Malacca Part 2 - Ikan Bakar at Umbai

I cannot resist this once I’m in Malacca. Ikan Bakar at Umbai. Lots of restaurants waiting but we have our favourite one – Haji Nasir Ikan Bakar. The foods are cheap, nice and most importantly, the foods are fresh as they are locally catch and cook as we wished.

We arrived early at 530pm, few families has arrived and start to queue to select the seafood. Here, they not only offer grilled fish, but all type of fresh sea creature like crabs, cockle, squid and oysters and of course fish. You will get a slap if you ask for Atlantic Ocean Fish like Salmon – get if from The Manhattan Fish Market.

We chose clam (lala), flower crab, golden snapper (ikan jenahak if I’m not mistaken) and squid.  It is fresh, just choose the size and amount and they will put it on the weighing scale, and make an order.

The restaurant located exactly before the estuary. Our table is uncovered one, but there is a covered section. There are no walls, so you can forget about air-conditioning. Fishing boats arrive at the shore and unload some of the seafood to the long stretch of restaurants nearby.

Some people love to enjoy the grill fish with nasi lemak. I ate my nasi lemak before the seafood served. It is a small one and the sambal is damn spicy, I totally can’t stand the heat. The otak-otak quite good compared to what we normally have in KL. But it is totally uncomparable to otak-otak in Tanjung Lumpur, Pahang. The otak-otak and sata in Tanjung Lumpur is the best that I ever had. Proud to be Pahang born.

Grill golden snapper served with special sauces that is made from tamarind juice mix with soy sauce and added bird chillies. I don’t take this. Spicy!!

Clam (lala) is very fresh and fantastic.

My favorite is the sweet and sour crab. Forget the cutlery here, enjoy the food with hand is the best. The crabmeat is sweet, white and fluffy. Best gila. The sweet and sour gravy just oke.

Deep fried squid ring. It was alright, quite nice, but not fantastically good. Serve with chilli sauce.

We ate until full and no left over.

On my way back to KL, the traffic at first quite smooth, but later..

Malacca Part 1 - The Journey, The Hotel and Malacca River Cruise

Saturday noon after work, we were off from KL, and then heading further south to spend few days at Malacca. The journey was tiring, normally it takes 2 hours to get there, but it took 5 hours! Imagine you sit in a car under the hot sun, traffic was so terrible and moving at a slow pace? Plus you were bloody hungry.

The journey

This is the place where we stay, Everly Resort  Hotel. We arrived at the hotel around 9pm and have a quick dinner before get into our room. Since we were late, there’s no vacant seat for us. Urgh sad.  No choice, thus we have to enjoy the dinner with the VIPs. It was buffet dinner, but I can’t do my buffet routine (5 plates of foods haha) since I sat in a same table with the VIPs. The food was oke, nothing exciting at all

This is my dinner

Oke before that let me do a review for the room. Despite spacious room, there are a few things that I don’t like. I do not expect to have old furniture, old tv, stain here and there on carpet. I don't deserve this for 4 star hotel, it look luxury from the outside but run down for the interior. On the good side, the staffs are quite friendly especially from the front desk. The room is spacious and is great for a big family to gather for quality time

So after we have done with dinner, and someone (can’t remember who) suggest we need to consider a river cruise since we in Malacca.

Yes it was exciting experience. A 40 minute cruise along a river cutting right through the city, with beautiful kampung house on each side. It was awesome. I saw many murals on the buildings and it tells the history of Malacca.

Watching people having their breakfast

Next day, I woke up late and what a beautiful Sunday morning and the sky was a bluebird! I was super hungry looking for a breakfast. The breakfast menu from the hotel mostly a local society cuisine. Not much choice available and the taste 2.5/5. I’m sorry hotel but the food was totally under my expectation

View from front

View from back

Forget about the food, back of the hotel, a beautiful garden around the swimming pool and looks straight onto the beach.

This is me

Beef Strips with Orange and Ginger

This is inspired by my dad’s cook but I twist the recipe a bit by using orange instead of lime. This is stir fry cooking, one of the best ways to cook meat with minimum fat. It is also one of the quickest ways to cook, provided you need to choose tender meat. So you will need:

Lean beef rump, fillet or sirloin. What ever, but cut into thin stips

Juice of 1 orange

1 tablespoon of Light soy sauce

Corn flour

2 tablespoons of Sesame oil

1 inch of ginger, finely chopped

Large carrot, cut into thin strips

2 spring onion, thinly sliced

Place the beef strips in a bowl and sprinkle over the orange juice. Leave it to marinate for at least 30 minutes.

Drain the liquid from the meat and set aside, then mix with soy sauce, corn flour and ginger.

Heat the sesame oil in a wok or large frying pan and add the beef. Stir fry for about 1 minute until lightly coloured, then add the spring onions and the liquid that we reserved earlier, then cook and stirring until boiling and thickened.

Lastly, add the carrot and stir fry again for another couple of minutes more.

Now we done! Best served with plain rice or rice noodles.