Its my b’day

What is b’day about? .. I never really cared for b’day, never thought of it as anything special. Only sometimes do I splurge a little and pamper myself.

spread at my birthday. lobster, gong gongs, chili crabs, bamboo clams

A friend send this cute message on my facebook. “another great weekend so far? enjoy this sunday … pple around should take ur orders… , show u respect …, give u treats…, just for a day at least. “

Me and my greasy fingers

Well, lets see. I thought that those ugly plastic table liners should be changed just for me… also, I shouldnt have to blackout the mess and other people in my picture! Why arent those guys clearing their tables and move away for me, just this once on my b’day? Was that really too much to ask for…

But anyway, its was a great dinner meal.. after a day of working on Trio (still) and entertaining visiting sis et el.

Consolation for a terrible day at Kips’

I dont think I will go back to Kips’ again. The incident with Trio being scratched destroyed all good feelings that I had with that place. So here is my final seafood meal will stuff bought from them.

Showing how large this cockle is

Relative of the big cockle? RM2 is a great price.

Fresh and good at cheap price.

Chuk Chuk, muddy swamp snails...

Some of the great stuff at Kips. Great buys, but its not worth it. It will cost me much more to fix my paintwork! And the heartache!

Alright, so what do you do about muddy swamp snails, aka chuk chuks? Put them in a bucket and give it a good shower with a powerful spray. Rinse, spray, rinse spray until you get all the mud off. Scoop them into another pot, rinse the bucket to remove debris thats stuck at the bottom.

Chuk chuks escaping from “bathtub”

Then transfer them back… Tip: they crawl slower in a plastic bucket. Ok, I am really finicky about cleaning them up. Dont think you want to eat mud either, so do as I say.

Washed and ready to boil

The large cockles are easy to prep, power spray wash. See how much more white is showing now? Let it soak for abit, 15 mins, hopefully it will spit out some mud/sand. I think these are sand cockles… .. how did they get so big?

Half shelled

 

….This is my 1st time get them big ones. I cant find any recipe online for cooking large cockles, so this is what I come up with. Boil for 5 mins, turn off fire but let it sit till cool. Pry open shell, cut off muscle attached to shell. half shelled after cooking. Half shelled cockles are just for picture taking. .. Remove cockles from shell, slice into strips, put in a bowl of cut chili and lime juice. Hmm…! I like it. Cant describe the taste, you gotta try it yourself.

Cooked Chili chukchucks

………..As for the Chuk chuks, its quite a lot of work with the washing, then cutting of the “tails” for opening them up. Its alot of work for not enuf meat. This is how I cook it, again its my recipe, from how I think the hawkers do it.

Cut up 2 garlice, slice thinly 1 chunk of ginger. Fry ginger and garlic until brown. Add CC, and water, cover lid. Stir after 2 mins, add large chunk of chili paste (to suit your chili tolerance.. but I like it really spicy hot) . Stir, cover again. Turn off heat after 3 mins.

Eh… do I have to describe how to get them out of the shell..?

Seafood heaven..

Manila clams steamed in garlic ginger chili and rice wine broth

The heaven that most Singaporeans want to go to… for me, gourmet heavens are here on earth. .. < I hope I dont have to choose between the heavens, or I will be really split up >

Still crazy after my futile clam hunt from last weekend, I went all out to get them… Manila clams (frozen, not fresh) from Tesco JB, GongGong, Fish roe, century eggs from Kips’ in Kota Tinggi.

Well, I want garanteed seafood for dinner alright! Will do the clam hunt another time.

The story for today. Out of bed at 0400, watched Dow close in on 7000.. (.. yeah..!..) Left home 0445, did some local errands, cleared JB customs 0600, had a excellent Dim Sum breakfast at the shop near Pelangi JB. Highly recommend, but cant remember the shop name.. Its really near Pelangi, walk down just abit and viola! They only open for breakfast.

local chili padis, small and dangerous

Arrive at Tesco, nap in T’rio for abit.. till Tesco open at 0800… Clams are not fresh, but I just bought them anyway… Left Tesco 1030. Arrived Kips’ 1100. More shopping, great stuff! I like Kips’. This is my 2nd visit to this clean, privately run supermarket. Was very happy in my 1st visit, to buy a whole 1kg snapper for just RM$14, 1/2kg large squid for RM$4, 1/2kg medium tiger prawns for RM$8. All that ingredients went into making a excellent Cevichi! The veg section was supergood and cheap too. I hand pick my chili padis from a big pile of locally grown chili’s. The prepacked thai chilis are available and they look fresh, but the local chili padi’s are just the best in flavour, tho they look not so uniformly bright red and not perfectly shaped.

