Macao 2008

Ruins of St. Paul's. The remaining southern stone facade of the cathedral

About time I blog about Macao, this is a long, long overdue post. It has been more than six months since this trip to Shenzhen and Hong Kong with two of my sisters and a niece. Macao was actually my favorite leg of the whole trip.

I love it here simply because there weren't any frantic shopping and huge crowd to negotiate as in HK and Shenzhen.

From Shenzhen we took a comfortable chartered van that cost us about rmb 700 to Macao. Hassle-free from the hotel in Shenzhen right to the border at Zhu Hai. 

With only one day in Macao we knew we had a lot of grounds and food to cover. Let me squeeze everything in one post to show you what we ate and saw in pictures...

This reads 'Famous Double skin steamed milk'. 

We found this shop right next to the tourism center at the splendid Largo Do Senado (main square at down town), walking distance to St. Paul's Ruin.

The original dessert with ginger juice. Very exquisitely smooth texture with a delicate and light flavor. 

As I love anything with red beans, I opted for the above...pure bliss...

  

Mok Yi Kei, very popular for its puddings and ice-cream desserts.

The most famous has got to be its durian ice-cream. Amazingly infused with the essence and pulp of the king of fruits but I would have preferred a softer and creamier texture.  

Wing Lai Yuen, a famous restaurant featured on one of our Malaysian's TV food program.

Too bad didn't have a proper meal here but the noodles (forgot what it was called, dan dan mein or something like that) we had for a snack were pretty substantial and yummy.

The Dumbo Restaurant, a famous Portuguese Restaurant

Followed Precious pea's review and i just had to give it a try or I would be going home feeling mission unaccomplished (???)... :P

Grilled quails. Very flavorful but a little dry.

Loved this braised pig's neck. Moist and delicious with a most aromatic smoky flavor.

Most famous portuguese-style egg tarts. These we doggy bagged from Dumbo Restaurant and as I remembered they were disappointingly dry and overly sweet. 

Not satisfied, we had another round early next morning at one of the stores near the Ruins of St. Paul. They were delicious and I realized they are best eaten piping hot. The best, we were told are those from Margaret's Cafe & Nata but alas, we never get near enough to taste them. A good enough reason for me to come back to Macao again...

 

Loved each and every one of these quaint narrow alleyways that we found at almost every turn.

Especially the cobblestone ones.

 

This historical site was near the Venetian Hotel. We chanced upon it while walking towards the casino.

Very well preserved buildings that are now transformed into museum and galleries.

Beautiful dahlias everywhere. 

Inside the Venetian, the world's largest casino resort (for now) which opened in August 2007. It boasts 3,000 luxurious suites and the biggest casino (about 600,000 sq. feet) in the world.  

Amazing indoor canals and gondolas, duplicating Venice.

A masked artist performing a classical piece creating a mood similar to the carnivals in Venice.

Birthdays And Cupcakes

What in the world are these??? My birthday cake??? Yes, happy birthday, Keshia!!!

Can't make out what we are trying to spell???...HAPPY B DAY KESH and of course a heart-shape. It was supposed to spell 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY KESHIA' but the cupcake recipe yielded only 16 small cakes when I clearly needed 19, so I had to abbreviate. We got hungry half way thru the job and devoured the extras.

Kesh, we hope you like these cup cakes which we took one whole morning painstakingly created especially for you. We know they don't look professional at all,  but they are filled with lots and lots of love.

When I decided to make a cake for Keshia's birthday, I know it would be a near impossible task for me to make a cake and decorate it, convincingly that is.

So I took a baby step and go small, cupcake small. I figured that would be a piece of cake (not exactly!). 

Surfed through the internet and looked through the recipes of all those bloggers I admire (namely terri, nee, ganache..) who can so easily whip out such awesome work of art one after another. 

Hopefully by going into their blogs their magic might rub off on me :p. And of course, to look for tips. I needed all the help I could get. 

Nee's butter cream looked sooo beautiful and satin smooth but I wasn't confident enough to attempt the sugar syrup thing and I wasn't so sure of the freshness of the eggs I have in the fridge. 

I don't want coloring and plasticky whipped cream, so I ended up doing butter icing, plain and with melted dark chocolate for contrast.

Certainly not a piece of cake as I thought. The icing was not as obedient as I expected and the cheap plasticky whatcumicallit I bought specially for this task was not much help either. 

The icing landed not only on the cakes but also our hands, table and floor. I should have done this when our part-time helper was in. 

I know now why I never like working with icing...it is the cleaning up. I had to mop the floor with detergent, if only I could pour hot water over it like i did the oily dishes!

Thank goodness for this cupcake stand from Mee Fung and the smarties which Leanne insisted we needed. They certainly helped to make these little cakes more presentable.

