五福北京城 Reunion

It’s been a few weeks since I’m back but I still can’t find the mood to write until now. During the 6 weeks of holiday, I don’t have much chance to post photos and they sum up to 2200 photos when the time I came back to Melbourne – it’s hard to sort them out now.

From my last post, I was whining about losing things that I had during that 6 weeks, it seems like I took a week or more to settle down my feelings and get the normal things that I used to do in Melbourne going again. My rational mind is not working alright at all for the past 2 weeks, I still think of how I wake up and drive out to have my convenient delicious lunch, how I give a call to my mum telling her that I’ll go home for her wonderful home-made dinner, how I call up friends and ask them out to have a drink instantly and how cheap I can get food outside and have 5 meals a day…

I managed to sort things out after going crazy in the head for a while, finally hold myself up and get things going. So first, I’m going to show-off my friend’s successful restaurant in the JB town. On the third day after I got back to Johor, I had a reunion day with my dear ‘Feika’ buddies – those whom I hang out every day when I was in JB, like part of my family?

Everyone got busy with age, some got too busy with work, some with family, some with their own business and some still hang around the town doing nothing much, everything seems the same like old time yet something is different in each of us but the bond to make this picture happen is priceless.

Not trying to be exaggerates but after so many groups of friends I met in my life, I still prefer to stick with the original old ones – they say 旧爱还是最美, the feeling is very nostalgic.

Anyway our group is too big so I’ll just use one as our representative throughout this post – our Linda aka Feika Limited Model.

Welcome to 五福北京城 (The place where your wallet gets ripped)

So this year I finally managed to spend Chinese New Year with all of them, the last time should be 3 years ago.

This also means that I’ve not done this for 3 years, the Malaysian Chinese Culture during Chinese New Year – eating Yu Sheng ’鱼生’ known to welcome prosperity for a new year.

The special thing about this Yu Sheng ’鱼生’ dish is that there’s a way to eat it – mix in all the ingredients consists of salmon, white radish, carrot, ginger, shrimp crackers, sesame seeds and Chinese parsley, then gather everyone.

Once everything is set, ready the chopsticks and start tossing the ingredients into the air and shout ‘Huat ah’ repeatedly for a million times like our 鱼生 Model from the picture.

The idea is to say out loud all the auspicious wishes to mark the start of a prosperous new year, the better and higher you toss, the louder and more golden words said, the greater the fortune it is for that year.

After all the tossing and posing, snatch the Chinese parsley aka Fa Cai ‘发菜’ since it’s the vegetable that pronounce as ‘getting rich’ in Mandarin. Usually it’s harder to find, as some sneaky fellows will toss it to their own plate before everyone started eating.

When it comes to this kind of food, no one toss higher than us definitely. Some other dishes which they serve in Pekin Sutera Utama 五福北京城...

The nice fake shark fin soup ‘福州汤’ – definitely taste as delicious as it looks…

And these are the dishes which I don’t even know the names for it but I know they taste good.

Better when you can have it with your bestie~

Best when you can bring your pet into the restaurant! Quietly of course!

And when I say it’s not cheap, I mean it! RM 1039.95 for all we had above.

Now you know, our Feika Model charges aren’t that cheap too~

If you are interested in her watch advertising – come in and have a look

Although the price went up to RM 1040.00, I’m not trying to show you that my buddy’s restaurant is a rip-off restaurant – they definitely serve good food and it can be cheap!

And I’ll use my niece as a representative model this time~

The place is definitely good for kids since it’s spacious and they have lots of fish tanks and amazing fishes that are all ready to get cooked!

Can you recognize any of the fishes? Anyway the place as a whole have a grand look~

Whether you like it with air-con or enjoy your food under the lunar moon with soft breeze, you pick your choice~

Love him! My second and third Beloved~

And here comes the menu we had, it sums up to RM 600.00 and I’m much more satisfied than those I had previously.

