Lunch at the Canteen

It's not easy trying to take pictures at the canteen in my chemical park. Usually a lot of people have lunch there, and when I took the first picture, with flash of course, every single one of them in the canteen were looking at my direction wondering what the hell this cinakui doing in the canteen taking pictures of food. Ah well, like I said... sometimes it's hard to explain what I usually eat for lunch, which is my grand meal of the day... here are a few and most of the time they don't go over 5Euro. Germans love pork. This is grilled pork with sliced onion sauce, kinda taste like soy sauce. Usually it goes with the fries, and I'd add a bowl of vegetables(in this case, steamed long beans) just to make it seem 'healthier'.
This is fried fish fillet(possibly Hoki fillet as they call it, I didn't even know fish can play Hoki here) with tomato based sauce, some so-called 'asian style' rice, which if just mixture of rice and bean sprouts and slices of bamboo shots. There are also some boiled potatoes, and steamed mixed vegetables. This is as healthy as anything can get here.
I believe they call this Hawaiian style Schnitzel. They always associate Hawaii and Pineapples, so being Hawaiian style, you MUST have Pineapples... a slice of pineapple on top of the deep fried pork-breast, with a slice of gouda cheese, with some soury cream sauce. To make it work, I had a piece of vegetable lagsana and some spinach filled dumplings. Healthy? Hmmmm... doesn't matter, it's yummy ^^
This is supposed to be German-Mexican fusion. We have the sausage of course, with the Mexican sauce, with paprika, corn, lots of tomatoes, kinda reminds me of salsa sauce, but with more flavor and less spices. It again goes with the fattening fries, and I felt like having something cold so this time I had some cold rice(unbelievable right?) mixed with tuna, with olives, corn, and thousand island sauce. I know I know... it looks like puke, but it's actually quite yummy. Okay, I lied...it's gross. ^^

I'll keep adding more food from time to time.

Saya Anak Malaysia

A lot of people here, the Germans, they can't really tell if you're a Chinese, Malay, Indian, Vietnamese, Thai, Philipino.... you get the point, all they know that you're an Asian, just like how we look at them and just say that they are European.

So when I start opening my mouth, they'd ask.... so where are you from? I said I'm from Malaysia. "So are you a Malay?" I said "No, I'm a Chinese" And people usually give me strange look here... "But you just said you're from Malaysia, so you must be Malay" I said "No.... I'm a Chinese of ethnicity, but I'm a Malaysian, that's my nationality" And then they go OoooOOOooooOOOoooohhhhh. And next question " So are you a muslim?" ><

So I had to go about explaining to them about Malaysia being a Islamic country but still people are free to embrace the religions as it is their Rights. And they go like OoooOOOOooOOOooooHhhhHHhh the second time..... and then the following question would probably sound like "So you are an immigrant?" >_____________< So, I decided to show my patriotism in a good way. It took me 3 hours to sew this patch onto the backpack that I bring to work everyday on my bicycle. Yeah I know it says LSU, and I bought that from Louisiana State University bookstore. ^^ But hey..... I'm flying the Malaysian flag everywhere I go, that says even more right?

Fried Macaroni with Black Pepper Turkey

Since I've started working in Germany, I've been given the opportunity to experiment with various of cooking styles. I love frying noodles, but I found that it's much easier to fry using pasta, because the noodles retains its firmness and form longer, as long as you boil it right. And after that you can pretty much do whatever you like with it. So here's how you do it...