Fish roe in garlic, ginger and chili

The shellfish man wasn’t openned during my 1st visit to Kips’ in Jan. So happy to finally discover what hes got! Very fresh and pretty good supply of rather exotic shellfish. Nope, he dont have the really expensive abalone, nor oysters, nor fat juicy geoducks. But huge size cockles, gong gongs, chuchuks, lahlahs, mussels were just what I wanted. I had wanted them all… seriously! Barely managed to keep myself to choosing only 2 items, gong gongs and some fish roe. Should have my camera with me.. at least I could have a picture of his stall! A shrine for all seafood worshippers.

Gong Gongs. A type of edible sea snail.

The highlight of my dinner … <…drum rolls…> … GongGongs. Why are these named GG? I wonder that myself.. .. ..

My previous attempts at cooking these shells were not so successful. 1 batch had alot of sand, 1 batch was kinda plain, 1 batch had most of the meat stuck inside the shell. This time, I rinsed, soaked for 15 mins, rinsed 3 more times, before cooking. Added more ginger, chili and garlic, a touch of dark soy sause, and viola! This batch was just perfect. Better than Jade Garden in Sg Rengit! Here’s a picture of a snail pried out and ready for the mouth.

Gong gong out of shell..

Now who’s ready to try one!? Well, nobody took up my offer to come visit me within 1hr of my picture posting on facebook. I guess most of my friends are not so adventurers in trying out new food huh..

Quail century eggs

Oh, btw, these were my appetizers, Quail century eggs and beer. It was an amazing discovery for me, that beer bought out better flavor to the rich taste of these eggs.

Hmm.. oh yes, we left Kips around 1200, had a good pork rib soup “aka bak kut teh” lunch in our favorite KT shop! Left KT1300 and arrive Sebana 1530. Did some errands and start cooking 1630. Only 1hr to cook up all those stuff shown above. Doug cooked his own “spoon Taco beef” dinner. He’s not having any part of this… <..all the better for me…>

In search of CLAMS!

I confess to being a seafood junkie, and my favorite in that are CLAMs! My happiest childhood days were spent clamming away on some remote island off Punggol. A 2 hour clam hunt along the beach of Coney Island will yield half a bucket.

Then, for some reason, life changed. My family didnt go clamming anymore, and I went on to school and did other stuff. I still love seafood and clams, but I would buy them cooked or “fresh” from the supermarket.

As I recall, my last successful clamming trip might be when I was 10. After all these years, I wonder if I still enjoy hunting for my own clams. So, when I did the cruising trip up to Phuket with Doug on S/V Calliste in 2005/6, I decided to hunt clams once again. This turn out to be rather embarrassing for me, as I got no clams to show, whereas the non-clammer Doug picked up 1(at beach near Telega Harbour, Langkawi) and found 3 large pin mussels(on a remote island beach in Phang Nga Bay, Phuket).

BTW, I am not yet given up on clamming. I am still on the lookout for clamming beaches wherever I go. Just this weekend, a great clam craving spell overcame me. I pulled Doug away from whatever his plans were and off we go on a clam hunt. We drove from Sebana, down the road to Sg Rengit, turn left to head towards the sandy beaches off the East Coast near Desaru. We are looking for sandy beach clams…

My cute little SUV at Rumunia Beach Resort.

We turned off the main road leading towards Desaru, when we near to the beach front community near Gombak. We were surprise to find a rather nice resort and vibrant activity going on there. This weekend, a bunch of SGreans were doing kayak school. Apparently their subject this week, was coming in on the surf.

Kayakers preparing to come in on the surf

It was fun to watch them go through with all their strokes and ride up and down on the surf. None of them got into any trouble coming in. Maybe the conditions were not  bad, only 1 metre surfs.

Riding the surf

Opps! Almost fell in that time..

looking for the right spot

Okay, enuf watching. Back to the topic of clamming. Since we were here at this nice little open resort, I thought we might just try clamming right here on this beach. Armed with 2 plastic spoons, I set out to find my clamming spot amongst the rocks. This place looks promising, with a bunch of dead clam shells washed up in a pile. Where you have dead clam shells, you must have live clams too. That was Dougs’ theory.

Clam hole #1

Here I am digging my 1st clam hole of 2009. Just 4″ down, we realized that this is not to be. The sand was to coarse under the 1st layer of finer sand. Not quite the right texture for clams.

Ok, moving on to the next beach up the coast. We past a Army camp, 1 kampong, 2 broken up bungalows. Normal things in MY that dont fit in the nice waterfront living scene. Finally drove off a unused, overgrown path that led to the beach about 3km from the Rumunia resort.

Clam hole #2, plastic spoons still intact

What a world of difference 3km makes. The sand on this beach was much finer. This is more promising that the last beach, with again, more dead shells and finer sand.

Doug and teamug on beach at Rumunia

Well, so whats’ the verdict? Found nothing but dead clam shells after 4 holes on this beach. Surprised that the disposable plastic spoons held up from all this digging too. Hey, ok, so Lang has no luck clamming yet again!

Well, at least Doug had a good time at the beach and documenting as I, once again embarass myself with futile clam hunt.