The Malaya Restaurant: Good Food Month Let's Do Lunch, King Street Wharf, Sydney (27 Oct 2016)

39 Lime Street, King Street Wharf, Sydney NSW 2000
http://www.themalaya.com.au
https://www.instagram.com/themalayarestaurant/

Let's Do Malaysian Lunch

Dined with three work colleagues for a birthday lunch and we were all very happy with the Let's Do Lunch shared menu ($38) at The Malaya. Salt & Pepper Prawns were an immediate crowd pleaser served up first. Nice thin batter and decent sized prawns. Chicken San Choy Bow was tasty with nicely presented lettuce cups. Kapitan King Prawns came with a decent amount of sauce to help flavour your bowl of steamed rice. The Szechuan Eggplant had a good crispy coating in a tasty sauce. Even though you can get a bottle of Yalumba The Y Series 2015 Riesling for under $10 at a bottle shop we all liked our glass of wine very much and it went well with the meal. Coffee wasn't included with their Let's Do Lunch even though many other restaurants were including a coffee. Pleasant water views and efficient service. Was a pretty popular place ranging from couples to large table groups. We thought it was pretty good value for the variety of dishes you got to sample. There was even some reasonably priced desserts on offer but we opted to save ourselves from the calories and seek our sugar hit from the Pink Ribbon Day afternoon tea back at work.

Home Cooking: Fish Fingers San Choy Bow (25 Feb 2012)

Spontaneously creating a meal

I used to love watching the show Surprise Chef where Chef Aristos Papandroulakis went into peoples kitchens and challenged himself to cook a meal only using ingredients from their pantry, fridge or groceries they'd just bought. Quite often I find myself trying to do the same thing at home when I haven't had a chance to go shopping and need to feed myself with something besides toast, a banana or a can of tuna if I'm lucky enough to have one in the pantry. With dinner approaching fast with a growling stomach it was time to put my Aristos thinking cap on. I had left over Fish Fingers from the week so that was a great start. I found some iceberg lettuce, eggs and left over frozen peas. With a bit of mayo and some Maldon Smoked Sea Salt and Pimentón seasoning it was looking like Fish Fingers San Choy Bow was a possibility. In the end it tasted pretty decent. Perhaps a little bit too eggy so I should have maybe thrown a bit of chopped chives from the balcony garden in to smooth it over a little. I wonder if anyone else has created this dish before or is it a world first?

Recipe:

5 fish fingers

3 iceberg lettuce leaves

2 eggs hard boiled

1 cup of frozen peas

2 tablespoon of mayonnaise

Salt and paprika to taste

SNAPSHOT REVIEW:

PROS: Simple, cheap, tastes OK

CONS: Possibly not the most nutritious meal on the planet but it does contain greens and protein

MUST TRY: Thinking of another simple dish using the rest of the peas and lettuce

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Birds Eye fish fingers — I loved these as a kid

Hard boil the eggs

Wash a few lettuce leaves and break into smaller pieces

McCain frozen baby peas — be sure not to over cook them

Praise mayonnaise

Dulce Pimenton and Maldon Smoked Sea Salt

Mix the peas, egg and mayonnaise together. I should have crushed up the egg first and then combined so the peas don't get squashed too much.

Spoon egg and peas on lettuce and place a few cut up pieces of fish fingers on top.