DIY: Home-made Blueberry Ice Cream (Philadelphia-style)

Philadelphia-style or American-style ice cream is an egg-free ice cream.  As no cooking is actually required, this style is more foolproof as it calls for lesser and simpler steps, unlike the custard-based ice cream which required handling of eggs.  Having a lighter texture and a more delicate flavour, this eggless ice cream is highly recommended for fruity flavours.

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Home-made Blueberry Ice Cream (Philadelphia-style)

Makes about 1 litre

400ml heavy cream (commonly known as whipping cream)

200ml milk

1 tsp of vanilla extract

125g blueberries

10ml lemon juice

150g brown sugar

1.  Combine the blueberries, sugar and lemon juice in a bowl.  Mash the blueberries with a fork until it is well-combined to get a heavenly syrup.

2.  In another bigger bowl, combine the heavy cream and milk.  I added some of the bigger chunks of the blueberries (especially the skin) into the milk mixture and using the hand-blender, I blended it until smooth (and at the same time, incorporate air into the mixture).

3.  Then, combine the remaining blueberries mixture and mix well.

4.  Place the ice cream mixture into the refrigerator to chill for a few hours.  Note this is a very important step because if the mixture is not cold enough, it wouldn't churn very well.  (This was where my mistake was).

5.  Once you're pretty comfortable that the mixture is cold enough, pour it into the ice cream maker.

6.  Process it according to the manufacturer's instructions, which may take approximately 30 minutes to churn.  The end product will look like a soft-serve ice cream.  But even if it turns out watery/softer than expected, don't worry.  It doesn't mean that it is a failure.

7.  Scoop the ice cream into a freezer-safe container (or any recycled ice cream container) and pop it into the freezer for at least 2-3 hours and it should harden perfectly.

8.  Before serving, let it thaw for a few minutes so that it is easier to scoop it.

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This simple ice cream is very easy to make.  Being the very first attempt at making ice cream and having some setbacks here and there, I am very pleased with the results.  Although it turned out slightly icy, but the creamy, milky texture is there.  It tasted light and the blueberries shined perfectly nice (the lemon juice did a good job to bring out the fruitiness).

And the satisfying part is, after the second day, the 1-litre ice cream is finished :)

Time to plan the next ice cream!

Korean Food @ The Street Cafe, Sunway Pyramid

Tuck deep inside the Asian Avenue, Sunway Pyramid, you can find a very nice casual cafe serving yummy-licious Korean street food - The Street Cafe.

Okay, I know it has been there for a very long time and it did took me quite a while to actually bring myself to try a meal here.  Seriously, I'm truly missing out so much because the food here is really nice!  I can't believe it took me so long.

Their tagline "The Best Korean Street Food" is definitely no lie, at least in my opinion.

Korean food.  When this first come into my mind, I'll definitely say Korean BBQ or maybe its more famous dish, kimchi.  Of course, there are the other more commonly seen dishes like bulgogi and japchae.  But the menu has always been focusing on the BBQ dishes.

So, when I opened The Street Cafe's menu (KS & I were still deliberating whether we should u-turn back to the earlier cafes until we stopped here), I was quickly hooked to it.  There's so many types of dishes on the menu, and it was so colourful.  It just made me wanna sit down and continue reading the menu.

They serve a variety of dishes - bibimbap, ramyun, lunch box (this is really cute, served in real lunch boxes), toboki, raboki, buchingae and the list goes on.  If you're feeling hungry, you can order the Combo Sets, which looks pretty huge, with a main dish served with either a kimchi soup or kimbab.

As the names were a bit quite unfamiliar to us and there were too many to choose from, we decided to stick to the "Highly Recommended" and "Must Try!" indicators on the menu.

Jajangmyeon (RM12.90) tagged with "Highly Recommended".


Now, if you have watched enough Korean dramas, you would noticed this dish often being mentioned.  To be honest, I have never come across one and had no idea how it looked like or tasted.  To me, Jajangmyeon sounded very close to the Chinese ZhaJiangmian (炸酱面) and suspected it may actually be the same thing.

Well, in fact, the Korean version is really an adaption of the Chinese dish, introduced into Korea by the Chinese migrant.  In a way, it is very similar but then again, it is also very different.  The key ingredient that makes it different is the base of the sauce.  In the Chinese version, yellow soybean paste is used for the sauce but in the Korean version, black bean soy paste is used instead.

If you like food that are on the sweeter side, you'll like this dish as it does taste a bit like honey BBQ sauce or maybe the Japanese curry.  Served with pieces of grilled chicken (which tasted very like teriyaki chicken), shredded vegetables, sweetcorn kernels and cubed carrots,  the thick wheat noodles are covered with thick and dark sauce, that makes you feel like slurping the noodles like spaghetti.  It may not look very appealing, but it does taste nice.

Kimchi Buchimgae (RM 13.90) tagged with "Must Try!".

This Korean-style pizza, or more commonly known as Korean pancake, is so beautifully laid out, with a lot of spicy kimchi spread all over it.  Similar to a regular-sized pizza, it had a lot of toppings and the texture of the pancake gave that lovely gooey texture, just as though there was cheese.

I do admit it is slightly oily, but the flavour is tremendously good.  The spicy kimchi that have been used is very flavourful and gave just enough taste for the pancake.  The base of the pancake, on the other hand, had just the right level of thickness - thick enough to feel the pancake, thin enough to make you feel like having more.  It tasted so good that you don't even need the dipping sauce.  As an in-between snack, this would be a perfect treat.  I would definitely come back for the buchimgae again.

