Las Carretas Mexican Restaurant & Bar @ Taipan USJ

Suyen, Kuang, Kenny, Ten and me (CityGal) went to Pokka Ace at Bkt Raja Industrial area to settle some sponsorship stuff. So on the way back we headed to Taipan in hope of getting some nice food. I remembered reading about this mexican restaurant from KY speaks blog, so we decided to give it a try.

The ambience and menu is 90 percent similar with what you can find in Chillis. However we give a good review to it because it's more mexican like in here and the food served is definitely of better quality.

My favourite decorative item here. Liquor bottles as the reflective medium of the light bulb.

I snapped this while I'm weeing. Haha. Hilarious!

Everyone is scooping more and more of the salsa sauce with the complementary chips.

Pollo Locco - Grilled boneless chicken with black pepper sauce. I love the generous amount of sour cream that cover my baked potato.

Costilla de Cordero - some Grilled lamb dish. Ten ten loves the mint sauce especially!

Burrito - Pollo ( chicken) wrapped in flour tortillas. Kuang loves it too! The mexican rice is cooked in some lighly spicy tomato sauce and the colour is simply appetizing!

Enchilada - chicken pieces "seasoned with chiles" wrapped with corn tortillas . Verdict from suyen - excellent!!

Lamb Shank - Highly recommended by kenny! Juicy and tender, and the gravy goes well with the pasta.

My cuppa expresso.The hp is used to project how tiny my cup is. Two sips is enough to finished it.

Kuang ordered Irish Coffee ( Freshly brewed coffee + Irish whiskey)

Suyen loves her margarita ( tequila based coctail). She choosed the ice blended version instead of on the rocks version (with ice cubes). Their margarita contains more tequila than those that you can get in T*IF. I love the cactus like glass holder with a mexican leaning upon it.

Tequile Sunrise ordered by Ten and Kenny. The taste is more towards the fruity side.

DO dropped by this place the next time you were around subang area if you are bored with the food of the huge chain of T*IF or CHi**s outlets around KL.

Las Carretas Mexican Restaurant & Bar
No.14, USJ 10/1E,
Taipan Triangle,
Subang UEP,
Selangor D. Ehsan

Phone No: 03-56373058
03-42571668
Fax No: 03-56373059

Homemade Penang Lobak

Collabarative work of mummy and me!!

My mum kept this newspaper cutting of Amy Beh's recipe on Penang Lobak. She's having her mass production of lobaks (with pork) to distract us from having any chicken dish because noone in my family can resist this yummy and evil roll. I can't seem to find the online recipe from Kuali, the search result shows me the recipes for dipping sauce instead of the lobaks. So I typed it out just in case that anyone of you would be interested to try this out at home.

Ingredients:
400g pork/chicken
4 water chestnuts,
diced1/2 bombay onion,
diced1 tbsp chopped spring onion
1 small egg
1 large piece bean curd sheet, cut into 14x7cm each piece

Seasoning:
1/4 tsp pepper
1 tsp five-spice powder (ng heong fun)
1 tsp sugar1 and 1/2 tbsp light soya sauce
1 tsp oyster sauce
1/2 tsp sesame oil
1 tbsp corn flour or sweet potato flour


Method:
1. Cut the pork or chicken into small strips.
2. Combine meat, water chestnuts, onion, seasoning and egg in a mixing bowl. Mix well. Add spring onion to mixture. Marinate meat for at least an hour or preferably several hours in the fridge.
3. Put 1-2 tbsp marinated mixture onto each bean curd skin piece. Form into a long roll. Roll up tightly and twist on both the ends.
4. Steam rolls for 8 mins. Remove, cool and then deep-fry in hot oil until golden and crispy.
5. Cut into slices and serve with dipping sauce.Tips: Do not wrap too big a roll as it would be difficult to fry it.

Note:

1.We use yam paste instead of flour to keep the ingredients in place. It tastes real good!

2.If you are afraid of the oiliness of deep frying, you can sprinkle the rolls with some olive oil before sending them to toast.

3. The lobaks are lack of some sweet taste. Maybe we should doubled the amount of sugar next time.

Thai Fair @ Ipoh Parade

I'm sure that you guys are pretty familiar with this Thai Fair thingy. It has been around for quite some time, and it shifted from malls to malls from time to time. The last time I spotted Thai Fair was at MV Megamall and Sunway Pyramid. Since it was around Ipoh the last weekend I went home, so I went with my sisters to have a taste of the tomyam soup that we love so much. Other than the famous tomyam, they have mango with sticky rice ( too sweet for my taste bud), fried shrimps and popiah (yummy!), kerabu (thai mango salad with fried squid), ice blended drinks and som tam.

Patrons can choose from yellow noodle, meehoon(rice vercimilli), kuey teow (flat noodle) and glass noodle for their noodle dish.

