One Morning at Farmer's Market in KL, Malaysia (Pasar Pagi)

Hi everyone, I don't usually have such a super long post! But I thought this might interest you because when I searched for things to post up here, this seems pretty interesting to me so I posted it here. These pictures were taken during Chinese New Year, which was quite some time ago, haha... Anyway, :p Back then, I followed my sister to this market in KL, which I forgot its name, that it turned out to be a very TRADITIONAL morning market that sells all sort of things, in a VERY traditional way!


Like, for example, they sell chicken alive! When you confirm your order, they will 'service' the chick for you, right in front of your eyes, so it is confirmed fresh. Or something like the aloe vera (on top of the metal cage), or the wild vegetable ( in the grey plastic basket) which is called 'paku' quite uncommon for most of us here.


As you can see here, poor chicken can hardly move around before their time comes...

Oh yes, this was the butcher stall selling pork, used to be my favourite! You know why? As I grew up in a Kampung and my mother used to sell vegetable in the morning market, and I had to somehow babysit myself in a corner. So normally in the afternoon, when the butchers had already closed their stalls and left, since I had nowhere to go, I thought it would be a good way to take nap on the butcher table, so it became my favourite bed in the market! Just nice for my size and because the table was made of cement, it was super cooling! Now of course you can't see the table but below the wooden top, it should be the cement table that I am talking about.

My mother used to sell vegetable before switching to selling flowers, I prefer she sells flowers though because it sounds nicer and more romantic. Super stupid reason. I went back last week to visit her, CY took this picture (below) when we went to buy some kampung vegetable back to Singapore. Her shop was still there, intact, but no one was operating there. It was supposed to be sold to someone else already but the 'someone else' was not there too. Her signboard was still there! My mother named the shop after her, Mong Lin, that's her name, quite romantic isn't it? I wonder how many people out there have the surname Mong 蒙 in Chinese, quite rare I think. Somemore vegetable back in KL morning market.

On the other side, some stalls selling snacks, biscuits and stuff like that. My sister introduced me Kaya Kok, the triangular egg jam pastry, a common pastry for breakfast or snack in Malaysia, really blew me away!

Look at it! So appetising isn't it? You can find the recipe to make the egg jam here: http://lilyng2000.blogspot.com/2005/05/kaya-rich-egg-custard.html

It varies from recipe the recipe, just like the way we make jam, bread, or pizza. You can somehow master it by making it a few times, you will find your own family recipe eventually. I personally think that Lily's version should be quite authentic, although I have never made it myself. :p

The pastry below the kaya kok is siew bao, baked pastry with roasted pork, very tasty and full of flavours. It's quite heavy for breakfast but I don't mind having this because it is so yummy!

My sister is ordering a lot more for the kids back home. She is makan queen, i.e. eating queen, anything that tastes good or smells good can never escape from her licking good finger! I am so fortunate to be her sister because I too, have lots of good things to eat!

That's all for now, a super long post!

Grilled Bell Pepper Pasta

This is truly an improvised pasta recipe. I think sometimes we need to depend on our intuition to cook something and it will turn out good. This is so good. I can’t imagine anyone not cooking this at least once in his lifetime.

I want to have something light yet nutrituous, so I come out with this simple recipe that requires no brain, simply pasta, bell pepper, garlic, parsley, bacon and olive oil. You can somehow imagine its flavours, do you?

Ingredients:
Pasta, enough for 2 pax
Sliced 1 whole garlic as I love to have lots of garlic!
6 bell peppers, assorted colours
1 bunch of chinese parsley
A few strips of bacon
A few tbsp of Olive oil

Methods:
Grill bell peppers in whole with some olive oil till slightly burnt on the skin, rest it in a bowl, covered so to have the steam effect onto them. Cook pasta in salted water according to package instructions.
Fry some bacon, then sliced garlic. Deseed the bell pepper and cut them into big chunks, fry slightly with bacon. When the pasta is done, mix with bacon, some water and olive oil. Season with salt and pepper.
Chop parsley and add in the end.

It is so pepperly! Yum yum!

Baked beans, ham and bread

Simple food such as this, is not meant to impress others, but to comfort stomach. I find that anything goes with tomato sauce is familiar food, like canned sardine or baked bean. So once in a while, I like to have this kind of food, bread with baked bean, fried egg, and optional ham.