiramisu on my own) and a super yummy chocolate truffle cake from Cedele...mmmmm:)

Was that the end? Nope – it went on to breakfast the next day and i went english! A proper english breakfast consisting of 3 different types of sausages, the leftover bacon from yesterday, tomatoes and scrambled eggs, finished off with a cup of coffee. Mmmm...another great meal to end a great weekend!

What I had in Penang...

We decided on a trip to Penang in August with the aim of 'buddy bonding' with our dear friend, Sharon before she leaves for Harvard on a year long scholarship. As everyone had tight schedules, we only had 2 full days to find out if the mythical rumors of amazing food in Penang were true. An hour's plane ride later, five hungry girls, without Sharon got to Penang.

(No we didn't have a "Sharon-not-around-party” - that's perhaps for later? She had a school celebration that day and would only join us the next day)

Instead of renting a MPV first, we made a bee line to the waffle stand in an attempt to satiate our hunger. I had one with kaya filling, Sandra and Charissa both had the chocolate waffle with peanut butter and Endora had one with jam. Mmm, waffles never tasted so good! And that marked a positive start to our eating spree!

We finally found our way to the our hotel after 2 hours of figuring out the roads, and immediately after checking in, we went in search for food (yes the waffles were just a snack!). We circled our hotel area several times in our attempt to 'food hunt' without success, so we decided to explore a little further, and we discovered this quaint "hawker center". Helllooo, variety!!! We ordered so much food that we must have given people the impression that we were only recently released from prison as we were drawing curious stares. Well let them judge as they want - we just want to eat!

We had grilled stingray (YUMS!), belachan fried chicken (a little dry but still yummy), popiah and kueh paiti (so-so), fried oyster omelet (the oysters were seeming larger than our heads; a pity that I don't eat them), 20 sticks of satay (which was not bad), Mae and Sandra each had "ban mian" (Soup was good but the MSG was a little overpowering), Charissa and Endora each had wanton mee and i had Claypot chicken rice. Yes, all in one meal; I'll say we did pretty well for ourselves!

The next morning, we went to the airport to pick Sharon up. While waiting for her to arrive, Sandra and I decided sneak in a bowl of asam laksa. Yes I am aware of the 'fine' reputation of food available in airports, but we were hungry!!! My god, it was soooo bad, possibly the WORST asam laksa I have ever eaten. I practically took only one bite and threw the rest away; the wait time for Sharon was made longer having to cringe over in my head just thinking about how bad the laksa was.

Sharon finally arrived to our A4 sized welcome banner and loud cheers. We made a trip down to Tesco. Yes you read it right - TESCO. My friends wanted to do their 'auntie' thing. Since no other food places were open, we smartly decided that Sharon should also share our bad airport food experience, so we bought ourselves more nasty breakfast in a food court at Tesco. Hehe.

By this time, we were doubting if good food in Penang was merely just a myth, so to straighten things out we headed downtown to a mall on Penang road, for the Asam laksa that Mae's mum swears by (we believe her because she's peranakan:P). But alas!!!!! After go round the mall a few times, we found out that the shop was closed for the day - because the stall owner's maid went home and decided not to open as she couldn't work alone. We decided to settle for something else, and after major pestering from another store owner, who claimed that “we would regret it if we didn't eat his food”, we ordered a plate of cha kuay tiao from him to share. Liar he was! The rest of us went the 'safe way' and had chicken rice and wanton mee, but unfortunately both were disappointments too.

At this point we decided to halt the 'bad food spree', so we went off for a foot massage, However Endora and i felt inspired again, so we left the rest behind and embarked on a 'dao sah pia' hunt. We took a walk to the famous "Him Hiang" and bought 6 boxes of 'dao sah pia', 5 boxes of 'beh teh sor' and a few boxes of kueh lapis. The girls were finally done after an hour or so, and came to pick us up, but they couldn't resist the lure of the snacks and they ended up buying more than several boxes of kueh lapis for themselves too. If I remember correctly - Charissa alone snapped up 8 boxes!

Oh, excuse me! I left out the part where Endora and I chanced upon the famous Penang road Asam Laksa en route to "him hiang", and we persuaded the by now hunger stricken girls back to Penang road to try it out with us. They agreed! The laska was not great but still good! We finally found decent Penang food! Feeling inspired, we topped it up with Rojak, Chendol and a combination of Chendol with Durian. Yay! Assam laksa craving satisfied! Fortunately it didn't end there; we drove to this place called Sunflower Bakery, located near our hotel and bought more cakes and kueh lapis. Absolute madness!!!!

We decided to take a break for a couple of hours, relaxing and testing out 'the spoils' in our hotel room. Hunger stuck again and we soon headed headed out for dinner. Yes, more food! We drove out to look for Teik Seng restaurant, which came highly recommended by my friend KP but it was unfortunately closed – dumb us forgot the time, which was already close to 10pm. Duh! So reluctantly we drove around to search for something else, and found a Bak Kut Teh place, which was nothing to rave about. Endora had western food and ordered a Cha Kuay Tiao to share; both were pretty ok too.

Departure day came and I refused to give up; I insisted we headed back to Teik Seng to try out luck before going home. Not only was it open, we were treated to amazing food!!!! The assam fish was mind blowing!!!! The salted vegetable with duck soup was superb!!! Not too salty and super tasty! We also had their famous kang kong, two types of sotong, their famous pork dish (which unfortunately i didn't really like) and the har chong chicken which was damn good!!! Finally after days of 'misses' WE FOUND A WINNER!!!!!!! In Charissa's words, "Well done Chern Yee!" And thank you KP!!!!

(It was so good i asked the chef if i could pack some assam fish home, totally forgetting about my 100ml liquid limit on the plane, but fortunately I dropped the idea when the chef told us that the fish may not keep well by the time we got back home.)

What an amazing end our Penang food chomping madness. I would willingly march back to Penang just for the zhi char. Ooo.....i am salivating thinking about it now! Anyone wants to join me? Anyone?

Nutella rocks our world!!!!

I admit, I am not a huge fan of Nutella, perhaps only when I was a child (which explains why I was a fat kid). But i do know everyone else in the world is, which was and reaffirmed by my friend and colleague, Aundrea, from Two Oceans, the company that I do freelance for work. She requested that I baked something for everyone when I swung by the office the next time, and she wanted it to contain 3 key ingredients: Chocolate, Hazelnuts and, no surprises - Nutella!

So i set forth to make the most glorious Nutella Cake, going by the recipe from Miss Nigella Lawson, and succeeded in making the cake as pretty as she did for hers! I'm blowing my own horn again as usual, hahaha, and yes, I made a full cake and not cupcakes as I usually do – though that will be done on the next attempt! Hopefully it will work out as beautifully as it did this time, but for now, I'll just sit back and savour this rich yet delightful cake. I offered some to my mum too before passing out the rest to Aundrea and the rest of my colleagues, and it has instantly become one of my mum's firm favourites - that says a lot about the quality of the cake as she generally doesn't fancy anything sweet or with chocolate. Yes tooting my own horn again, but it was really that wonderful!

The nutella cake with chocolate ganache and hazelnut. yummmmmmssssss......

We have to stop meating like this

Another epic makan session brought to you by The Supper Club.