My salivary gland will secrete saliva each time I see or think of this! Do not let the colour of the tomyam soup deceive you ! They are spicy and it is only meant for those who are brave at heart! (I mean I'm kinda brave too)

Somtam is thai salad with shreded papaya and mango, crushed groundnuts, sesames and some sweet and sour sauce. Remember to ask them to spice down if you can't bear spicy food.

Banana Coffee Muffin

My hands were itchy during my weekend in Ipoh plus my youngest sister keep on bugging me to "play bake bake", so I got this banana coffee muffin recipe from Jo's Deli and Bakery. Whenever I wanted to come out with something new, I search from this site for some recipes and do some modification to my own preferences. I hope that my sister will bring it to school and proudly tell her friends that I made her those muffins during waktu rehat. : p

INGREDIENTS:

Makes 12 large muffins

180g all-purpose flour
195g superfine flour
5 tsp baking powder or 2-1/2 tsp double action baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
210g castor sugar
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
250ml milk
4 tbsp instant coffee powder
130g butter, melted and cooled
3 ripe bananas, mashed
Coffee powder to dust muffin surface

METHOD:
Preheat oven at 200 degC. Line muffin tray with paper cups.
Sift flours, baking powder and salt into a mixing bowl. Add sugar into the flour mixture. Use a whisk to lightly blend the mixture.
In another mixing bowl, dissolve coffee powder in milk. Add egg and melted butter. Mix well.
Make a well in the middle of dry ingredients. Add the wet ingredients and mashed bananas. Mix just until all the flour is moistened. The batter should look lumpy. Do not overmix.
Divide batter into 12 muffin cups. Dust surface of muffins with a little coffee powder.
Reduce temperature to 180degC and bake muffins for 25-30 minutes or until well risen.
Transfer to wire racks to let cool.

Notes:
Use ripe bananas for stronger fragrant.
I doubled the amount of bananas because my sisters love bananas and I cubed them instead of mashing them.
I cut down the amount of coffee powder because I wish to have more banana-ly taste and smell.
Boolicious from masak-masak shared out her family recipe of banana cake too. If you wish to come out with banana cake instead of muffins, do adapt her recipe.

Carnival of Japan @ Multimedia University Cyberjaya

A lot of happenings in our uni nowadays, read Steven Choo's entry University turn into megamall (MMU turns into MMMM multi media mega mall) and one of the event is Carnival of Japan which is organized by Japanese Cultural Society from 21st to 23rd of March. The working committes has put in a lot of effort in getting vendors to come in here and setting up the canopies. Kampungboy is the treasurer of JCS and he's taking part in this event. So I must go Kepoh Kepoh a bit and helping around. One can know that it's a successful event by just looking at the crowd. I guess noone can resist food right?

For me, the major attraction here is these ARTIFICIAL FOOD models. Serious?? Yeah, it is known as gyodan.I heard that the Japanese must study the art of gyodan for seven years before they are considered professional. They make it out of plastic and display it in restaurants so that the customers can see how will their food be like. But did you know that this is a craft with an 80 year history, and all models are still individually hand made by master artisans? The idea originated in a small mountain town in Gifu, and you can still visit a traditional workshop there. (Information from Princetonol Online)

Isn't it amazing that all these food looks so real?? They are all hand made by professional japanese artist.

Ok! Let's get back to real food that you can chew, bite and swallow. They have takoyaki, dorayaki , bananas dipped chocolate, sushis, float, nasi lemak, char beehoon, soya bean, cincau and some japanese stuff from 100 yen shop here. 800 dorayaki is sold off within few hours and the takoyaki stall is always been seen with long queue.

Our blog readers who bought the Japanese curry after reading our post..Must give them loyalty awards dee..

And not to forget our highlight of the day - Pretty Girls in Yukata!! Kawaii neh!! I know them so do bribe me for their contacts!

William is the luckiest guy on earth!

Sweet and Sour Fish for Dinner

I haven been taking chicken for quite some time. The recent outbreaks in Perak make me a coward when it comes to bird poultry. Sarcastically, I take eggs occasionally. Haha!

Actually this sweet and sour fish is an impulsive kind of thing, but somehow it is similiar to the recipe that I found in Kuali. The only difference is that I choose not to deep fried the fish, because FAT DEE lar! I stir fry the fish fillets, please be noted that you must be soft and slow in movement during this process if you do not want to get the fish fillets wrecked.

The sauce is a mixture of tomato sauce, chilli sauce, lemon juice and some vinegar. These appetizing and (looks) fiery red sauce is best eaten with white rice. You gota trust me because KampungBoy finished 3 big bowls of white rice! I bet kids would love this dish to the max. It would be perfect with some pineapple and cucumber cubes. Haha but I left this two item for my grocery shopping.

As you can see, the same old boring "zhap chai" (mixed vege) again. This time, I added in some minced meat for some Omph! I loves minced meat so so so much. I think I can survive on zhap chai alone, as long as there's some minced meat in it. Nasi satu lagi , please!