No, thank you…

My brother-in-law and his missus went over to KL and Singapore for over a week to visit their son and daughter there respectively and when they came back, they brought along a whole lot of things including this bottle of durian kaya…

…from my niece over in the island republic.

This is a Singapore product…

…and of course, I could not wait to give it a try.

It so happened that we had some bread in the house so the very next morning, I went and prepared for myself some kaya toast…

…for breakfast.

I also boiled two eggs as I wanted the whole works but unfortunately, I did not time it right so the eggs ended up hard-boiled…

…when they should be only half-boiled. Ah well! It did not really matter as I would love eggs – in whatever form and I did not want to go through the trouble of boiling another two more.

So what did I think of the durian kaya? Well, it was very nice but if anyone is craving for durian, this will not solve the problem as it does not taste anything like the fruit, fresh. At best, I would say it is more like a cross between durian dodol and kaya and though it tastes pretty good, given a choice, I would much sooner go for the traditional nyonya kaya or the pandan version, Glory Brand, that is also made in Singapore.

Together with the eggs and my kopi-o (coffee, black), the durian kaya toasts were good enough for a decent breakfast…

…and a welcome change from my usual kampung fried rice or noodles. However, if you ask me whether I would go out and buy another bottle, perhaps others would enjoy it enough to do that but on my part, the answer is – no, thank you.

Incidentally, for dinner, last Saturday evening, I went and cooked the other slab of pork belly/sar chan bak (three-layer meat) that I bought the other day but I just roasted one of the two. I did not have the time so I did not let it sit in the fridge this time around, not even for 30 minutes. After boiling, I poked the skin, rubbed some vinegar on it, marinated it with the spicy bake mix, scored it with a knife, wrapped the whole thing up with aluminium foil, exposing just the skin, and put it in the oven to bake.

Thankfully, there was no splutter, no horrible mess in the oven unlike previously and the meat turned out really good…

…not overdone – very succulent and tasty, but the skin was hard…

…so I just sliced it off, along with the bit of fat right below it, and threw it away.

Well, my girl enjoyed the meat very much and said that it was nicer than her mum’s roast chicken thighs using the same spicy bake mix. Hehehehehe!!!!!