: : Valentine’s Day : :

You know, there is something to be said about coffee and love.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

: : Harbourview Hotel : :

As promised days ago, here is the menu of the dinner I went to at Harbourview Hotel. It was a Chinese style dinner with 7 courses in total. Sounds like a lot to eat, no? Well, each table had about 10 people so more than enough people to share the spread of food.

This is the sweet corn crab meat soup. It’s very easy to do and can be done at home. All one needs to do is add some creamed corn, pieces of crabmeat, thin and small strips of black mushrooms into a pot of boiling water. Then, add some cornflour to thicken the soup. Also, slowly add in eggs while continously stirring the soup until the egg is cooked.

I love the big freshwater prawns used in this dish : stir-fried chicken with chilli and prawns. Yes, I’m still eating chicken during the chicken flu scare. Anyway, it was a nice dish. The chicken was cooked in a sweet and sour sauce where the thick and sweet dark soy sauce was used. The prawns (shrimp) looked to be fried separately and later added to the dish just before it was served.

According to the menu on the table, this fish is cooked in Hong Kong style. Hmm… not sure what does that mean unless it’s Cantonese style since the Cantonese are the largest Chinese group living in Hong Kong. The fish was steamed in light soy sauce first. Garnishing were added on later which include deep fried shallots and strips of carrots, chillis and spring onions. As for the fish, I think it was a garupa that was served. The flesh was very tender and delicious.

The BBQ beef ribs was served in a great tasting BBQ sauce which I think was made from the thick and sweet dark soy sauce. But, it was a bit tough to eat because the skin was not removed completely from the flesh. Ah well. We all had a taste of it so that basically finished 75% of the entire dish.

The next dish to come from the kitchen was the pak choi with mushroom. The pak choi is an extremely crunchy vegetable that goes extremely well with oyster sauce. Heck, all vegetables goes well with oyster sauce! Although the black mushroom tasted really sour. It’s the first time I’ve ever tasted such sour black mushrooms though. Has anyone have a similar experience? I did not have any stomach problems that night so the sour taste does not indicate food gone bad.

The last main dish was the fried rice cooked kampung @ village style. This means that chopped pieces of ikan billis @ fried anchovies are added into the dish to give it a pleasant salty favour. Nowadays, most restaurants would divide up all the rice into individual bowls on the table although the last person would usually not get an equal portion.

To complete the meal, a platter of local fruits was served : pineapple, watermelon and honeydew. A nice way to clean one’s mouth after all the delicious meals with different flavours.

After that, we started to belt out song after song of English, Malay and Chinese tunes. Did I sing? Yes. On the karaoke? Nope, because my voice sounds terrible on the mike.

Anyway, ciao people!