They always say the best indicator of whether the place is whipping up nice dishes is to see the level of crowd relatively to its neighbours.  Well, for The Street Cafe, that is really true!


The Street Cafe
Lot 197 Asian Avenue
First Floor
Sunway Pyramid Shopping Mall
Petaling Jaya

DIY: Quick Salad with Stone-Ground Mustard Dressing

Salad is a very inexpensive feel-good meal if you made it on your own.  Because there is no standard rule, you can mix-and-match whatever that goes into your salad - cold salad or warm salad, vegetables salad or fruit salad, with rice/pasta or without - the choice is limitless.

After watching too many TV cooking programs, I just felt like making my own salad for lunch, from scratch (too many theories, but no actual practical experience).

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Quick Salad with Stone-Ground Mustard Dressing

Salad
Lettuce - Any variety.  I have used red sails lettuce

Cherry tomatoes - Love those crunchiness & sourness.  Felt like grapes.

Dressing

Organic stone-grounded mustard
Or any other varities of mustard.  I chose stone grounded as I prefer the texture of the coarse mustard, giving a bit more spiciness.

Vinegar
There's a variety of vinegar you can use - distilled vinegar, apple cider, champagne vinegar.  Or, if you prefer natural fruitiness instead, you can replace with any accidic fruits like lemon, lime, orange etc.  I didn't add any since the mustard already has added vinegar in it.

Sesame oil
Olive oil was omitted as I didn't have them ready at home.  But according to a study, since you need to have some oil in order for efficient absorption of the nutrients from the greens, I had replaced it with some sesame oil - a little touch of Chinese taste.

Brown sugar/honey - Just to balance out the acidity

Salt & black pepper to taste

Water - Add according to how watery you like your dressing

Toppings

Sunflower seeds, toasted with some salt & sugar for taste

All these are prepared well in advance, placing the salad in different containers with the dressing kept in separate tightly-lid containers.  When it's time to eat, you can add more ingredients to go along with your salad for some protein.  Possible suggestions:

>  A hard-boiled egg

>  Thinly sliced omellette (pan-fried without oil, obviously)

>  Cooked meat, shredded (left-overs from previous meal - no more worries of food wastage)

They taste superb!  This is my first time actually making my own salad from scratch (because I was lazy enough previously to buy read-made dressings from the supermarket aisle), and it have given me the confidence to add more of this to my diet.

A good way to introduce more greens to your diet in a more fun & interesting way.

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If you want to be very health-concious, I strongly advise to stay away from ready-made dressings.

To make them easily accepted by the general market, these dressings are usually loaded with a lot of fat, sugar & salt.  Even if it claims to be "99% fat free", do not be fooled because for some components to be removed from the equation, they will need to be replaced with other (possibly more unhealthy) ingredients & chemicals.

But if you have no choice & insist on ready-made dressings, then do make a habit to go through the labels first before dropping it into your shopping basket.  As advised by Michael Pollan (author of the best-seller In Defense of Food), if you can't pronounce the ingredients or do not know what it is, very likely those are chemically-induced ingredients and it is advisable to stay away from these.  Why buy something that you don't what they have put in.

Another plus-point of self-made dressing is that you have full control of what you add to/minus from your dressing and personlize it to your liking.  The very same dressing can be transformed to a whole new level by just slightly tweeking the recipe.  Isn't that fun?

Pork Noodles @ Jalan Mesu

Please click here to read more about the review of this stall

As I am cutting down on the more unhealthy food (which means no curry noodles for anytime to soon), I ordered the pork noodles.

While this bowl of pork noodles may not have anything extraordinary to boast about, I love their pork balls - huge & meaty!  The soup, on the other hand, does not have any pork taste, so it does not make it a real pork noodles - it tasted more like ikan bilis soup.  Nevertheless, the soup is still nice & light, topped with fragrant sesame oil.

Breakfast @ T-Break

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day since a nice,satisfying breakfast will bring you a-feel-good feeling for the rest of the day.  Never underestimate the power of good, proper breakfast.

Today, I decided to treat myself to a nice breakfast @ T-Break Cafe, Wisma Antarabangsa since it is the end of the working week (Hooray!  Weekends are here at last!).  On days when I managed to reach KL earlier, I would definitely come here for my first meal of the day.

GIven that I am not very hungry, I decided to go for the Half-boiled Eggs with Panini Toast Breakfast Set (RM 5.50) accompanied by a cup freshly-brewed coffee (or an alternate choice - Twinnings English Breakfast tea).  If you felt that black coffee/English Breakast tea is not your cup of tea, then you can opt to upgrade to other coffee beverages at a charge.

It is such a simple yet complete, satisfying meal.  The bread, either soaked in the egg or spread with butter and jam, is just so nice.  The strawberry jam can be substituted for pandan kaya, which I find it quite nice - the level of sweetness & consistency is just right.

If I was not rushing to clock in, I would have sat down longer to enjoy my cup of coffee & munch on the buttery almond-shortbread cookie.  I always look forward to the cookies that they serve together with the coffee/tea - love the fragance of the butter.

They serve a variety of breakfast sets - from a light set to a complete Big Breakfast set, from local breakfast to Western breakfast.

Another breakfast set, Egg on Toast (RM 5.50) - scrambled eggs served with Panini Toast.

Click here for more review of this nice cafe that also serves lovely, simple all-day menu.

T-Break Cafe

Kompleks Antarabangsa,

Lot G22, Ground Floor,

Jalan Sultan Ismail,

50250 Kuala Lumpur.

(only open on working weekdays from 7.30am)