We made a special trip to Verinice, located at Jalan Petanak, to try out its new dish, the Paper Seafood Steamboat. This is what the actual dish looks like:

Paper used to fill the seafood and soup

The seafood ingredients included mussels, fish fillet, squid, prawns and also vegetables like slices of carrot and mushroom. I actually enjoyed the soup as it was very sweet and tasty. Add a bowl of rice and it will keep you full throughout lunch. This unique dish, with a promotional price of $9.90, was definitely worth trying out. Once the promo is over, the Paper Steamboat will cost patrons $18.90.

Roti canai (pronounced “chanai”) is a type of flatbread sold in Mamak stalls. It is also known as roti prata in Southern Malaysia and Singapore. Basically, it is made from dough with the combination of ghee (clarified butter), egg, flour and water. The mixture is kneaded, flattened, and then oiled, before being folded repeatedly. It is then left to proof and rise. Thereafter, the dough will be flattened, coated with oil and then cooked on a flat iron skille with oil. Roti canai is served with its’ gravy which is called dal or ‘dhal’ (lentil) curry.

The above is the picture of my favourite Roti Telur, which is Roti Canai with egg added to its ingredients. These days, there are a variety of roti canai such as roti telur, with fried eggs, roti tisu (tissue bread), a paper thin and flaky roti, roti bawang (onion bread), roti boom (bomb bread), roti planta (stuffed with margarine and sugar), roti sardin (stuffed with sardine) and roti pisang. The average price of Roti Canai starts from $1.00.

Damon Stainbrook, former sous chef of French Laundry, is leading the charge in a new “conscientious cooking” movement. He’s working with mercury certification program, Safe Harbor, to ensure the fish used in his delicious recipes meets strict standards for mercury content and is caught using only sustainable methods – verified through its traceability program.

Thanks to Stainbrook, I have a recipe here for you to create delicious, healthy and sustainable dinners:

Ingredients:

• 4 tuna steaks, 6 ounces each
• Kosher salt
• Black pepper
• oil

Zucchini pasta:

• 4 cups Julienne green and gold Zucchini
• 2 tsp kosher salt

Artichoke Sauce:

• 16 oz peel, seeded and diced tomatoes
• 1 medium yellow onion diced
• 3 cloves garlic minced
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 1 cup diced marinated baby artichokes
• 1 to 2 teaspoons finely minced hot or mild chile pepper, or to taste
• ¼ cup chopped fresh basil
• Black pepper to taste

Black Olive Tapenade:

• 1 cups pitted Kalamata olives chopped (or olives of your liking)
• 1 big garlic clove minced
• 1 Tbls caper
• ¼ cup fresh Basil leaves chopped
• ¼ cup fresh flat-leaf parsley chopped
• Pinch crushed red pepper flakes
• 1 tablespoon red or white wine vinegar
• ½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Preparation:

Combine all Tapenade ingredients, tasting and adding salt and pepper to taste. Cover and let stand at room temperature before serving. Makes 1 ½ cups

Julienne the Zucchini into long thin pasta like shape. Toss with salt and let sit in colander for 15 minutes. Zucchini will soften to an al dente consistency.

To make the sauce cook onion and garlic with salt over low heat in a heavy bottom pot until translucent, 5 to 7 minutes. Add crushed tomatoes and simmer for thirty minutes. Add artichokes, chile pepper and basil and simmer another ten minutes. Add black pepper to taste and set sauce aside to cool.

Right before grilling tuna toss the sauce and zucchini together in large bowl.

Pull tuna steaks out of fridge fifteen minutes before cooking which will help to keep the tuna from sticking to the grill (If using). Season Tuna steaks with Salt and Pepper, then brush lightly with oil.

Lightly brush a grill rack, or broiler pan with a little oil. Grill tuna over coals medium high heat. Turn after about 2-3 minutes for rare tuna, 4 to 6 minutes for more medium to well done. Tuna should maintain a pink center, but will flake easily around edges.

To finish twist equal portions of pasta onto four plates, top with grilled tuna and tablespoon of tapenade.

Serves four.

Nowadays Indian food is popular not only in India but all over the world. The British, especially, cannot have enough of their favorite dish of curry, ever since the “Chutney Mary” restaurant was opened in London. This restaurant specializes in Indian dishes and cooking methods.

The words ‘Indian cuisine’ can be very misleading. This is because India is a vast country with diverse climates, cultures and agricultural products. With the change in the geography, the amount and type of fresh ingredients available in plenty also change, thereby creating a vast diversity in the Indian dishes. Therefore, there is ‘north Indian’, and ‘south Indian’ food based on region, ‘Mughlai’ and ‘Rajpootani’ food based on the different cultural influences, and even the famous Goan dishes that borrow heavily from the erstwhile Portuguese colonizers’ national recipes. Therefore, instead of getting confused by the variations in Indian food, it is better to discuss some of the more popular and indisputably ‘Indian’ dishes like the now-world-famous snack, ‘samosa’.

A samosa is a deep fried patty filled generally with boiled and mashed potatoes and a variety of Indian spices and boiled peas. Most samosa recipes call for refined flour for the outer crunchy crust. New, health conscious recipes allow these golden triangles to be baked instead of deep fried to shave a little guilt off the indulgence.

You can also experiment with the different versions of this popular snack. There are sweet samosas, “keema” samosas stuffed with minced meat instead of potato, as well as ‘chana’ samosa, or samosa stuffed with boiled chickpeas instead of the usual boiled potatoes.

Indian food has become one of the most sought after ‘exotic’ cuisines nowadays. It is known for its generous use of spices, aroma and for its delicate mix of flavors. Many people find Indian food too rich or too spicy for their taste buds, but the truth is that the Indian food served in restaurants is very different from the daily, simple home fare that millions of Indians enjoy every day.

For example, let us take the famous curry dish of chicken tikka masala which is considered so very Indian and which, in reality, is a recipe never known to Indians until the Indians settled in England went ahead and concocted this dish which could be considered Indian because of the generous use of ‘masalas’ or spice mixes, but which never evolved in India. The red tomato based sauce was toned down in spiciness to suit the British palette and the recipe is as varied as the stories of the origin of this dish.

You can make some on your own. All you need to do is marinate some chicken chunks in yogurt and your favourite Indian spices for about six hours, and then bake it in a tomato based gravy in an oven. Alternately, you may want to cook the whole thing in a pot that you should seal with a flour-water paste for pressure. Enjoy with ‘naan’ or rice. The popularity of the curry dish is such that the term ‘Indian cuisine’ has become synonymous with the word ‘curry’.

 No prize for guessing - My all time favourite Kangkong Belacan with rice ($7)

 MixedVege Rice

Fried Crispy Tomato Noodles

Stove Kitchen is a new outlet located at Jalan Song, amongst the new row of shophouses. You can’t actually view it from the roadside and have to drive in. The outlet is fully airconditioned, one of the very reason we went there that humid day. Being a new place, my colleagues and I decided to play safe and ordered the “You Can Never Go Wrong” type of food above.

Can you guess from the last two pictures what Stove Kitchen specialize in? Yep, it’s Steamboat. Looking at their menu, I would say it’s quite costly compared to other Steam Boat outlets. Overall, the food was nothing great. Just a 2.5 out of 5.