Saturday, November 1, 2008

Cheesecake Factory!!!

I finally went to cheesecake factory and I did not spent a penny on this nice, fancy restaurant. After RAS today, Dr. Buckely decide to bring all the RIT students and faculty member who went to RAS but did not reserve for lunch, to cheesecake factory! so here we are!! free nice complete meal!
Unfortunalty I did not order for any appetizer, as none of the poeple on my table did. But I had a good meal and dessert, one nice complete meal and here is the picture!!!


Bread with butter, I did not know the name of this bread but it crispy outside and soft in the inside!!


Chicken Pasta with Sundried Tomato in Cream Sauce


I did not know what's the name of this guy, but it is salmon with mashed potato in lemon sauce. This one is Ina's.


Din's: I also didn't know what it is called but it is shrimp in gravy with potato and black beans. It has banana too at the sides, it's really sweet. I only tasted the banana.

The picture of the cheesecake, which I have it wrapped as to go will come later I haven't eat it yet!

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Wok With You at Park Point

Shrimp Shumai (resolved my craving for dumpling..yeay!!)



Salmon Sushi



Crab Rangoon (The best appetizer!!)



Thai Basil Fried Rice (taste just like other fried rice in chinese restaurant..Not recommended)



Udon in Soup with Veggie and Shrimp (I like the udon texture but the soup was quite bland)



Panang with White Rice (the best main course among the three)



I would love to come to this restaurant again to try other menus especially their dim sum. Haven't tried them yet, so pretty sure I'll give a second visit to this restaurant, inshaAllah! and plus the waitress was really nice and friendly! So people...if you went to park point this restaurant is a must, it is much better than the regular chinese food that we always ate at the mall food court, this one is much fancier and they have more variety of asian food, not only limited to fake chinese food!

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Biskut Makmur (Peace Cookie)

Sorry people, I know some of you love reading blog, (not just skimming at pictures idle-ly) but as for now, I'm not in the mood for writing!! So InshaAllah in some other time in the future I'll add some descriptions to this post, it's coming but not now!!

So after some procrastination.... here come the writing part of this post!

After finishing poster for RAS, I felt so darn relieved and can't believe that it wasn't hard to finish a poster on your own. So, after all the hard work for two days in front of my lovely macbook, I decided that I need a therapy and I need to reward myself with something that I love. Apalagi masak la!! For me cooking is one of the way that make me happy, not all the time but most of the time. So people, do not use this reason to get me cooking all the time okey? As I'm not always happy to cook especially when someone ask me to. hahaha evil me!!! Well that is me. I don't like to do something that someone ask. If someone say do A, I'll probably will do B. That's just me!!

Anyway for my cooking theraphy that night, I cooked this biskut makmur (literal translation would be Peace Cookie). After I'm getting ready with all the stuff that I need to start my theraphy I realized that we out of ghee!! One of the ghee is already berkulat and had mold in it! so gross, so i threw that into garbage, leaving me with no ghee to continue my mission..:(

However, I don't give up, as my craving for biskut makmur need to be satisfied. Otherwise, the biskut (cookies) is going to be in my mind for the rest of the week and I could not live like that! Of course no! And plus I already mixed the flour and the sugar together in a bowl, who wants to be berdosa to just toss them in the trash, right?

So I got an idea to replace the ghee with shortening (don't worry I used vegan shortening not khinzir shortening (lard) ). And tadaaaaaaa I finished my version of biskut makmur. I baked the biskut first, cooled it down, and then coat them in a generous amount of castor sugar or powdered sugar, whatever you want to call it.

So here is hte biskut after they came out from the HOT oven...

I used my chopstick to transfer the biskut into a bowl full of castor sugar (that chopstick actually flew all the way from Japan to US and it passed the US immigration! Congratulation chopstick!! Thanks to hanis, she actually bought it for me when she went to JAPAN...orang kaya boleh la pi japan hohoho)


So here the biskut in a bowl of sugar. It looks messy this time. Shame on me ;(

Biskut that is coated with sugar, I just tossed them in the sugar with a spoon I should have used my hand instead, It would be much fun! But it would look disgusting and no one would want to eat it. So I go for the spoon for healthier and more hygienic choice!!

