Korea trip

I have signed up for a trip to Korea.  It is a 8-day trip starting tomorrow 25 September,2010.  The trip will cover Jeju Island, Heyri Art Village, Mount Sorak, Oak Valley, Everland and city sightseeing in Seoul.  Here is the itinerary.

 

 The tour specialty includes superb Korean gastronomical experience namely:

- fresh Jeju abalone porridge/seafood shabu

- Jeju BBQ with 'ogyeopsal' 3 layer black pork

- chun chuan pan fried chicken

- ginseng chicken soup

- cuttlefish bulgogi

- kimchi hotpot

- mushroom shabu

- stone bimbimpap

- exquisite side dishes like tile fish, fish roe, various kinds of kimchi, bing rice cake and seaweeds

Since this is my first visit to Korea, I am sure I will have a great time.  I hope I will enjoy all these exciting food!

Will report back on the trip soon.

Mooncakes

The Chinese Mooncake Festival falls on 22 September this year.  We can see mooncakes selling almost every where we go.  There are more and more varieties too.  For me, I only like the traditional ones.  Although I am in Malaysia this year, I still like to make my own.  I made them when I live overseas because I couldn't buy them initially but now I think the homemade ones are the best.  So there is no exception this year.  What I like about being in Malaysia is, I can buy all the ingredients I want.

This year I made lotus nuts and red beans fillings plus lotus nuts with pandan flavour.  I bought 1kg of lutos nuts and 700g of red beans.  I made about 20 mooncakes with lotus fillings and 16 mooncakes with red beans fillings.

Here is my recipe for the fillings

Preparing the beans

600 g beans – red beans

Wash and boil until very soft – 3 to 4 hours.

Cool and wash with water using a sieve and discard skins, saving the water.

Pour water into a muslin bag to strain out the bean paste. Drain the water until the paste is fairly dry.

To cook the filling

150g – 200g oil (about one rice bowl)

700g sugar

2 tablespoons flour

2 tablespoons maltose

4 handfuls of peeled kuaci (optional)

Heat a heavy & thick wok (eg cast iron) on medium heat.

Add 2 tablespoons of the oil.

Pour in all the sugar.

Stir gently and constantly until the sugar has melted into a thick liquid.

Be careful as the sugar will burn easily. Remove from heat occasionally if necessary. Do not let it boil. Mash any lumps.

If the bean paste is pale in colour, let the sugar brown a little bit.

Pour in the rest of the oil. Turn up the heat. Stir constantly.

Drop in a bit of the bean paste to test the heat – if it sizzles, it is hot enough.

Add all of the bean paste to the wok in small lumps. Stir constantly.

Mix 2 tablespoons of flour with about ½ rice bowl of water into a thin batter.

When the bean paste is thick and begins to leave the side of the wok, drizzle in the flour batter. Stir constantly until peaks form in the paste.

Using a wet tablespoon, drop in two tablespoons of maltose.

Add the kuaci if using. Cook until the mixture is stiff and doesn’t stick to fingers when touched. Cool.

Recipe for the pastry

Enough for about 600 g of beans

10 tablespoons peanut oil

12 tablespoons golden syrup

2 tablespoons water

1 teaspoon alkali water (kan sui)

¼ teaspoon dark soy sauce for colour

Stir all ingredients together. Mix well.

Sift 400 g of flour. Spoon into the wet mixture. Fold through. Do not overmix or else the pastry will be tough.

Cover with a damp cloth and leave for ½ hour.

Making the mooncakes

Weigh out lumps of filling. Around 130g for large cakes, 40g for small cakes, depending on the mould.

Mash and knead each lump of filling until smooth and roll into balls.

Use about a tablespoon of the pastry dough to form a circle with floured hands. Wrap around a ball of filling. Remove excess dough. Press into a well-floured mould. Tap out of the mould.

Bake at 200C until light brown. Remove from oven and spray with water. Brush with a mixture of egg yolk and evaporated milk. Bake until golden brown.

Cool slightly. Turn upside down onto trays and leave until cold. Best eaten when the pastry has softened.

Fruits from Cameron Highlands

I bought some locally grown fruits from the Cameron Highlands when I visited last.  Very strange apple guava (that's what they called it).

From the outside, it looks exactly like an apple.  But when cut up, it looks very much like guava.  My sister was convinced that the green layer is not natural.

Then the local apples.  They look like eggplants to me.

These apples are not the same as the apples we normally buy from the supermarket.  The inside is hollow like honey dew or melon.  I thought I took a photo of the inside but couldn't find it.

Trip to Cameron Highlands

Last weekend I went to Cameron Highlands with a tour group of 30 people.  We started the trip from Seremban on Friday night at about 11:45pm.  When we arrived at Cameron Highlands, it was about 6am on Saturday.  The weather was good.  The temperature was about 20degrees C.  We got down for breakfast at Hong Kong Steamboat Restaurant.  Breakfast there wasn't that great but that was the only place open at the time.  We were grateful to be able to get coffee and hot food at that time.

After breakfast, our first stop of visit was to Rose Valley.  There were lots of roses, flowers, cactus etc. etc...

