vkeong loves good food, travel and photography!
Archive for August, 2006
Chocolate snacks!
Aug 7th
I was shopping in Carrefour Seberang Jaya last weekend with my parents and this particular box of chocolates caught my attention. Being a chocolate lover, I grabbed it without second thoughts lol. I remember when I was small, Van Houten is the chocolate brand for rich kids, and you must be really lucky to get your hands on them. It used to come in steel boxes only, good for storing needle and threads (my house still keeps one) Now you can find them in round steel containers and plastic packages.
[tag]Van Houten[/tag] Assorted Napolitains Full Cream Milk [tag]Chocolate[/tag] (gosh that’s a long name) contains small bars of chocolate with 3 flavors: Milk, Mocha and Orange. Sized perfectly for a nice bite at work 
Great as gifts to kids and your loved ones too.
Chocolates are found to have certain health benefits if consumed in considerate amount such as lowering blood pressure, promote alertness, lessen pain (for women), lessen anxiety, make one happy, help to “get in the mood” lol and many more. This however does not apply to all chocolates, as they can be classified into Dark Chocolate, Milk Chocolate, White Chocolate etc.. Anyway based on my personal research on the net, Dark Chocolate proves to be most beneficial as it contains the most antioxidants, which helps to prevent cancer and promote healthy skin (so goes the myth of chocolates causing acnes) Another interesting fact is that chocolates help to prevent persistent coughing! So I guess another myth is gone for good!
“How Wei Yun” Pan Mee
Aug 6th
There is a popular coffee shop for lunch among working people in [tag]Bayan Lepas Industrial Zone[/tag], food served include Pan Mee, Chee Cheong Fun, Rojak and Siu Mai.
“[tag]Hou Wei Yun[/tag]” is located in [tag]Bukit Jambul[/tag] opposite Vistana Hotel, under the low cost flats. This shop is The surrounding is cool and windy because there are many big trees that provide free shades.
I got to know of “Hou Wei Yun” first from my brother, he has worked in Bayan Lepas for almost 2 years. Besides him, my colleagues also recommended me to try out their [tag]Pan Mee[/tag]. It is widely acclaimed that this shop serves one of the best Pan Mee in Penang, google it here. Since Siang Leng never been to this place before, so I brought her there for lunch last Friday.
Because of the big crowd, it is self service here. You need to take a piece of ordering paper from the counter and fill up your order details. There are 2 types of mee you can choose from, thin or thick (they make their own mee) and 2 styles of cooking, dry or soup. It took almost 40 minutes for our orders to arrive, luckily we had a couple of Siu Mais while waiting.
The Siu Mais look nice eh? But actually they are a let down, they tasted bland, just normal minced meat steamed. Cannot compare with dim sum restaurant’s at all. So you can save you money on this lol, it costs RM1.40 per plate of 3.
Dry Pan Mee is like konlo wantan mee, and taste quite similar too. The ingredients are pretty standard, minced pork, ikan bilis and fungus 黑木耳 (this thing is expensive, sold at RM20+ per kg in hypermarkets) Each plate comes with a small bowl of soup with 2 fish balls.
Another view of the Dry Pan Mee, each plate costs RM2.70. Siang Leng said KL ones taste the same, if not better lol.
The Pan Mee Soup is not as nice as the dry version. If eaten too slowly, the mee will start to expand (“phong”) So if you are ordering for soup, go with the thin mee ok? Trust me on this lol. And also be prapared to cover your food and drinks because the windy situation will cause plenty of leaves to fall. My rating: 6.5/10, I think there are better Pan Mee stalls, but in terms of popularity.. this shop owns all.
Roasted Pork
Aug 5th
I am surprised to find very little information to [tag]Roasted Pork[/tag], 燒肉 in the Internet. Even Wikipedia does not feature any article about this Chinese delicacy, seems like Char Siew is more popular. Anyway we call it “Sior Bak” in Hokkien, and “Sao Nyiuk” in Hakka. My mother will always buy some of it from the market on Sundays as an additional dish. Normally there will be a lot left after lunch, but after fried with garlic and light soya sauce, it becomes another dish completely! And it will be the first dish to be gobbled lol.
To taste really nice Siu Yuk, you will need to go to restaurant that serves [tag]Hong Kong style dishes[/tag]. They do really serve the best Siu Mei 燒味. Anyone has any idea how Siu Yuk is prepared, please leave a message or a link, I am very curious to know. All I have seen is people using a lighter of some sort to burn the hair on the pork’s skin.