Ingredients (for 2 portions)
1. 200gm of boneless turkey breast sliced(It's okay to use chicken too)
2. 5 cloves of garlic, finely chopped.
3. 2 large onion, diced.
4. 1 stick of carrot, grated or sliced.
5. 1 Japanese cucumber, sliced.
6. 2 chicken eggs.
7. 500-600ml of water.
8. 1 tablespoons of sesame seed oil.
9. 1 teaspoon of salt.
10. 1 teaspoons of black pepper.
11. Some cooking oil
12. About 2-3 handful of Pasta, or around 200-300gm.
13. A few pinches of curry powder.
14. Salad dressing
15. 1 tablespoon of Soy sauce

Preparation

1. First is to marinate the sliced turkey meat with the black pepper, soy sauce, salt, curry powder and sesame seed oil. Mix them thoroughly and evenly. Marinate for 2hours or more. Usually I'd marinate it pretty long by keeping the meet in the fridge so that the meat won't go bad.
2. Bring the water to boiling and then cook the pasta/noodles, for 5-7minutes depending on how soft you want it.
3. At the same time heat up the cooking oil with the other pot at high, and stir fry the chopped garlic. When all the garlic seemed to be turning a bit brown, throw in the onions and stir fry until they are soft.
4. Carrots being the next and stir fry for around 5 minutes and then the turkey meat goes in. Keep stirring until the color of the meat turns from red to whitish, and that's the time when the black pepper are starting to be visible. It shouldn't take more than 3 minutes for the meat to be fully cooked.
5. While the turkey's being cooked, the noodles should be ready and remove the water using a cooking basket. If the turkey is not yet cooked, and the pasta is already getting soft, you could soak it in a big bowl of cold water to keep it aldente.
   
6. Put the noodles in the bowl and stir fry with the rest for a good 1 minute. Add a little bit of cooking oil if it gets too dry. After that add the eggs, and keep going for another 2 minutes. And then it's ready to serve.

Cooking the pasta with boiling water.

The ingredients. Marinated turkey, finely chopped garlic and diced onions. Sliced carrots and Japanese cucumber.

This is the end result.

The salad can be anything else of course. I'd recommend some cherry tomatoes too, which I totally forgot that I had. ^^ Enjoy and have fun!

Bento Box

This is one of my favorite sushi shop in Germany. I am not saying that they are cheap or absolutely great, but it's a really nice hang out place, and sometimes they do serve some pretty unique stuff with creative ideas. I'll keep adding pictures here whenever I go there during the weekend and find something new.

Location: Cologne, Germany

http://www.bentobox.de
Meer auf Salat. With a whole bunch of vegetables, raw tuna, raw crab sticks, shrimps and raw salmon. You have the option of different types of dressing, this one is with miso-karashi(which I think is with wasabi) (9.50Euro)
This is are the 2 of the specials for June 2008. They are both inside-out maki with sesame seed, salad, with seaweed.
The bottom one is Tuna Spicy Wakame(5.00Euro),
and the top is Ebi Tempura Maki(fried shrimps)(4.50Euro)

Euro 2008 Public Viewing

So, there's this new thing this time for Euro 2008 football championship in Germany, it's called Rudel-Gucken(Pack -Watching) or Public Viewing as they like to call it. It's something like our mamak stall, with huge screens showing football matches. They have it here in all over the places, like train stations, and indoor arenas. It's nothing really new to us I know, but it's nice to know that they like to do what we like to do at home too. It's just a bit harder to find teh-tarik over here, but there's no problem getting a beer ^^ And it's cheaper than water.

So I went to Koeln-Arena, to watch the first match for Germany, playing against Poland. Germany won 2-0 of course, and that was the first time I've even watched a game in such a big screen and having 30,000 people in the arena, shouting and singing just like they're actually playing there. Hahahahaha!I took this one thinking that it might rain that afternoon. But the picture turned out really nicely.
I was first at the outside of the Koeln-Arena, you can choose to stay outdoor, or indoor. Outdoor you can have like picnic style of course, no chairs. But indoor is with seats and air-conditioned. Best thing about it is that, it's totally free of charge!
You can't bring your own food or drinks there, so if you're hungry or thirsty, which you normally would sitting through 2-3 hours of the game... you'll have to spend money there to get over-priced beer and hotdogs.
This is the big screen inside the arena, with 4 sides. It's absolutely fun to watch.