I went to Artisan Roast Coffee for the first time for lunch today, had Affogato and bits of coffee shot on Flat White. Melbourne actually had done great job for making me able to drink coffee (better) without jitters. Huhaaa!

Woohoo, Indonesian Carousel is up this week. The last time I joined the content meeting, they said it’d be good to have an Indonesian week ‘for me’ because me - their token Indonesian - is leaving this country for good. One carousel as a tribute, not bad eh? I guess they love me (:

These are some of the food shoots submitted for Selangorlicious: Eat. Write. Win! competition which due yesterday. I could have done better, I guess, but apart from us winning the competition or not, me and Alia have got a better idea. 

One of my favorite carousel done for this week: Burger Carousel. I’m back to the office again after a deadly 10 days of production shoot next door. It was really quite an experience. I’ll upload some bits of behind the scene once I’m feeling better.

For now, happy munch your patty!

Our food editor and food researcher were going crazy last week by making up burger madness in the kitchen. Wait, this is not the regular burger with usual patties for sure, because we have 7 Magnificent Malaysian Burgers ranged from Asam Laksa burger, Nasi Lemak burger, Rendang burger, Char Kueh Tiao burger, Ramly & Fruit Salsa burger, Roti Canai burger, and Pisang Goreng burger. 

Magnificent chefs on the role! 

Still for this Indonesian Week, I decided to cover traditional food from the far far land in the eastern side of the country. Papeda is a sagoo dish for people in Papua and certain part of Maluku Island. It’s funny that here in Malaysia, people from Sarawak has similar sagoo dish as well. The difference is, Papeda from Papua is eaten with Ikan Kuah Kuning while in Sarawak they eat their sagoo with sambal belacan.

It’s been quite a decade plus since the last time I ate Papeda back in the year 1998. I used to live in Papua for 14 years to actually miss this food so much.

Akai meroooo, it brings back memory today.

Balinese Chicken Betutu is one of the dishes made today for Indonesian Week article. It is quite a distinctive dish known originally from Bali and usually served in traditional ceremonies and prayers. 

Betutu is made with chicken or duck which is stuffed with spices and cassava leaves and then wrapped with banana leave before it is roasted for about 6 - 7 hours. But today we didn’t leave it that long. My colleague managed to made a simple version of Ayam Betutu which only needed probably one hour an a half. 

Look at those cassava leaves stuffed in the middle!

Still for Indonesian Week, my colleague attempted to make Soto Banjar. Soto Banjar comes from south part of Kalimantan Island (Borneo) while Banjar itself taken from Banjarmasin, the capital city for that province. 

Based on the original story about this dish, Soto Banjar’s gravy should be white in color, which comes from the milk added into it. It is later to be eaten with ketupat. But not many people fancy that kind of serving, hence some of them leave their soto plain. The funny thing is, when the gravy is plain, it shouldn’t be called soto. Instead, it has to be called soup - and soup shouldn’t be eaten with ketupat… but rice. Kinda complicated, rite? Plus actually the ingredients are still the same. 

Anyway, with ketupat or rice, just don’t forget perkedel (potato patties) and fried shallots to complete this comforting meal. 

I have one assignment to be completed this weekend for Indonesian Week in FriedChillies. I picked 5 (five) main dishes from different island in Indonesia. Picture above is Ketoprak Betawi, a local breakfast meal which consists of bean sprouts, fried tahu, bihun, fritters that should be eaten with peanut sauce and fried shallots. Unlike the other photo shoots I did, I actually made this dish by myself. Tee hee. So much for living abroad and miss the local cart food, eh?

I can’t swim, hence I can’t imagine myself dive into the ocean. So I take another place to dive into, and in my case, I dive into a wok. I’ve just realized that I have quite number of pictures taken from the wok, above the wok and on the wok itself. I might print out series for that alone.

FriedChillies is hiring new graphic designer and (also) food photographer. It put me in gasp realizing that I’m leaving this place soon. 

And I’ve never realized how much I love food today. 

Spicy Salad for today’s lunch. It’s getting there, hang on!

Organic salad tossed with organic stuff from Justlife. I went for their ‘Earth Day Carnival’ press conference and yeah guess what I had for lunch: Lebanese salad! The rest of the food was vegan food (right) and I got intrigued more. It was really tasty!

We have noodles’ shoots today and one of them is Cantonese Fried Yee Mee which personally remind me of my mother Bugis’ Mie TiTi. It’s the same basic dried noodles with seafood gravy, and I thought this could be kinda similar since Chinese culture has big influence back in Makassar, South Sulawesi. 

My food writer Alia mentioned a nice line this morning, “i like nasi melayu, chinese noodles, and roti india.” Yes, roti canai is one of the example. I’ll definitely miss this once I leave this place. 

Above is roti canai taken for one of street food assignments at Restoran Jaya. My favorite pic among the rest taken since last week. 

Caroline Artiss did her pilot shooting with FC last weekend. I have never heard of her before, but apparently she is one of the first TV chef’s to be discovered on Youtube in the UK.  Her passion for food and making cooking easy, enjoyable and accessible has quickly led to Caroline accumulating a large online following.

She’s a very decent and pretty chef, she knows what she’s doing and she’s just nice to chat and talk about food and stuff. Being half Sarawakian and half British, it’s funny to hear her accent when she pronounces local food’s name though.