Here is the final result and the moment of truth of how a biskut makmur with veg shortening would taste like!!




The result... It tasted okey, not as good as the makmur that has ghee in it, but it tasted almost similar. However, the most interesting thing about this version of makmur is that, the kurma inside it was crunchy! it felt almost like biting a candy inside a makmur cookies. I don't not know whether that is due to the shortening or the type of kurma that i used.

Whatever it was...the Peace cookies were already finished in just one day!! I'll re-do it next time inshaAllah. But now I'm not sure whether I should switch back to ghee or should I stick with the shortening? em~~~

Saturday, October 4, 2008

Open House for EID!!!!!

This weekend we had three open houses hosted by Malaysian at Rochester

It first started at Nasha and Kay Yin's house at Rustic Village on Friday. We had Nasi Ayam, Mee Bandung and Kay Yin's popular potsticker (a.k.a fried dumpling if I'm not mistaken)

MEE BANDUNG


Kay Yin's Dumpling:
Nasi Ayam!!



The next open house that we went after Nasha's was at Joe and Zizi's house. But unfortunately my camera's battery ran out. So I have no picture of their food. But..but.. their nasi minyak and ayam masak merah was so good!!! It was pedas but i still enjoyed it!! and of course the famous dadih which was very good too, it tasted almost like a milk jelly and everyone enjoyed it. Nice job JOE!!!

The next day (Saturday, Oct 4), we had another open house hosted by MySA at Dilla's house at Park Point. They had so much food over there since it was a pot luck and everyone brought their own dishes and almost 'everyone' brought dessert, including us (we just bought a Black Forest cake from Wegman). Over at Dilla's house we had Nasi Minyak, Ayam Masak Merah and Rendang Ayam as the main dish and Acar timun nenas as the side dish:








Wednesday, October 1, 2008

EID Open House @ 168 Riverknoll

Malam before RAYA:

Biskut Semperit before di bakar:



The same Biskut after bakar:


Then we figured out that the dough need more flour, it worked out well. We ended up making second batch but this time we changed to a different piping tips and this was what we came out with:

More picture of the biskut:


Biskut Mozarella yang di buat oleh Hanis:


On Pagi RAYA:
We also made some other things on the Hari Raya. I woke up at 10am that morning, just in time when Dilin came back from her exam. Poor dilin, she had an exam on pagi raya :(
Anyway, as soon as I mandi sunat hari raya I ran out downstairs and me, dilin and ajiem started cooking. Dilin made the nasi tomato with Ayam Masak Merah:

She first rebus the ayam:


Then used the chicken stock and the ayam to prepare the Ayam Masak Merah:


This is her Nasi Tomato, this was the first time she made Nasi Tomato and it turned out good:

Excuse me for the picture, it's little bit blur coz my hand was shaking and I don't like to use flash for close up. My bad :(


Me? I made Roti Jala and the weird chicken curry:


Smoking Hot Chicken Curry:


Hanis made her famous LONTONG but unfortunately I forgot to take a shot of her lontong too bad:((
But I have pictures of us trying to make Nasi Impit from scratch:

We tried to boil the rice in ziplock but then the bag was bocor and the nasi came out of the bag.


We finally ended up masak the nasi in the pan without the bag. We masak the nasi really lembik and pressed down the nasi in a baking sheet and used Hanis's genomics textbook as a pemberat:


And cool it down in fridge together with the books:

And Alhamdulillah and it turned out well.


Neesun and Ibah also made Ayam Percik which was also very good:
We finished cooking at 3pm and people started coming to house soon after we finished and Ackie and Ina also bought some dessert over to our house:

Ackie's cupcakes:

Close-up:


Ina's Layered Cake:


A meja that is full with Raya Food: