pancakes

early 2008
a friend asked
hey, have you heard about pancake?
sure, a cake in a pan...
no nooo...
found this new place, where you can eat pancakes
not only with syrup, jam, butter or ice cream
but also with sausage, ham, bacon, hash brown and mashed potato
and tastes as good as it looks,
oh.. is it a cake-bread kind of place?
hmm.. sort of
oh okay (not that interested)

until, few months after that, my two bestest friends came to visit. as we looovee to eat so we try that pancake-bread place. it turns out super great (yaay). the place's name is paddington pancakes, at the curve mall, damansara perdana.

this is my favourite mall in malaysia. here, is actually 5 (five) mall combined into one large area. there is the curve, tesco hypermarket, cinelleisure, ikano shopping mall, and the one and only, ikea. but the concept itself is an open air mall, similar like parisj van java or cihampelas walk in bandung. ooppss... wrong topic here, okay back to food.

so, as you can see from the name, their speciality is pancakes, of course. but with many many many kind of pancakes, we even need more than half an hour just to pick and order what we want. all the things in the menu looks so tempting, but we got to choose...

in the end, this is the first item which we order. with the price RM22.50 menu number 406, double gourmet cheese sausages, beef salami, hashbrown, and grilled mozarella complete with salad and cherry tomatoes. i don't know what they called for the sauce, but it makes the whole thing complete.






the second item called dollar pancakes. basically it contains a lot of mini pancakes, together with strawberries, peaches (hmm... my favourite), apple cubes, and cashew nut.

don't forget two scopes of ice creams, which you can choose chocolate, strawberry or vanilla flavour (we chosed chocolate and vanilla) and lastly strawberry syrup poured on top of it.

(yummy) it tasted as good as its looks.
yes, that is my first experience at paddington pancakes, on may 2008. then early this year, feb 2009, i got another visitor (hmm.. lucky me..) and another chance to eat here.

but for this time, i completely forgot to write down the dishes name, so can only show you the pic. if i'm not mistaken, first picture was somekind of a chessy-pancake-pizza, second one was pancake with hash brown, beef bacon and ham. third one was lasagna with spinach-pancake roll.

all.about.sushi.and.sashimi.part.one

my ultimate guilty pleasure, indeed [o.O]'

back in 2006, a portion of avocado unagi roll (sea eel) is my first introduction to japanese sushi, then we finished up with 2 large macha (green tea) ice cream. we didn't order much at that time, because just to eat at that place, me and my 2 best friends had to sneakin' up from the rest of my friends. we told them that we need to go to a bookstore, instead we eventually ended up elsewhere *ooops*. it was my favorite japanese restaurant, sushitei at plaza indonesia, jakarta. well, not everyone like sushi or even sashimi, i also need some time to get used to it. but once you can enjoy it... hmm...

the second time was at a small japanese restaurant near my house. there, i learned something about wakame (seaweed), tamago (sweet egg omelet sushi), and my all time favorite sushi, tobikko (flying fish roe). i like tobikko because the roe is smaller compare to ikura (salmon roe), so less ''fishy taste'' and also tobikko is very crispy, you can literally hear the crack sound when you eat and bite it. good thing that tobikko is much cheaper than ikura (yosh!). too bad i didn't take any pictures for this one.

third time was the best, because i-eight for free (yaay!) and again it was sushitei but this time at paragon mall, singapore. the place itself similar like any other sushitei branch, modern simplicity design with dim light, plenty of water elements and bamboo here and there.



of course we had to have ocha (green tea), it's a must... prefer hot ocha for me, but the other two guys ordered a cold one. then we add california roll, tamago, and most definitely tobikko again. also tried chuka iidako (baby octopus) for the first time here, turns out really good. a bit scary for first timer, it's a baby... well octopus, but still, it's a baby.

after that we also order soft shell crab and ebi (raw prawn) sushi. finally a portion of unagi roll, sashimi salad, and chirashi lobster. no dessert this time, too tired to eat anything anymore.

*don't eat until you're full, eat until you're tired*
-a hawaiian saying-

a.perfect.rice

i always interested in all things related to japan.
well... their food is one thing for sure, but the culture and the way of living is always like a mindstorming for me.

i found this one web-blog about kanzo, one of japanese aesthetic priciple (zen).
basically, kanzo is about simplicity and keeping things basic.
there's one part interest me the most, here i quote :

a fancy dish garnished with top quality ingredients amuses our taste buds
while plain rice serves only to ease our hunger
kanso is rice, not pasta.
you will get tired of eating fancy food but not basic food like rice.
kanso is plain white paper and black ink on paper, not oil on canvas.
you only use what you need and nothing more.
kanso is the bare essential.

. . .

keeps things simple when they should be.
use only what you need.
one saying goes,

perfection is not when there is nothing more to add,
but when there is nothing left to take away.

but there is no perfection.
what is true then?
there is no truth, only perception.
perception is clear when the mind is not clouded or burdened.
keep things simple as they should be and the mind will not be burdened.

i couldn't agree more.
for my work and study, i got the message here loud and clearly,
but since this is a food-blog,
the idea about a-perfect-rice suddenly pop up in my mind.
never ever, in my experience,
i succeed to cook a bowl of shining... warm.. white fluffy rice

so i decided, the next project is to cook a-perfect-rice.
we'll see how it goes, so wait for part #2 from this topic.

[to be continued]

attempt.number.one

last saturday, i want to try out my 60mm lense. i bought this lense because food is my main object and i got this very useful information from lolo, one of the food blogger.

anyway, i was looking for an object and i saw this chocolate bar that i kept in the fridge. and that time, i was really craving for something sweet so i just grab it, took a few snaps and later -eight- it. supposely, that chocolate is 'belong' my friend, he requested it since last christmas (oops...)

but i can never eat too much, a bit too sweet for a bitter dark chocolate lover like me. aside from that, this chocolate is really good. i like it because it contains rhums inside hmm...

a best friend of mine suggested the chocolate. she is one of my ultimate partner in crime for food and happen to be a supermaket addict who can spent hours in it. one of her main dreams is to have a real-u-can-use cash register, well happy to know she finally got the almost-alike-but-u-still-can-use one last birthday (hooraii)
so you can actually find this chocolate in any supermarket store, but in few cases they don't have the rhum flavour.

i skipped my lunch that day and soon few hours after that, i got very hungry. too lazy to cook, i just took an instant ready use one, curly wollie unhealty noodle. never thought it would be so tempting, especially when you are hungry. so this is it, instant noodle with onion minced beef and a couple of baby spinach leaves from my own backyard-pot.

just.because.a.carrot.cake

a quick glimpse of history here. this is the very first food picture that i taken, with full awareness that i realize since then, i LOVE taking pictures of food.

it was 2006, in the city of lion to be exactly, at the hawkers food arena next to the durian building. in short, esplanade singapore.

this was just a simple SGD4.00 carrot cake and couple of barbequed chicken wings. along with that also a portion of grilled stingray, lemon chicken with rice and this big prawn which i forgot the name and ended with a glass of refreshing sugar cane.

i don't know really, maybe because of the name -carrot cake- or the shape and colour, or maybe because that was the first time (since a very loong time) i visit singapore or maybe just because -like many people, surround me especially- i just simply LOVE to eat.

but one thing for sure, from that moment i officially became an addict (of food photography) :D :D ;D