The next stop was to bee farm.

This is where the bees live.

Next stop was to "Boh" tea farm.  The sign says "no parking here.  No entry" but all buses parked here and everybody entered from here!









After the tea farm visit, we checked-in to the hotel.  I am still not very good at taking pictures of everything and blogging yet.  I didn't take a picture of the hotel that we checked-in to!  I can't remember the name of the hotel either.  I will do better next time.  Anyway, it was a cheap hotel with no lift.  I shared a room with two friends.  We had to walk all the way to the third floor, the highest floor.  The beds were not bad but I wasn't happy with the bathroom.  I expected a proper shower in the bathroom but they don't have a proper one.  There was a shower but everything inside the bathroom gets wet when we shower.

After we checked-in, the three of us went out to lunch at a restaurant a few doors from the hotel.  Lunch wasn't included in the price of the trip.  We had three dishes.

Egg fooyong.  This is the best of the three dishes.

Chicken with mushrooms.

Dragon string veges with belachan.











We were all tired after lunch.  So we went back to the hotel room for a rest before going to pasar malam.

The pasar malam in Cameron Highlands starts quite early around 4pm.  We walked for a while before we had dinner.  Dinners for Saturday and Sunday are provided.  On Saturday, we had steamboat.  It was at the same restaurant where we ate breakfast.

This is all you can eat steamboat but we can only order as much veges as we like.  The meat are fixed.  There were lots of fish balls but not much meat.

The soup is divided between clear soup and tom yam soup.










Sunday morning we woke up at about 7am.  We had breakfast at a hawker stall next to the steamboat restaurant.  It was surprisingly nice and cheap.

Here was where we had breakfast on Sunday.

I had this "kon lo lo shi fun".













My friend had "gee cheong fun".

Another friend had prawn noodles.











With three bowls of noodles plus I had a coffee and one of my friends had a bowl of red bean soup, all of these cost RM12.60.  We were so happy we didn't go back to the same place.

Then they took us to a strawberry farm.  We were told that it was a pick your own strawberry farm and that we could eat as much as we want while we pick the strawberries.  I wasn't sure whether the tour guide was pulling our legs.  When we got there, the people at the farm told us that we couldn't eat any of the strawberries while we pick our own strawberries and the price per 500g of strawberries was RM20 and that we have to pick at least 500g if we want to pick our own.  Most people were disappointed and didn't want to pick their own.  I didn't do it either.

 This is the strawberry farm.

These are the strawberry plants.












This was the last visit at Cameron Highlands.  The next stop was lunch in Ipoh.

This was where we had lunch.

One of my friends had "ban mian".

I had "char siu" and roast pork rice.












Then we visited a cave in Ipoh called 极乐洞(Ji le dong).

According to the tour guide, this is a new tourist attraction.  There are lots of statues of Buddha.












After this last visit, we were on our way home.  We had dinner in Tanjung Malim just before KL.  We were back in Seremban at about 8:30pm.  It was raining.  My father picked me up at the drop off.  I will talk about some of the fruits I bought from Cameron Highlands.....

Breakfast at Soong Kee

This morning I went to breakfast with my parents at Soong Kee.  They are famous for "hor fun", rice sticks, and wonton noodles.

My parents had the "hor fun".

I had wonton noodles.











Then I ordered a bowl of "sui gao" but they didn't have that this morning so I ordered a bowl of their prawn wontons in soup.

A bowl of 10 prawn wontons.

This is how the wontons look like.











The bill for all the above was RM19.  We were not happy that it cost so much.  The noodle was RM4 a plate.  The prawn wontons cost RM7!  I haven't been to that place for a long time.  I think I will not go back for a long long time.....

Fruits

It is durian season in Malaysia again.  Since I came back I have had durian once.  I like durian but I am not crazy about it.  Although I have not had durian for a long time, I wouldn't want to eat that everyday.  I went to Jusco the other day with my niece.  There were lots of durian for sale in Jusco supermarket.  So I bought two packets because one packet costs RM25.90 and two packets cost RM45.  I couldn't resist so I bought two packets.

Buying durian like this has all the advantages I think.  First I get to choose the taste ie. sweet only or sweet with bitter taste.  I chose the bitter sweet one.  Then I don't have to get rid of the durian shelf myself and they are guaranteed nice.







After I bought the durian, my cousin visited me and brought me more durians.  My cousin brought me durians from Simpang Peretang.  The durians were from my cousin's durian estate.

These are nice too although not as nice as those that I bought from Jusco.















Other fruits I bought recently were dragon fruits and mango.  Last Monday night, I went to pasar malam with my sister.  We bought five large dragon fruits for RM10.  I think it was a bargain.

Since most people prefer the red dragon fruits, I don't see anybody selling the white one anymore.

This is how I serve dragon fruit.

I bought this mango from Jusco too.  I was impressed with the size of the mangoes when I saw them in Jusco.  They were very big.  I haven't seen such a big mango for a long time.  This weighed 1.09kg and it costs 1.19 per 100g.  So I paid RM12.99 for the mango.  It was very nice but my father said probably I was the only person buying it from Jusco because he thinks it was quite expensive!