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  Char Kuay Teow with sweet soy  If you know and love Malaysian food, then Char Kuay Teow needs no introduction. In terms of popularity, I would think that Laksa ranks number one, followed by Hainanese chicken rice, and then Char Kuay Teow. These three dishes are commonly found in most menus of restaurants serving Malaysian-style food in Sydney, but more often than not, the authenticity of the Char Kuay Teow is questionable. Char Kuay Teow (CKT) literally means fried rice noodles, but a plate of greasy fried rice noodles with black soy sauce does not qualify as CKT. I find that the CKT sold here usually omits the eggs, which is a must in every CKT. It coats the rice noodles and gives it flavour and texture. Cockles are another must-have in CKT, but I have omitted them in my dish as I was unable to find any at the shops here. I made two versions of CKT. One is the savoury Penang-style, and the other is the sweet version, typical of that found in Singap...

    Asparagus and Prawn Stir-fry   Ingredients   1 tbsp vegetable/peanut oil 2 cloves garlic, sliced/chopped 200g prawns, peeled, deveined and tails intact 2 bundles asparagus, woody ends snapped off, halved crossways 2-3 bird's eye chillies, sliced   Sauce: 1 tbsp oyster sauce 1 tbsp fish sauce 1 tbsp palm sugar (or to taste) 1 tbsp Thai sweet chilli sauce 3 tbsp water   Method   Heat oil in a wok on high heat. Add the garlic, followed by the prawns. Let the prawns cook on one side, then flip them over to cook the other side. When the prawns are almost cooked, remove and transfer them to a plate and leave the oil in the wok. Next, add the asparagus to the wok and fry for 30 seconds, then push them aside. Add the chillies and pour the sauce ingredients down the side of the wok into the centre and bring to a boil. Toss the prawns in with the asparagus and sauce, and stir-fry briefly until everything is w...

In my previous post ( Grilled Beef with Charred Tomato and Chilli Sauce ), I wrote about my visit to Sailors Thai where I had the luxury of savouring an array of creative and exotic Thai dishes and was simply enamoured by the overall gastronomic experience. I attempted to make a mental note of how each dish tasted so that I could recreate the same at home if I ever had a craving for it. And so, this post features a very simple recipe for delicious stir-fried vegetable s in oyster sauce . In the menu, it was actually stated as "stir fried broccolini and sugar snap peas with oyster sauce", but they looked more like asparagus than broccolini, and so I've used asparagus in my recipe here. How timely it was that Ms AC received a bag of snow peas from her neighbour who just harvested them from the backyard, and she brought some to the office for me!     I decided to ramp up this dish by garnishing it with some crispy garlic chips and crispy dr...

Kimchi is a traditional Korean dish of spicy fermented vegetables (usually napa cabbage or radish) and is commonly eaten as an appetizer or used in cooking. I was never really a fan of kimchi. Whenever I dined at Korean restaurants and was presented with banchan (the many little dishes that are served at the start of the meal), I would just sample a few slivers of the cabbage kimchi and perhaps a piece of the radish kimchi (I havan't acquired a taste for that yet). My favourites were usually the cubed potatoes ( potato jorim ) and the soy bean sprouts . Over time, I actually grew to like the taste of kimchi, and I guess it also depends on how "powerful" the flavour is. Everytime we shop at the Korean supermarket and browse through the shelves of kimchi, G would remind me jokingly "Are you sure you want to try it? It's made with rotten fish/squid." We watched that episode of Bizarre Foods where Andrew Zimmern visited a traditional kimchi factory in Korea wh...