By the time I got to this last cupcake, I was finally getting the hang of it and enjoying it...Leanne and myself had a really fun time decorating...

and eating these as we worked...

And the look on Keshia's face was priceless when she walked in and we surprised her with the cakes. Happy birthday, my girl.

Chicken Wine Mee Suah

We didn't have time to taste the chicken wine mee suah in Sibu. Really wanted to, as I was told the Foochow's wine is different from the rice wine we used here in Sabah. I have tried those from Ipoh which was cooked in red rice wine and they were very good even though kind of fury looking with the redness of the wine. Why is the rice wine red? 

Anyway, I did bring back some good, handmade (L insisted) mee suah from Sibu and I hand-carried them personally as they were a delicate lot.

I decided to cook this for my 5-minus-one (Mee is the one in the States) sisters on our Thursday breakfast date. We have these breakfast dates every Thursday come rain or shine for the past 18 years. It started after our dad passed away, as dad and mum enjoyed going for dim sum almost everyday, we wanted to make sure mum get to go out for breakfast at least once a week with her daughters. So this routine/ritual was formed and it is still continuing even long after my mum left the scene. It is one highlight of the week for all of us - to catch up with one another, to share our views and opinions on every topics (food, travel, health and most recently, politics) under the sun. Most times everyone is talking and no one listening... :D Sometimes when time permit, the breakfast would extend to shopping (food, crockery, furniture, clothings...) 

The noodle is so exquisitely smooth, silky and light but still retains a definite bite. Heavenly... 

For the chicken wine recipe, click here. I omitted the mushrooms, wolfberries and black fungus here, just wanted to keep the soup as unclustered as possible to better taste the mee suah. 

To cook the mee suah noodle:

~Boil a large pot of water (~4L) for 4-5 servings of the noodle (usually about 4 bundles).

~By the side get ready a big basin of cooked cold water. 

~When water boils, pop the noodles in, stir to keep the noodles from sticking.

~It takes less than a minute to cook. 

~Lift the noodles from the boiling water and drop them in the cold water. This will stop the noodles from cooking any further. 

~Drain and separate into serving bowls. 

~Pour boiling wine soup onto the noodles and serve hot.   

I have Agnes to thank for this almost zero oil content chicken wine soup. I find even the kampong chickens these days are quite fat. Apparently many kampong chicken rearers are using chicken feeds to fatten them up faster!

With this ingenious piece of tool, oil is filtered off from soups effortlessly. It has an extremely fine gauze as sieve which only allows water to pass through.

Tilted at an angle, it makes the job a piece of cake. 

Diang Miang Ngu @ Sibu Central Market

This looks more like a stadium than a market, don't you think? I was told it is one of the largest market in Malaysia, it is definitely one of the best looking one I have seen in Malaysia. 

It is also very orderly and neat but still retains a feel of a market place. First there is the tamu area (you can't mistaken it for anything else because most of the produce are displayed on the floor like in all tamus with the vendors squatting) and then you have the market proper. First tamu I have been to that is fully covered and operates daily. That sure beats shopping under the hot sun.

Seems like a very common and popular item, the pickled kangkong. Quite a number of stalls offering them in the tamu.

No, these are not for cooking lemang. These bamboos are for the native's special dish, the bamboo chicken. They use coconut water (not santan) to cook this dish. Really like to taste it.

This is midin, but I really can't tell the difference between this and paku ferns just by looking, they taste much better though. 

Another edible fern.

I found these chickens all wrapped up and ready to go. First time I have seen dressed up chickens :-) 

When Terri called from KK, she told me to look for this dish call Diang Miang Ngu, I didn't quite get her so I repeated the words and L, who was next to me heard, nodded and said she knows. She said this is mostly eaten as supper but we didn't have any nights free to sample that. 

She thought the market place might have a stall selling it in the daytime. She gave me a run down on how this dish is prepared and the literal meaning of the three tongue-twisting words diang miang ngu which is 'wok side gruel'. 

Sure enough, we found the only stall selling this at the upstairs market place.

The

 cook was kind enough to let me squeeze into her tiny kitchen to take pictures while she prepared the dish.

 

This is a batter of rice flour and water (the gruel). 

She put some stock, black fungus and mushroom in this wok. I waited eagerly for her to lace the edge of the wok with the batter like what L had described to me earlier.

But no, she then heated another wok and started to cook the batter in it. When I asked why she did that she said it is faster and easier but...but... I don't want fast and easy.. I want a spectacular show!! Oh man, I felt so cheated.

  

Here was my diang miang ngu in two separate woks... :-(

When the gruel set she just flipped it over to the wok with the boiling soup which by now she had added minced meat and fish balls.

The final product. The noodle was very smooth and tasted good but I still felt cheated.

We ordered a plate of fried rice cake too. Not bad, good wok heat but still light, the rice cake had just the right bite.