When there is no time to cook and hunger comes calling, you know it’s probably lunchtime. What do you do in such a situation? Generally, a sandwich, soup and salad lunch is fast and easy to cook, delicious to eat and healthy to boot. So, here’s a healthy curd sandwich recipe to help  you sail through lunchtime:

You need:

• Hung curd around six tablespoons
• Powdered sugar or honey one teaspoon
• Salt to taste
• Tomato one, sliced thinly
• Cucumber around six thin slices
• Bread two slices, preferably multigrain
• Mint sauce as required
• Cottage cheese, tofu or chicken sliced, enough to cover the bread

Makes one sandwich:

1. Toast the bread slightly.
2. Mix honey or sugar and a pinch of salt into the hung curd and whip lightly for a few seconds
3. Add the mint sauce into the curd
4. Spread the curd mix onto the toasted bread slices.
5. Place the cucumber and tomato slices on one slice
6. Grill or roast the chicken/tofu/cottage cheese slices if needed before placing them on the second slice of bread
7. Use the leftover curd mix to join the two slices

For those who are averse to the idea of honey in their bread, pepper can substitute the honey. Enjoy!

Village Fast Food is located behind Green Bento (which is no longer opened) at Jalan Central. They are both painted in bright green colour and you can view the building from the main road, so it is not difficult to locate it.

The building itself is an open concept, meaning non airconditioned but based on my experience, it’s bearable during lunch hour heat, so should not be any problem for those who wants to try them out during dinner time. This place has also organized a bloggers food review campaign where Kuching Food Bloggers were invited to taste & review the dishes sometime end of last year. Kudos to Village Fast Food for recognizing the power of blog marketing.

Basically, they are providing home cooking style dishes and the price are average, starting at $4 for a plate of fried beehoon. Here’s a look at the dishes that we ordered.

Singapore Style Fried Bee Hoon (actually it’s fried beehoon with curry powder)

Fried Mani Chai Bee Hoon

Home Made Tauhu (not recommended)

Sesame Chicken

 My favourite - Kangkong with belacan (spicy)

Overall, I thought the food was quite good 3.5 out of 5. This is definitely a place I will return to have my meals again.

Vegetarian dishes are not only healthier than their ‘meaty’ counterparts; they are also easier and cheaper to prepare. You can’t go wrong with an onion soup or grilled mushroom steaks, can you? If you follow some simple rules, you too can make amazing vegetarian fare. Just make sure you buy the freshest produce and use quality ingredients. Lastly, don’t overcook: each food has its own taste which must be distinctly felt.

A well known classic is salsa. It is so versatile that you can turn it into soup, eat it like it is or make a curry out of it. Here’s how:

For the salsa:

Chunk a few tomatoes after you have peeled and de-seeded them and add lime juice, salt, pepper, mint and a peeled garlic clove. Add some chopped green chillies, chopped onions and some freshly chopped cilantro. Plop in some de-seeded jalapeños, a teaspoon of olive oil and some iced water. Now blend it all in an electric blender till it attains the desired consistency. Let it season for at least one hour or so.

Your salsa is ready!

• Use it as a handy dip for vegetable sticks, French fries or tortilla chips.
• Use it to improve the flavor of your gravies. It adds a slightly tangy tomato flavor to your vegetable dishes too.
• Spread it onto a pizza base instead of using plain old tomato ketchup.
• Use it to spice up your yogurt snack.
• Use as a bread spread on plain white bread or on a toast.

Isn’t it an amazing yet simple thing to prepare?

I’ve tried many claypot noodle in town but so far, none has been able to beat this stall. It is located at Thompson Corner, Jalan Nanas opposite Chung Hua School No.4. Honestly speaking, I have frequented the stall for more than 10 years already. The price for the Claypot Noodle is $3.50 and ingredients include vegetables, mushroom, crabsticks and chicken meat.

Yamitsu is a newly opened food outlet located at Premier 101. We decided to frequent the place without bothering to make reservations. Bad idea! When we walked into the shop, the place was full of patrons and no one attended to us. We even had to wait for customers to leave and quickly grabbed the table available.

They have a fixed menu comprising of a variety of dim sum, fried mee, fried rice, fried bee hoon, roasted pork, roasted chicken, char siew, etc. Other dishes were not available at the moment. Service was not that great but I believe this is because they are still new and inexperienced.  Food was average, though the fried rice and roasted dark were a bit too oily.

Overall, I would rate them a 3 out of 5. I would like to give Yamitsu another try once they have more dishes on their menu.

Har Kau

Char Siew Pau

Steam bun with butter & salted egg filling

Fried rice with mushroom

Fried Bee Hoon

Roasted Duck @ $25 per plate

3 Types of Roasted Meat @ $15