One of the best dish name ‘Pen Cai’ 盆菜, where the chief chuck all the good stuffs into a pot and steam it until it gets cooked – delicious. One pot of this can eat up to 10 people.

Then the stir-fly pipis – one of my favourite!

And Marinated Pork…

And the big sweet Chili Crabs – Oiishii~

Since I’m such a food craze, I used up one whole day in his restaurant having reunion meals, taking pictures and tasting his menu – the taste definitely worth what it cost.

No.1, Jalan Sutera Tanjung 8/4
Sutera Utamabiz Centre
Taman Sutera Utama
81300 Skudai, Johor

The C.N.Y – Cow New Year

It’s the Moo Moo year, let’s kill more cows for our desires on steak!

I’m greedy this year so I’ll celebrate CNY in Melbourne and Malaysia, since I dislike the first day of CNY. Every year, there are only two scenarios, first, relatives will come visit and disturb me when I was in my dreamland early in the morning, then I’d wake up with a sleepy look and they’ll look at me and laugh while greeting me ‘Morning, Piggy’. Scenario two will be, my mum waking me up extremely early to visit my great grand mother from my mum’s side and I’ll be extremely tired for the rest of my day, all the very nice foods doesn't seem so nice after that.

Nowadays, first and second day of New Year are usually bored back in my hometown after they ban fireworks in Malaysia, without fireworks flying all over the town, the town seems like too dumb for a person to feel spirited for the festive – most shops and shopping centers are closed until the third day of New Year, relatives visit you and take up all the space in your house (bed, sofas, teles’, PCs’, etc), gamble friends set up tiny gambling den and try to win all the monies from your red-packets and the roads are so quiet with a few cars that make you feel that you shouldn’t be out on the road but somewhere else fighting to win somebody else’s red-packet.

So I decided to skip the first 2 days and happily have a dinner with my family when I get back on the 28th. This decision doesn’t make me feel extremely good though since I still have to come back to office today to finish up everything I have to do for my 6 weeks of holiday – I managed to clear out my last task this morning and will be happily enjoying my rest of the day in the office chilling around, it’s CNY after all.

Australia Day falls on the 26 January and Aussies don’t celebrate CNY, my CNY holiday was then compensated from the Australia Day Holiday on the 26th so it’s all good, if not I’ll make a third scenario soon. This year I feel I’ve started off CNY pretty happily, although the festival I went wasn’t that fun but it did made me feel that its CNY, and also, on the very same night, I finally join my housemate to another KTV session again - it’s been such a long time since the last time I joined him and had that much of fun.

Other than that, on CNY itself, I had a great time practicing my cooking skill. As usual, my family friends here, except for Nick and Warren since they are back in Malaysia this time. We made a great reunion feast…

The extremely nice Poh Piah (One of the Malaysian food) filled with fresh minced prawns, minced pork and etc… The preparation for it took like a few hours!

Michelle helping out to roll and wrap up the ingredients into ‘Poh Piah’ – looks professional until I tempted her to make funny shapes, she ended up making large shanghai dumpling instead of Poh Piah - totally lost her direction.

These are the ingredients… not easy to make them at all - there are so much work like peeling off the prawn’s shells, chopping up onions and many more…

After all the trouble, we still have to look out to make sure it’s fried into gold brownish color so it’ll be crispy and not burnt…

As for me, I think fish for CNY is a ‘must’ thing to have, so I bought a big fresh Barramundi which I made it in two different ways…

The Cantonese Steam Barra… By Me!

And the Fried Barra with Soy Sauce… By Me Again!

Then we had the mushroom Chicken that was marinated for two days! The Chicken has a strong mushy taste, and the mushroom is sooO nice!

Other than that, we had Cashew Prawns, heaps of Marinated Fried Chicken, Yellow Bean Soup with Pork Spare Ribs, Steam and fried Vegetables with Garlic. They are all so delicious that I couldn’t resist not eating more and I ended up with a bloated tummy the next day, all good for a New Year start!

Guess what!? 1 more day to go!!!!!