A week ago…

We got together for dinner, a quiet low-keyed one at my parents’ house, just the family together, over a week ago – last Saturday night to be exact.

My dad and my sis went and ordered some nice dishes from this very nice restaurant in town, one of the oldest, most established around. Coincidentally, those included some of the very nice dishes that I had there when I was going around all over town to sample all the good stuff there was for the book that I was involved in writing last year.

We had the chess duck…

…as it is called and also the fried sea cucumber…

– sharks’ fins, dry version-style, minus the offensive stuff…and the claypot mutton…

…and the ikan bawal putih (silver/white pomfret) slices with its very special sauce…

I would say that if I had to pick the best, that last one would be it.

We also had the hot plate…

…which was good too and the fried mee sua with eggs…

Those, plus this vegetable dish…

…came up to a little over RM400 (servings for 10) inclusive of free home delivery and I think my dad gave a generous tip to the guys. That was definitely cheaper than the RM500 per table set (not inclusive of everything else) that we had recently on my mother-in-law’s birthday…and I would say this was just as nice or perhaps even nicer!

No, there were no prawns either so I decided to cook my own version of the Chinese drunken prawn dish – Sarawak-style with tuak (traditional ethnic rice wine) added…

I would say it  was very nice…

…but it may not go down too well with those who are less inclined towards anything with such exotic ethnic taste. My girl tried one and said it was nice but “very strong on the tuak“. Well, of course, it was – I used the wine, unadulterated and what was in the soup would be the wine plus all the sweet juices from the prawns and whatever moisture that might have dripped into the dish in the process of steaming.

I also went back to this place to buy some macarons…

…for dessert. I remember the salted caramel ones (brown) were not as sweet so I bought some of those…and also the new pistachio ones (dark green), thinking that those would not be so sweet as well. Well, I was wrong! They were VERY sweet! Upon closer inspection, I saw the filling sandwiched in between layers of brown, probably chocolate. I also bought one each of their other new ones to try – from the feedback I got from those who had them, the orange and the raspberry (pink) were very nice but also very sweet and generally, everyone agreed that the nicest of the four new flavours would be the (pepper)mint (light green). It seemed to have a hint of pandan flavour with a light touch of the pleasant minty taste.

I would say this batch looked a lot better than the ones I bought the first time – the surface of the shell was glossier and smoother and even the texture was nicer – slightly harder and crustier, not as crumbly as previously…so either the one making them has improved or I caught her at a wrong time then. All in all, everyone said they were very nice – they loved them very much…just that they were all too sweet, not for those who are not into sweet things.

Well, that certainly was a delightful dinner that we all had that night – I sure enjoyed it very much.